Session recordingLinked Data for Rare Materials, Paloma Graciani Picardo and Brittney Washington (Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin)
The Harry Ransom Center is home to the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library of Early English Literature, comprised of 1,259 printed books and 1,960 manuscripts created between 1475 and 1700. This high-profile rare book collection has been the testing ground for the Center's participation on the Linked Data for Production Phase 2 (LD4P2) cohort with the goal of evaluating models, vocabularies, and best practices for item-level description of rare and special collections materials using RDF. In this lightning talk, we will discuss our work developing an application profile for special collections materials. We will do a quick review of the existing ontologies and controlled vocabularies relevant to the project, and present data modeling approaches and challenges. Finally, but no less important, we will emphasize the value of special collections community engagement in these types of projects and the need for continued collaboration beyond the grant. We would love for this talk to be the beginning of a conversation with folks who are working with special collections materials and linked data.
Extending BIBFRAME for Special Collections: an update on the work of the Art & Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension Group, Elizabeth Roke (Emory University)
Special Collections materials do not neatly fit into traditional bibliographic description models. Metadata such as custodial history or physical characteristics and conditions are essential for the description and preservation of rare materials; however, these data have not been well-supported in bibliographic models, limiting their usefulness for the archives, art, and rare materials communities. The Art & Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension (ARM) is an effort seeking to extend BIBFRAME for archival collections, art objects, and rare materials and address the unique use cases of these communities. ARM is a joint task force that brings together content and metadata specialists from three organizations: the Association of College and Research Libraries' Rare Books and Manuscripts Sections' Bibliographic Standards Committee, the Art Libraries Society of North America's Cataloging Advisory Committee and the Society of American Archivists' Standards Committee. This lightning talk will discuss the modeling challenges particular to rare materials in BIBFRAME and how ARM is working to address those use cases though ontology and vocabulary development.
