Metadata Matters

Category: Tools

  • Semantic Versioning and Vocabularies

    A decade ago, when the Open Metadata Registry (OMR) was just being developed as the NSDL Registry, the vocabulary world was a very different place than it is today. At that point we were tightly focussed on SKOS (not fully cooked at that point, but Jon was on the WG that was developing it, so we felt pretty secure diving in).

    But we were thinking about versioning in the Open World of RDF even then. The NSDL Registry kept careful track of all changes to a vocabulary (who, what, when) and the only way to get data in was through the user interface. We ran an early experiment in making versions based on dynamic, timestamp-based snapshots (we called them ‘time slices’, Git calls them ‘commit snapshots’) available for value vocabularies, but this failed to gain any traction. This seemed to be partly because, well, it was a decade ago for one, and while it attempted to solve an Open World problem with versioned URIs, it created a new set of problems for Closed World experimenters. Ultimately, we left the versions issue to sit and stew for a bit (6 years!).

    All that started to change in 2008 as we started working with RDA, and needed to move past value vocabularies into properties and classes, and beyond that into issues around uploading data into the OMR. Lately, Git and GitHub have started taking off and provide a way for us to make some important jumps in functionality that have culminated in the OMR/GitHub-based RDA Registry. Sounds easy and intuitive now, but it sure wasn’t at the time, and what most people don’t know is that the OMR is still where RDA/RDF data originates — it wasn’t supplanted by Git/Github, but is chugging along in the background. The OMR’s RDF CMS is still visible and usable by all, but folks managing larger vocabularies now have more options.

    One important aspect of the use of Git and GitHub was the ability to rethink versioning.

    Just about a year ago our paper on this topic (Versioning Vocabularies in a Linked Data World, by Diane Hillmann, Gordon Dunsire and Jon Phipps) was presented to the IFLA Satellite meeting in Paris. We used as our model the way software on our various devices and systems is updated–more and more these changes happen without much (if any) interaction with us.

    In the world of vocabularies defining the properties and values in linked data, most updating is still very manual (if done at all), and the important information about what has changed and when is often hidden behind web pages or downloadable files that provide no machine-understandable connections identifying changes. And just solving the change management issue does little to solve the inevitable ‘vocabulary rot’ that can make published ‘linked data’ less and less meaningful, accurate, and useful over time.

    Building stable change management practices is a very critical missing piece of the linked data publishing puzzle. The problem will grow exponentially as language versions and inter-vocabulary mappings start to show up as well — and it won’t be too long before that happens.

    Please take a look at the paper and join in the conversation!

  • The Jane-athon Report

    I’ve been back from Chicago for just over a week now, but still reflecting on a very successful Jane-athon pre-conference the Friday before Midwinter. And the good news is that our participant survey responses agree with the “successful” part, plus contain a lot of food for thought going forward. More about that later …

    There was a lot of buzz in the Jane-athon room that day, primarily from the enthusiastic participants, working together at tables, definitely having the fun we promised. Afterwards, the buzz came from those who wished they’d been there (many on Twitter #Janeathon) and others that wanted us to promise to do it again. Rest assured–we’re planning on another one in San Francisco at ALA Annual, but it will probably be somewhat different because by then we’ll have a better support infrastructure and will be able to be more concrete about the question of ‘what do you do with the data once you have it?’ If you’re particularly interested in that question, keep an eye on the rballs.info site, where new resources and improvements will be announced.

    Rballs? What the heck are those? Originally they were meant to be ‘RIMMF-balls’, but then we started talking about ‘resource-balls’, and other such wanderings. The ‘ball’ part was suggested by ‘tar-balls’ and ‘mudballs’ (mudball was a term of derision in the old MARBI days, but Jon and I started using it more generally when we were working on aggregated records in NSDL).

    So, how did we come up with such a crazy idea as a Jane-athon anyway? The idea came from Deborah Fritz, who’d been teaching about RDA for some time, plus working with her husband Richard on the RIMMF (RDA In Many Metadata Formats) tool, which is designed to allow creation of RDA data and export to RDF. The tool was upgraded to version 3 for the Jane-athon, and Deborah added some tutorials so that Jane-athon participants could get some practice with RIMMF beforehand (she also did online sessions for team leaders and coaches).

    Deborah and I had discussed many times the frustration we shared with the ‘sage on the stage’ model of training, which left attendees to such events unhappy with the limitations of that model. They wanted something concrete–they usually said–something they could get their teeth into. Something that would help them visualize RDA out of the context of MARC. The Jane-athon idea promised to do just that.

    I had done a prototype session of the Jane-athon with some librarians from the University of Hawaii (Nancy Sack did a great job organizing everything, even though a dodgy plane made me a day late to the party!) We got some very useful evaluations from that group, and those contributed to the success of the official Chicago debut.

    So a crazy idea, bolstered by a lot of work and a whole lot of organizational effort, actually happened, and was even better than we’d dared to hope. There was a certain chaos on the day, which most people accepted with equanimity, and an awful lot of learning of the best kind. The event couldn’t have happened without Deborah and Richard Fritz, Gordon Dunsire, and Jon Phipps, each of whom had a part to play. Jamie Hennelly from ALA Publishing was instrumental in making the event happen, despite his reservations about herding the organizer cats.

    And, as the cherry on top: After the five organizers finished their celebratory dinner later in the evening after the Jane-athon, we were all out on the sidewalk looking for cabs. A long black limousine pulled up, and asked us if we wanted a ride. Needless to say, we did, and soon pulled up in style in front of the Hyatt Regency on Wacker. Sadly, there was no one we knew at the front of the hotel, but many looked askance at the somewhat scruffy mob who piled out of the limo, no doubt wondering who the heck we were.

    What’s up next? We think we’re on the path of a new data sharing paradigm, and we’ll run with that for the next few months, and maybe riff on that in San Francisco. Stay tuned! And do download a copy of RIMMF and play–there are rballs to look at and use for your purposes.

    P.S. A report of the evaluation survey will be on RDA-L sometime next week.

  • The Jane-athon Prototype in Hawaii

    The planning for the Midwinter Jane-athon pre-conference has been taking up a lot of my attention lately. It’s a really cool idea (credit to Deborah Fritz) to address the desire we’ve been hearing for some time for a participatory, hands on, session on RDA. And lets be clear, we’re not talking about the RDA instructions–this is about the RDA data model, vocabularies, and RDA’s availability for linked data. We’ll be using RIMMF (RDA in Many Metadata Formats) as our visualization and data creation tool, setting up small teams with leaders who’ve been prepared to support the teams and a wandering phalanx of coaches to give help on the fly.

    Part of the planning has to do with building a set of RIMMF ‘records’ to start with, for participants to add on their own resources and explore the rich relationships in RDA. We’re calling these ‘r-balls’ (a cross between RIMMF and tarballs). These zipped-up r-balls will be available for others to use for their own homegrown sessions, along with instructions for using RIMMF and setting up a Jane-athon (or other themed -athon), and also how to contribute their own r-balls for the use of others. In case you’ve not picked it up, this is a radically different training model, and we’d like to make it possible for others to play, too.

    That’s the plan for the morning. After lunch we’ll take a look at what we’ve done, and prise out the issues we’ve encountered, and others we know about. The hope is that the participants will walk out the door with both an understanding of what RDA is (more than the instructions) and how it fits into the emerging linked data world.

    I recently returned from a trip to Honolulu, where I did a prototype Jane-athon workshop for the Hawaii Library Association. I have to admit that I didn’t give much thought to how difficult it would be to do solo, but I did have the presence of mind to give the organizer of the workshop some preliminary setup instructions (based on what we’ll be doing in Chicago) to ensure that there would be access to laptops with software and records pre-loaded, and a small cadre of folks who had been working with RIMMF to help out with data creation on the day.

    The original plan included a day before the workshop with a general presentation on linked data and some smaller meetings with administrators and others in specialized areas. It’s a format I’ve used before and the smaller meetings after the presentation generally bring out questions that are unlikely to be asked in a larger group.

    What I didn’t plan for was that I wouldn’t be able to get out of Ithaca on the appointed day (the day before the presentation) thanks not to bad weather, but instead to a non-functioning plane which couldn’t be repaired. So after a phone discussion with Hawaii, I tried again the next day, and everything went smoothly. On the receiving end there was lots of effort expended to make it all work in the time available, with some meetings dribbling into the next day. But we did it, thanks to organizer Nancy Sack’s prodigious skills and the flexibility of all concerned.

    Nancy asked the Jane-athon participants to fill out an evaluation, and sent me the anonymized results. I really appreciated that the respondents added many useful (and frank) comments to the usual range of questions. Those comments in particular were very helpful to me, and were passed on to the other MW Jane-athon organizers. One of the goals of the workshop was to help participants visualize, using RIMMF, how familiar MARC records could be automatically mapped into the FRBR structure of RDA, and how that process might begin to address concerns about future workflow and reuse of MARC records. Another goal was to illustrate how RDA’s relationships enhanced the value of the data, particularly for users. For the most part, it looked as if most of the participants understood the goals of the workshop and felt they had gotten value from it.

    But there were those who provided frank criticism of the workshop goals and organization (as well as the presenter, of course!). Part of these criticisms involved the limitations of the workshop, wanting more information on how they could put their new knowledge to work, right now. The clearest expression of this desire came in as follows:

    “I sort of expected to be given the whole road map for how to take a set of data and use LOD to make it available to users via the web. In rereading the flyer I see that this was not something the presenter wanted to cover. But I think it was apparent in the afternoon discussion that we wanted more information in the big picture … I feel like I have an understanding of what LOD is, but I have no idea how to use it in a meaningful way.”

    Aside from the time constraints–which everyone understood–there’s a problem inherent in the fact that very few active LOD projects have moved beyond publishing their data (a good thing, no doubt about it) to using the data published by others. So it wasn’t so much that I didn’t ‘want’ to present more about the ‘bigger picture’, there wasn’t really anything to say aside from the fact that the answer to that question is still unclear (and I probably wasn’t all that clear about it either). If I had a ‘road map’ to talk about and point them to, I certainly would have shared it, but sadly I have nothing to share at this stage.

    But I continue to believe that just as progress in this realm is iterative, it is hugely important that we not wait for the final answers before we talk about the issues. Our learning needs to be iterative too, to move along the path from the abstract to the concrete along with the technical developments. So for MidWinter, we’ll need to be crystal clear about what we’re doing (and why), as well as why there are blank areas in the road-map.

    Thanks again to the Hawaii participants, and especially Nancy Sack, for their efforts to make the workshop happen, and the questions and comments that will improve the Jane-athon in Chicago!

    For additional information, including a link to register, look here. Although I haven’t seen the latest registration figures, we’re expecting to fill up, so don’t delay!

    [these are the workshop slides]

    [these are the general presentation slides]

  • Why You Should Come to the Jane-athon

    I know many of you are puzzled by this event, so do take a look at a rundown of the plans on the RDA Toolkit Blog.

    Not so surprisingly, we were inspired by the notion of a hackathon, but it had to be focused on something other than computer code and application building. All of us have heard conflicting opinions about whether RDA can be fully functional, whether FRBR works and will benefit users, or whether it’s just all too complicated. The big gap in addressing these questions has been the challenge in doing something hands-on instead of the usual sage-on-the-stage doling out large piles of handouts. There are still realities that need to be recognized, as we take a hands-on look at RDA and build some real RDA data.

    First of these realities is that RDA has been in development for a hell of a long time, and the rules (the part that gets the most attention, and some think really IS the whole of RDA) started out as AACR3. As one who’s been watching this space (from the outside and the inside) since the beginning, I can confirm that the the notion of AACR3 is a historical artifact, nothing to do with what RDA has become.

    I’ve been ranting and railing for years (too many to count) that RDA must be more than rules. And it is–see the RDA Registry for evidence of that. This leads me to the second reality: all of us are learning as we go. The first iteration of the RDA Vocabularies, developed by the DCMI/RDA Task Group after a famous meeting in London in the Spring of 2007, were never published. The published version, much improved, was released early in 2013 along with the new RDA Registry. The learning-by-doing was happening in a lot of other standards-focused groups: IFLA and W3C for example. FRBR, an essential part of the RDA model, was evolving along with RDA, and that fact led to a couple of interesting compromises, still working themselves out.

    I can promise you that the Jane-athon will reflect all of those realities, and in addition build out the community familiar with the lessons yet to be learned. There won’t be any papering over of gaps, downplaying of issues, or anything like that. At the Jane-athon we will demonstrate that building real RDA records in the context of FRBR is not a future dream, it’s happening now. What you will see as a participant is the reality–the ability to work within a FRBR flow, to import MARC records and see the system map them into FRBR constructs, to create links with NAF information, and view the results as a tree that highlights the relationships.

    Perhaps most important, we want to have fun with this. There will be no quizzes, no grades, no transcripts. That’s why we chose to focus on two sets of materials with great potential to benefit from a FRBR-based approach. Early in the day you’ll walk through the business of creating cataloging for Blade Runner resources (original book by Philip K. Dick), translations, film, etc. After that we’ll turn the group loose on Jane Austen (with some made-ahead basic data). After the flurry of data creation, we’ll be looking at the results, highlighting issues that come up, and not incidentally, getting some feedback from the participants about the tools, processes, and the beta-Jane-athon in its entirety.

    We know (and welcome the fact) that not everyone attending will be a cataloger, much less all that familiar with RDA. There will be a place and a role for everyone who wants to learn more, and to dig in and get their hands [virtually] dirty. There is no need to cram for this event, or to study the RDA rules or cataloging before you come. If you want to get a bit familiar with RIMMF before you come, by all means take a look at the site, download the software, and play. The only requirement is an open mind and some excitement about the possibilities (some trepidation is okay too).

    Once you have registered for ALA Midwinter in Chicago, you can sign up for the Jane-athon.The Jane-athon is already available as a paid addition of the full registration for ALA Midwinter in Chicago.

    Please feel free to use the comments portion of this post to ask questions, or use the RDA-L list to bring up questions and concerns.

    We hope to see you there!

  • What’s this Jane-athon thing?

    Everyone is getting tired of the sage-on-the-stage style of preconferences, so when Deborah Fritz suggested a hackathon (thank you Deborah!) to the RDA Dev Team, we all climbed aboard and started thinking about what that kind of event might look like, particularly in the ALA Midwinter context. We all agreed: there had to be a significant hands-on aspect to really engage those folks who were eager to learn more about how the RDA data model could work in a linked data environment, and, of course, in their own home environment.

    We’re calling it a Jane-athon, which should give you a clue about the model for the event: a hackathon, of course! The Jane Austen corpus is perfect to demonstrate the value of FRBR, and there’s no lack of interesting material to look at– media materials, series, spin-offs of every description–in addition to the well known novels. So the Jane-athon will be partially about creating data, and partially about how that data fits into a larger environment. And did you know there is a Jane Austen bobblehead?

    We think there will be a significant number of people who might be interested in attending, and we figured that getting the world out early would help prospective participants make their travel arrangements with attendance in mind. Sponsored by ALA Publishing, the Jane-athon will be on the Friday before the midwinter conference (the traditional pre-conference day), and though we don’t yet have registration set up, we’ll make sure everyone knows when that’s available. If you think, as we do that this event will be the hit of Midwinter, be sure to watch for that announcement, and register early! If the event is successful, you’ll be seeing others in subsequent ALA conferences.

    So, what’s the plan and what will participants get out of it?

    The first thing to know is that there will be tables and laptops to enable small groups to work together for the ‘making data’ portion of the event. We’ll be asking folks who have laptops they can bring to Chicago to plan on bringing theirs. We’ll be using the latest version of a new bibliographic metadata editor called RIMMF (“RDA In Many Metadata Formats”–not yet publicly available–but soon. Watch for it on the TMQ website). We encourage interested folks to download the current beta version and play with it–it’s a cool tool and really is a good one to learn about.

    In the morning, we’ll form small cataloging groups and use RIMMF to do some FRBRish cataloging, starting from MARC21 and ending up with RDA records exported as RDF Linked Data. In the afternoon we’ll all take a look at what we’ve produced, share our successes and discoveries, and discuss the challenges we faced. In true hackathon tradition we’ll share our conclusions and recommendations with the rest of the library community on a special Jane-athon website set up to support this and subsequent Jane-athons.

    Who should attend?

    We believe that there will be a variety of people who could contribute important skills and ideas to this event. Catalogers, of course, but also every flavor of metadata people, vendors, and IT folks in libraries would be warmly welcomed. But wouldn’t tech services managers find it useful? Oh yes, they’d be welcomed enthusiastically, and I’m sure their participation in the discussion portion of the event in the afternoon will bring out issues of interest to all.

    Keep in mind, this is not cataloging training, nor Toolkit training, by any stretch of the imagination. Neither will it be RIMMF training or have a focus on the RDA Registry, although all those tools are relevant to the discussion. For RIMMF, particularly, we will be looking at ways to ensure that there will be a cadre of folks who’ve had enough experience with it to make the hands-on portion of the day run smoothly. For that reason, we encourage as many as possible to play with it beforehand!

    Our belief is that the small group work and the discussion will be best with a variety of experience informing the effort. We know that we can’t provide the answers to all the questions that will come up, but the issues that we know about (and that come up during the small group work) will be aired and discussed.