Library and Information Science Commons^™

Federal Reserve Bank Of Chicago Circulars: A Case Study Of An Early Career Librarian’S Approach To A Full-Scale Digitization Project, Delaney Mccoy

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Each Federal Reserve Bank distributes circulars to their member banks which contain information regarding bank supervision and regulation, services, policies, and district relations. The early circulars of a Reserve Bank, those issued after the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and before the general regulation of the twelve Reserve Banks through the Banking Act of 1935, illuminate the idiosyncratic nature of the policies and procedures of each district.

In the summer of 2023, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago sent their circulars from the years 1914 to 1979 to the Digital History and Archives team at the Federal Reserve Bank of …

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 …

Growing New Librarians Through Meaningful Internships, Nicole Lewis

Faculty Publications

Internships have the potential to be incredible learning experiences for students, but without thoughtful preparation, they may be nothing more than short-term jobs. Using a metadata internship as a case study, this presentation will discuss how using effective teaching and course design principles could create more thoughtful and meaningful internship experiences, specifically how crafting an internship objective and learning outcomes can help with creating content and learning activities that prepare interns for their hands-on projects. The result is an internship that combines theory and practice into a meaningful experience for the student and delivers needed work for the library.

Hidden Opportunity: The Advantages Of Synchronizing Multiple Knowledge Bases, Emily Gross, Soley Somma, Jon Crossno

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

There are many advantages to synchronizing your knowledge bases that benefit your library. However, with reduced staff, the rapid changes across e-Resources, and working with multiple vendors, synching knowledge bases can seem daunting. Panelists will share why and how they chose to synchronize knowledge bases to support their library's strategy.

Milner Library Technical Services Department 2023 Annual Report, Milner Library

Milner Library Publications

Annual Report for the Technical Services Department of Milner Library, Illinois State University, for calendar year 2023.

Museum Preparedness In The Digital Age, Mary Jatkowski

School of Information Sciences Student Scholarship

In 2001, Neil Beagrie coined the term, “digital curation” at the Digital Preservation Coalition sponsored conference in London. This new term launched a field of study which has since beenadopted by various disciplines within the sciences and humanities. Cultural heritage organizations like libraries and archives adapted the new field, by refining and formalizing standards and practices of digital curation to cater to their diverse cultural and historical collections. LIS graduate programs have embraced the field of study with rigorous curricula like DigCCurr which trains students in the various aspects of curation and preservation, from metadata standards to selection and …

Lis Journals' Lack Of Participation In Wikidata Item Creation, Eric Willey, Susan Radovsky

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

There are many items in Wikidata representing scholarly articles. However, these items have been created mostly by volunteer Wikidata editors and not systematically by journal publishers or editors, which can lead to gaps and inconsistencies in the datasets. This article presents findings from a survey investigating practices of library and information studies (LIS) journals in Wikidata item creation. Believing that a significant number of LIS journal editors would be aware of Wikidata and some would be creating Wikidata items for their publications, the authors sent a survey asking 138 English-language LIS journal editors if they created Wikidata items for materials …

Using Metadata To Mitigate The Risks Of Digitizing Archival Photographs Of Violence And Oppression, Claudia A. Mallea

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Questioning the archival imperative of access, this research article discussed how descriptive metadata can be used to contextualize and problematize digitized archival photographs, which are often inadequately described in the digital environment. Beginning with literature review of atrocity photos and their use and digitization to discuss the risks inherent to disseminating photos of or born from violence. Review continued into the digital environment and the risks inherent to making difficult archival collections accessible online and the conflict between the right to privacy of the individuals represented in archival materials and the archival imperative to provide access.

Expanding on the recommendations …

“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 …

How Granular Do You Want To Go? Analyizing Marcxml Data With Python, Rebecca Hyams

Publications and Research

While Alma Analytics can be quite powerful, it has its limits when it comes to providing answers to complex questions about bibliographic and holdings records. For those of us that do work that includes maintaining and enhancing records, having good quality data is vital in making informed decisions on the best way forward. You may find you want to know things like which additional identifiers are present in the record to help with deduplication efforts, or how many records have a particular formatting issue that needs addressing. The data is already there in the record and can be accessed via …

Linked Data, Wikidata And Their Implementations, Sai Deng

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

An introductory session on linked data, wikidata and related implementations delivered to participating students for a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Major Collaborative Archives Initiative Grant led by Dr. Rosalind J. Beiler in History and Dr. Amy Giroux in Center for Humanities and Digital Research at the University of Central Florida.

Review Of Making Your Tools Work For You: Building And Maintaining An Integrated Technical Ecosystem For Digital Archives And Libraries, Ryan Leimkuehler

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Making Your Tools Work for You by Max Eckard introduces readers to the concept of systems and data integration. Eckard walks readers through how to approach system integration and highlights various tools and techniques to make an integration project successful. The book hits its climax with specific case studies that any reader would find valuable.

Review Of Metadata For Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Elyse Fox

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Metadata for Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Second Edition by Steven Jack Miller.

Emojis And Emotion Categories For Fiction: Survey Questions, Wan-Chen Lee, Li-Min Huang, Juliana Hirt

School of Information Studies Faculty Articles

This is the survey instrument and data for a research project on Emojis and Emotion Categories for Fiction. This is an anonymous online survey that collected 64 responses from self-identified fiction readers who are 18 years or older. The questions asked participants to 1) select mood categories (e.g., angry, cozy) that describe the atmosphere/setting, emotion, and tone/narrative of fiction. 2) Select all the emojis that represent the 30 emotion categories provided. The results verify the three families of mood categories for fiction, and create mappings between emojis and mood categories.

Collections Amplifying Diverse Voices, Dom M. Bortruex

Library Staff Publications

This article explores the creation, implementation, and maintenance of American University Library's Collections Amplifying Diverse Voices.

Hashes Are Not Suitable To Verify Fixity Of The Public Archived Web, Mohamed Aturban, Martin Klein, Herbert Van De Sompel, Sawood Alam, Michael L. Nelson, Michele C. Weigle

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Web archives, such as the Internet Archive, preserve the web and allow access to prior states of web pages. We implicitly trust their versions of archived pages, but as their role moves from preserving curios of the past to facilitating present day adjudication, we are concerned with verifying the fixity of archived web pages, or mementos, to ensure they have always remained unaltered. A widely used technique in digital preservation to verify the fixity of an archived resource is to periodically compute a cryptographic hash value on a resource and then compare it with a previous hash value. If the …

Digital Bookplates: Cataloging Processes And Workflows, Alie Visser

Western Libraries Publications

Historically, bookplates were found in the front of print monographs. Transitioning them to digital allows libraries to expand their visibility to researchers and to fundraising activities within institutions. Digital bookplates offer significant opportunities to honor or memorialize individuals with gifts to libraries at varying donation levels. This article discusses digital bookplates in an academic library and provides examples of the cataloging, metadata, and web processes involved in maintaining and collaborating on this active fundraising program. A previous article on this topic was published in 2012 and this article provides an update to its procedures and workflows a decade later.

Free And Open-Source Automated Open Access Preprint Harvesting, Jack Peplinski, Joanne Paterson, Courtney L. Waugh, Joshua M. Pearce

Western Libraries Publications

Universities are attempting to ensure that all of their research is publicly accessible because of funding mandates. Many universities have established campus open access (OA) repositories but are struggling with how to upload millions of manuscripts under numerous license agreements while also linking metadata to make them discoverable. To do this manually requires around 15 minutes per manuscript from an experienced librarian. The time and cost to do this campus-wide is prohibitive. To radically reduce the time and costs of this process and to harvest all past work, this article reports on the development and testing of a free and …

Libraries And The Problem Of Digital Humanities Discovery, Roxanne Shirazi

Publications and Research

Why is it so hard to find digital humanities projects? While digital humanities librarians emphasize their crucial role in producing DH work as partners in developing, sustaining, and preserving digital resources, scant attention is paid to the library’s role in resource description and discovery, their contribution to disciplinary formation that goes beyond technology stacks and campus service models. This chapter explores the implications of the producer/creator model of digital humanities librarianship and imagines alternatives in which the problem of DH discovery is understood as a broader issue for academic libraries curating open access digital scholarship. By attending to the discovery …

Incorporating Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Principles Into Our Metadata, Nicole Lewis, Allie Mccormack, Rachel Jane Wittmann

Faculty Publications

This presentation was given at the Core Forum 2022 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

In early 2021, a group of librarians at two university libraries embarked on a journey to review and update harmful subject headings and other metadata in their catalog, digital library, and finding aids. This session will discuss the background of the project and where the librarians currently stand in the process of remediating these records, including their efforts to create student internships to address problematic language in archival finding aids as well as create a community user advisory group. Special attention will be given to creating …

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 …

Opening A Communication Channel With The Etd Librarian, Kelley Flannery Rowan

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation will share the results of a new initiative developed by the ETD Librarian at Florida International University (FIU) to develop a personal connection between students and the ETD Librarian. The goal is threefold; to provide a personal contact and open communication channel within the library to whom students can address publishing best practices and concerns with, to better inform and engage students in the metadata process of submitting theses and dissertations, and to spur the growth of knowledge and usage of ORCID. A previous initiative that added an ORCID and a license option to the metadata fields had …

Library And Information Specialist In The Light Of Information Architecture And His Role In Organizing Content, Hanan Ahmed Farag, Ahlam Saeed Alqhtani

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research sheds light on the concept of information architecture or what is called information engineering, and clarifies some concepts about the tasks and roles of information engineers and librarians, and the existing problems facing librarians who play the role of information engineers and offers some proposed solutions, and the research recommends the need to change the role of librarians and their qualifications to become information engineers in the current era of digital information environment.

User-Centered Categorization Of Mood In Fiction, Hyerim Cho, Wan-Chen Lee, Li-Min Huang, Joseph Kohlburn

School of Information Studies Faculty Articles

Readers articulate mood in deeply subjective ways, yet the underlying structure of users’ understanding of the media they consume has important implications for retrieval and access. User articulations might at first seem too idiosyncratic, but organizing them meaningfully has considerable potential to provide a better searching experience for all involved. The current study develops mood categories inductively for fiction organization and retrieval in information systems.
We developed and distributed an open-ended survey to 76 fiction readers to understand their preferences with regard to the affective elements in fiction. From the fiction reader responses, the research team identified 161 mood terms …

Contextualizing Performers In Circus Route Books: Linked Data Entities And Open Data, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The presentation will discuss the final phase of the 4-year project Step Right Up: Digitizing Over 100 Years of Circus Route Books made possible by the Digitizing Hidden Collections program, a national grant competition administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This segment of the project concentrated on making data open and reusable to aid in optimal discoverability and create data relationships with the collection. The culmination of these efforts resulted in the digital humanities project, Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books 1875-1925. This exhibition …

Metadata Best Practices For Trans And Gender Diverse Resources, Trans Metadata Collective, Jasmine Burns, Michelle Cronquist, Jackson Huang, Devon Murphy, K. J. Rawson, Beck Schaefer, Jamie Simons, Brian M. Watson, Adrian Williams

Librarian Publications & Presentations

This document is the result of a year of work and collaboration by the Trans Metadata Collective (TMDC; https://transmetadatacollective.org/), a group of dozens of cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the description and classification of trans and gender diverse people in GLAMS (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Special Collections). The Collective’s primary goal was to develop a set of best practices for the description, cataloguing, and classification of information resources as well as the creation of metadata about trans and gender diverse people, including authors and other creators.

Decolonizing Your Library: Metadata That Empowers, Kelley Flannery Rowan, Annia Gonzalez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This article explores the impetus, progress, and challenges encountered in developing and managing a library-wide decolonial metadata project at Florida International University (FIU) Libraries. The goal of this initiative is to develop inclusive metadata within our digital collections and finding aids that represent the communities we serve and to develop a metadata remediation plan that ameliorates the harm done by antiquated language. In thinking about the current metadata in our collections, we are engaging a post-colonial mindset that incorporates methods of coping with the ongoing oppression of vulnerable communities. In contrast, our metadata analysis and remediation process is focused on …

Incorporating Inclusivity In Our Catalog, Nicole Lewis, Rachel Jane Wittmann

Faculty Publications

This presentation was given at the Utah Library Association Annual Conference in Layton, Utah.

In early 2021, the University of Utah embarked on the journey to review and update harmful subject headings in their catalog, digital library metadata, and finding aids. This session will discuss the background of the project and where we are currently at in the process of changing harmful subject headings.