Free Primary Sources: dp.la, european.eu, and the Magic of Metadata Harvesters

Metadata Repositories

Nicholas Schiller; ILAGO Summit; May 16, 2015; CGCC

The marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.

Outcomes:Participants will leave the session able to:

• share how freaking cool these tools are.

• explain the basic underlying technology to other librarians.

• integrate metadata repositories into your library’s offerings

Assignment: Find primary source relating to a historical figure represented in current popular culture.

Student: Fascinated with Game of Thrones character Cersei Lannister.

Librarian: Point student toward sources on Margaret of Anjou, a possible historical basis for the character.

Game of Thrones. “Cripples, Bastards, & Broken Things.” HBO. 56:00. May 8, 2011.

At your reference desk, how would you answer this

question?

Assignment: Find primary source relating to a historical figure represented in current popular culture.

Student: Fascinated with Game of Thrones character Cersei Lannister.

Librarian: Point student toward sources on Margaret of Anjou, a possible historical basis for the character.

One Discovery Toolsearches many digital archives

Students can find great content from digital

archives in dp.la & europeana.eu.

Outcomes:Participants will leave the session able to:

•share how freaking cool these tools are.

• explain the basic underlying technology to other librarians.

• integrate metadata repositories into your library’s offerings

Metadata RepositoriesLibrarian Perspectives:

• The structures that allow the system to work

• Where does the content live?

• What do students need to know in order to use them?

Library-List Of Lobbes Abbey, In A Volume of Works By St. Fulgentius

europeana.eu & dp.la• Publish a standard for digital archives:

• description of their artifacts

• dublin core; rdf

• sharing their metadata

• oai-pmh

Participating Archives

• Apply the standards as they catalog their collections or crosswalk their data.

• Expose their metadata according to the set standard

• Control their content; only metadata is harvested

Only metadata is harvested

Main library, Junior Library, and branches. Newton, MA. Card catalog

What do Students need

to know?How much expertise is

needed to search successfully?

Shields Library, student in the book stacks

Metadata RepositoriesLibrarian Perspectives:

• The structures that allow the system to work

• Where does the content live?

• What do students need to know in order to use them?

Library-List Of Lobbes Abbey, In A Volume of Works By St. Fulgentius

Outcomes:Participants will leave the session able to:

• share how freaking cool these tools are.

• explain the basic underlying structures to other librarians.

• integrate metadata repositories into your information literacy program

Metadata Repositories & IL

THE BIG QUESTION FOR 43, 1941 - 1945

Two Channels of ThoughtA. Practical focus: for students, how do

metadata repositories present different barriers than library provided resources?

B. Curious thought: How much of our my IL approach focuses on things the library buys? Does what-we-pay-for map to what-students-need?

Implement well-designed search strategies

• Discovery and access take place on different platforms.

• Facets work, but aren’t universal.

• Date is particularly challenging.

Access information effectively and efficiently from multiple sources.

• Metadata repositories aren’t quite siloed databases, but they aren’t quite search engines

• (They work on the same general principles as discovery layers.) Do we have an IL pedagogy for discovery layers?

Curious Thoughts:

• europeana.eu & dp.la are not solutions to existing problems, but cool new stuff that wasn’t possible before.

• There’s no *natural* place for them in our resource lists.

• At some point, the balance between filtering by quality and filtering by ownership will cease to be useful.

• These problems are closely related to discovery layer problems.

Questions?

A burning question. Puck:--"Gentlemen, avoid both extremes--your 'stronghold' is in the middle!"