Cataloging & Metadata Center as “Metadata Service Bureau”
For the past four years the UCLA Library Cataloging & Metadata Center has provided the campus community with metadata consultations—the most significant part of a “metadata service bureau” role. (The Center’s providing advice to others on how to use data elements for digital library projects and its selectively creating/modifying metadata in a variety of ways in the Center go much farther back in time.) Examples of relevant Center activities:
· In September 2008, Chamya Kincy participated in a consultation on the Chancellor’s Residence library collection. In March 2009, Chamya, Claudia Horning, and John Riemer, with research assistance from Valerie Bross, consulted with the Office of Environment, Health & Safety about its desire to organize online a collection of 200 standard operating procedure documents.
· In 2009, the Center also provided descriptive metadata advice outside the Library for the Center for the Study of Women collections hosted by the DLP, and gave advice on the enhancement of legacy metadata for the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative collection being given to the Library. Staff advised Center for Oral History Research on descriptive metadata and recommended a workflow for providing metadata for newly digitized oral history recordings.
· Following the spring 2011 Data Open House hosted by Todd Grappone and Sharon Farb, Center staff met with Tania Bardyn, Lisa Federer and others at Biomedical Library to explore a collaboration concerning the data-generating and collecting activities of translational researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as their need for metadata education. Stemming from the quarterly meetings, Claudia and Lisa met with professor Ivo Dinov in FY2012 to discuss his metadata needs.
· Also in the spring of 2011, half a dozen staff participated in a Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) workshop presented by guests from Brown University, and they determined there was a way for library authority records to support the expressed desire of humanists to incorporate demographic characteristics into names being marked up in documents. Currently, staff working on the Arcadia-funded nitrates digitization project are using TEI to markup texts in the Adelbert Bartlett collection.
· In the “DMPtool and Data Management Plans” workshop Sharon and Todd presented Jan. 12, one of the Powerpoint slides recognized metadata expertise as a Strength in a SWOT analysis of the local environment. Center staff have inquired about obtaining from NIH the data management plans submitted with grant applications, or possibly collecting those plans in applications leaving the UCLA campus. Those plans could inform development of ontologies by discipline (to help other researchers), as well as provide insight into the unarticulated metadata consultation needs at UCLA.
· Claudia, Lisa, and others are preparing a webinar on UC’s data curation services for ALA’s ACRL Digital Curation Interest Group, as well as an article for the Journal of eScience Librarianship.
· During the April 13, 2012 Digital Library Showcase in the YRL Commons, John spoke with Lisa (about possible metadata sessions that follow up on the Data Literacy presentations she has designed) and Todd (about usage of library authority records and linked data as means of introducing UCLA faculty to each other re: their recent publications and their research interests).
· Three days later, Claudia gave advice at City Hall to Mayor Villaraigosa’s chief public relations assistant on how to organize the digital photos and videos from his two terms in office and integrate them with other materials they have.
Having established a role as a “metadata service bureau,” the Cataloging & Metadata Center is well positioned to collaborate on any cross-departmental team formed to work on accomplishing the Library strategic agenda on data.