Library and Information Science Commons^™

A Visual Workflow For Cataloging, Arden Kirkland, Minor Gordon

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Our digital collections team took on the challenge to improve the tools and processes of cataloging. We began to explore how we could build features that helped students into a cataloging worksheet tool, under development at DressDiscover.org. After our initial development of the tool, we looked back and realized just how much Universal Design for Learning (UDL) had influenced our design, although we had not consciously intended that from the start. Our assessment of the project through a UDL lens was at first extremely affirming, helping us to note many ways that our work already supported all three of …

“I’M Not Searching The Right Words”: User Experience Searching Historic Clothing Collection Websites, Arden Kirkland, Monica Sklar, Clare Sauro, Leon Wiebers, Sara Idacavage, Julia Mun

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This study investigates the search processes of users accessing public websites representing historic clothing collections, examining where their searches are supported by the metadata in the collection databases and what factors could make their experience more inclusive. With IRB approval from four universities, we performed a recorded experiment with twenty adults: ten students of historic dress and ten fashion professionals. Four tasks included search scenarios and images representing diverse historic garments. Results indicate that both the descriptive metadata and search features on collection websites present challenges for the typical user search process. Users search for historical dress content the way …

Person, (Place,) Or Thing: Centering People With Caring Language And The Acknowledgement Of Performance, Kiley Jolicoeur

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

This presentation details remediation work done on harmful legacy metadata as part of the Syracuse University Libraries digital collections migration of the Sideshow Performers Collection, which contains digitized images from the Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann photographs. The discussion focuses on deconstructing the legacy information and reconstructing it in ways that center the individual performer depicted, rather than portraying them as a medicalized specimen.

No session recording is available, but presenter's notes are included on the slides.

Practicing Care: A Look At The Application Of Care Ethics To Metadata Creation And Remediation, Kiley Jolicoeur

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

The process of creating and stewarding descriptive metadata is often approached with a focus on standardization. However, utilizing an approach grounded in care ethics to construct a relationship between the metadata creator and the people who are the creators and subjects of the archival materials can provide better descriptive metadata. The improvement is focused on allowing digital archives to give people appearing in the archive the respect and attention they deserve, as well as providing important historical information to users. This paper details a concept-in-practice discussion of the employment of an approach grounded in care ethics on the remediation of …

Practicing Care: A Look At The Application Of Care Ethics To Metadata Creation And Remediation, Kiley Jolicoeur

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

The process of creating and stewarding descriptive metadata is often approached with a focus on standardization. However, utilizing an approach grounded in care ethics to construct a relationship between the metadata creator and the people who are the creators and subjects of the archival materials can provide better descriptive metadata. The improvement is focused on allowing digital archives to give people appearing in the archive the respect and attention they deserve, as well as providing important historical information to users. This presentation details a concept-in-practice discussion of the employment of an approach grounded in care ethics on the remediation of …

Palm Leaf Manuscripts In South Asia, Emera Bridger Wilson, Jessica M. Rice

School of Information Studies - Post-doc and Student Scholarship

Many thousands of palm leaf manuscripts, in South Asia and elsewhere, are currently in danger of being lost due to physical deterioration. These manuscripts contain irreplaceable cultural, religious, scientific, and artistic works. Palm leaf manuscripts, which can be centuries old, are found in numerous private collections, temples, monasteries, libraries and museums. The sheer number and wide dispersal of palm leaf manuscripts provide significant challenges to conservation and preservation, including both ethical and technical considerations. A literature search and examination of palm leaf manuscripts shed light on the urgent need to proceed worldwide along two fronts simultaneously: rapid digitization of critical …

Metadata For Diversity: Identification And Implications Of Potential Access Points For Diverse Library Resources, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Sayward Schoonmaker

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate what metadata elements for access points currently exist to represent diverse library reading materials, either in libraries or from external sources, as well as what metadata elements for access points are currently not present but are necessary to represent diverse library reading materials.

Design/methodology/approach A field scan of thirteen contemporary metadata schemas identified elements that might serve as potential access points regarding the diversity status of resource creators as well as topical or thematic content. Elements were semantically mapped using a metadata crosswalk to understand the intellectual and conceptual space of …

Research Information Management Systems And The Library, Anne Rauh

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

A presentation on "Research Information Management Systems and the Library." Presented at the Upstate New York Science Librarians Meeting, Rochester, NY, October 20, 2017. Topics include: What are RIM systems, what types of metadata are included, uses of RIM, Institutional collaborators in the production of RIM data, examples of current tools to manage RIM, challenges in developing and using RIM systems, and the role of libraries and librarians in Research Information Management. Information on global RIM practices.

Empirical Evaluation Of Metadata For Video Games And Interactive Media, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Andrew Perti

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Despite increasing interest in and acknowledgment of the significance of video games, current descriptive practices are not sufficiently robust to support searching, browsing, and other access behaviors from diverse user groups. To address this issue, the Game Metadata Research Group at the University of Washington Information School, in collaboration with the Seattle Interactive Media Museum, worked to create a standardized metadata schema. This metadata schema was empirically evaluated using multiple approaches—collaborative review, schema testing, semi-structured user interview, and a large-scale survey. Reviewing and testing the schema revealed issues and challenges in sourcing the metadata for particular elements, determining the level …

A Qualitative Investigation Of Users’ Video Game Information Needs And Behaviors, Rachel I. Clarke, Jin Ha Lee, Stephanie Rossi

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Video games are popular consumer products as well as research subjects, yet little exists about how players and other stakeholders find video games and what information they need to select, acquire, and play video games. With the aim of better understanding people’s game-related information needs and behaviors, we conducted 56 semi-structured interviews with users who find, play, purchase, collect, and recommend video games. Participants included casual and avid gamers, parents, collectors, industry professionals, librarians, and scholars. From this user data, we derive and discuss key design implications for video game information systems: designing for target user populations, enabling recommendations on …

A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Future Of Cataloging: Public Services Edition, Sarah H. Theimer

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Provides and overview of changes coming due to the adoption of RDA. Discusses the Bibliographic Framework Initiative which is developing a replacement for MARC.

A Framework For Creating A Facetted Classification For Genres: Addressing Issues Of Multidimensionality, Kevin Crowston, Barbara H. Kwasnik

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

People recognize and use document genres as a way of identifying useful information and of participating in mutually understood communicative acts. Crowston and Kwasnik [1] discuss the possibility of improving information access in large digital collections through the identification and use of document genre metadata. They draw on the definition of genre proposed by Orlikowski and Yates [3], who describe genre as "a distinctive type of communicative action, characterized by a socially recognized communicative purpose and common aspects of form" (p. 543). Scholars in fields such as rhetoric and library science have attempted to describe and systematize the notion of …

Ontological Representation Of Learning Objects, Jian Qin, Christina Finneran

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Many of the existing metadata standards use content metadata elements that are coarse-grained representations of learning resources. These metadata standards limit users ’ access to learning objects that may be at the component level. The authors discuss the need for component level access to learning resources and provide a conceptual framework of the knowledge representation of learning objects that would enable such access.

Converting A Controlled Vocabulary Into An Ontology: The Case Of Gem, Jian Qin, Stephen Paling

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The prevalance of digital information raised issues regarding the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing information. The multi-dimensionality of digital resources requires a more versatile and flexible representation to accommodate intelligent information representation and retrieval. Ontologies are used as a solution to such issues in many application domains, mainly due to their ability explicitly to specify the semantics and relations and to express them in a computer understandable language. Conventional knowledge organization tools such as classifications and thesauri resemble ontologies in a way that they define concepts and relationships in a systematic manner, but they are less expressive than …