[Metadatalibrarians] Reminder: Linked Library Data Interest Group Program @ ALA Midwinter 2018

[Scott Carlson]

LITA/ALCTS Linked Library Data Interest Group Meeting at ALA Midwinter 
in Denver, Colorado

Please join us for three exciting presentations on linked data name 
authority projects. After our speaker presentations, the group will have 
an opportunity for questions and discussion.

Time: Saturday, February 10, 2018 8:30-10:00 AM
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Rm 705/707
Session Name: "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name": Linked Data 
Authority Projects

1. "What works and what doesn't? Name Reconciliation Work and Management 
of Digitized Special Collections"

As libraries transform and publish their data as linked open data, they 
face a number of challenges. Included among these challenges are two key 
questions: How can we recognize and reconcile named entities already 
described in established linked open data sources, and how can we best 
manage unique names often found in local special collections’ data, but 
not found elsewhere? Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the 
Linked Open Data (LOD) for Digitized Special Collections project at the 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library has provided an 
opportunity to address these two questions through lessons learned from 
three of the University Library’s digitized special collections, two 
image-based theater collections, and a TEI-encoded text collection. This 
presentation illustrates how the project has combined manual and 
automatic reconciliation processes to improve the matching results, and 
an approach to creating and publishing local name authority files in an 
LOD format.

Speaker:
Myung-Ja ("MJ") K. Han is a Metadata Librarian and Associate Professor 
of Library Administration at the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on interoperability of metadata, 
metadata modeling, bibliographic control in the digital library 
environment, and the use of Linked Open Data in library service 
architectures and implementations.

2. "Western Name Authority File: Linking People and Corporate Bodies"

The Western Name Authority File (WNAF) project was funded by an IMLS 
planning grant in early 2016 to explore and pilot a system for 
developing a collaborative, regional authority file for personal names 
and corporate bodies from digital collection metadata. We presented the 
background and issues to be explored at the Linked Library Data Interest 
Group at ALA Annual 2016, and now as we near the end of the two year 
grant, we will provide an update on the data model we've chosen for our 
vocabulary, what we've done to collect and reconcile names from a 
variety of partner institutions, and the emerging vocabulary workflows 
that we're in the process of developing in order to make the WNAF 
available as linked open data.

Speakers:
Anna Neatrour is the Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of 
Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. She previously was a metadata 
librarian at the Marriott Library and at the Mountain West Digital 
Library. She received her MLIS from the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign.
Jeremy Myntti is Head of Digital Library Services at the University of 
Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. This position allows him the 
opportunity to work closely with faculty and staff who are digitizing, 
creating metadata, and digitally preserving library and partner content. 
He received his MLIS from the University of Alabama.

3. "Introducing Cedar: a Linked Data Authority Service at the University 
of Houston Libraries"

In 2016, as part of the development of a new digital access and 
preservation ecosystem, the University of Houston Libraries established 
Cedar, a local linked data thesaurus. Using SKOS, Cedar includes terms 
for subjects, individual and organization names, place names, and time 
periods found in the Libraries’ digital library and electronic theses 
and dissertations (ETD) collection from the UH institutional repository. 
While Cedar includes terms from national authority files, it also 
accommodates locally created terms with emphasis on personal, 
organization, and place names. Over the last two years, the metadata 
unit has deployed the software and developed strategies and workflows 
for term entry and use in our digital production workflows. 
Additionally, we collaborated with our cataloging unit to leverage this 
system to perform authority control in traditional MARC cataloging for 
ETDs in a more efficient way. This presentation will outline the 
development of the tool focusing on the thesaurus design, the workflow 
of creating local authority records, the use of the application, as well 
as lessons learned and future directions.

Speakers:
Xiping Liu is a Resource Description Librarian at the University of 
Houston M.D. Anderson Library. She is responsible for original 
cataloging library materials in all formats. She received her MLIS from 
Rutgers University.
Anne Washington is the Metadata Librarian at the University of Houston 
M.D. Anderson Library. She is responsible for managing metadata creation 
and maintenance for the University of Houston Digital Library. She 
received her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Andrew Weidner is the Metadata Services Coordinator at the University of 
Houston M.D. Anderson Library where he oversees digitization and 
metadata for digital collections. He received his MLIS from the 
University of North Texas.


-- Scott Carlson
Metadata Coordinator
Rice University, Fondren Library
scarlson at rice.edu
713-348-3727