Metadata Matters

Month: August 2009

  • Rachel Heery, in memoriam

    Last week I was in the UK, primarily to attend a DCMI Registry Community Workshop organized by UKOLN, scheduled for Friday, July 24th. Early the following week we found out that as we were gathered in York discussing distributed registries, Rachel Heery passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. Rachel was one of the founders of the Community (then called a working group), and was involved in building a number of registries, including the DCMI Registry and the IEMSR Registry at UKOLN.

    There have been a lot of postings about Rachel this week from colleagues and friends, and I wanted to add my voice to that chorus of tributes to an exceptional person. I didn’t know Rachel as well as I would have liked—we worked on different continents and generally crossed paths primarily at DC conferences. But we were both members of two distinct minorities within DCMI: women, and implementers. Neither of us trained as technologists, and came to the sometimes dauntingly technical discussions at DCMI from the point of view of those trying to use DC for real projects, too often frustrated with the 50,000 foot viewpoints expressed by the more technically astute.

    Stu Weibel, who knew Rachel, as I did, in the context of Dublin Core, brought her back for me the most strongly by reminding me of one of Rachel’s characteristic interjections:

    “We emulate those we admire, and I have often found myself over the years using a phrase that signaled, from Rachel, an objection worthy of discussion… a sort of lilting “Hang on…!” Those who have worked with her will hear echoes of the tone and inflection that made the phrase hers, and commanded respectful attention, a flag that something was not quite right. I always think of her when I say it, and will always try to use it in the service of the honest brokerage of common goals that characterized Rachel’s efforts.”

    Stu also reminds us that Rachel’s two most important contributions to the DC efforts (aside from her considerable intellect and personal presence) were in the areas of registries and application profiles–both have been a particular focus for me and Jon over the past four years or so. It gives me some solace to think that she would be pleased that implementers are still working hard in the areas she pioneered, though sad beyond measure that she will not see those efforts bear their promised fruit.

    Others who comment on Rachel’s influence and career:
    Lorna Campbell
    Andy Powell
    Lorcan Dempsey
    Her UKOLN colleagues

  • Linked Data at ALA Annual

    One of the most interesting programs at ALA Annual that I was involved with was the Linked Data grassroots program. Here’s the blurb:

    From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0. “How can library cataloging data be transformed to function within ‘Web 3.0’ and be understood by non-library web applications? Speakers from both the library and Semantic Web communities will explore the situation in a non-technical manner and describe current work underway to transform legacy library data into linked data.“

    The speakers were: Eric Miller (President, Zepheira, Inc.), me, Jennifer Bowen (Co-Principal Investigator, eXtensible Catalog Project, University of Rochester), Rebecca Guenther (Senior Networking and Standards Specialist, Network Development & MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress). Corey Harper of NYU introduced the speakers and fielded questions at the end. Because this was a Grassroots program, attempting to make a place for emerging trends in what is often a program consisting primarily of the hot issues of a year or two ago, all the approved programs got small rooms. The one we ended up in seated about 75, and we filled the floors, the aisles and much of the hallway outside the room. The room was in the Hilton, not easy to find, so it was gratifying how many people made the effort.

    American Libraries reported on the program, and from the comments I’ve received it was a successful session and has generated interest in further programming on the subject for next year (and we are actually talking about doing that). In my presentation, I made the case for the readiness of libraries for the challenges of linked data, citing the work done with the RDA vocabularies as foundational to that claim. I admit that although there was a part of that claim that was, if not actually wishful thinking, at least a rhetorical device, clearly we are at some kind of tipping point (or approaching it pretty quickly). Every six months when I talk to people at ALA extensively about this stuff, or when I’m out “on the road” talking to colleagues, there is more excitement and more interest on the part of librarians, who are definitely “getting it.”

    Presentations are available on the ALA Wiki.