Session 1: Automating Descriptive Metadata Creation: Tools and Workflows

Date & Time: 

This session was presented live on 06/07/16. Access the recording and webinar materials now:

• webinar recording | YouTube video
• presentation slides

Learning Objectives:

• Understand best tools for gathering descriptive metadata content for your library 
• Ability to implement workflows for metadata in digital files

Presentation Titles & Presenters:

• Migrating ETDs from Dublin Core to MODS: Automated processes for metadata enhancement​ ​

​Presented by ​Annie Glerum, Head of Complex Cataloging, Florida State University Libraries and ​Dominique Bortmas, Metadata Librarian, University of South Florida Libraries

Abstract: When migrating from one metadata scheme to another, the most efficient method is a direct crosswalk of corresponding elements. This method is effective for migrating from a fuller schema, like MARCXML or MODS, to a more brief one, like Dublin Core or Qualified Dublin Core. However, when migrating from a thin schema to a thick one, a simple crosswalk excludes the potential of rich metadata that a fuller schema allows. This presentation demonstrates how to create a second source of data for a transformation of Qualified Dublin Core to MODS by using Javascript in Adobe Acrobat's Action Wizard to batch convert PDFs to XML then XProc to run multiple XSLTs for reformatting and cleaning up the harvested bibliographic data. The Qualified Dublin Core to MODS XSLT includes modular transformations for formatting names and titles, standardizing capitalization, converting character encoding to UTF8, and assigning broad LCSH based on Qualified Dublin Core disciplines or departments. In turn, the modular transformations reference XML tables for capitalization, departments, subjects, and Unicode characters.

Along with examples of how this process can be adapted for your organization, the presentation concludes with examples of other XML technologies that have been modified to accommodate local needs reference by attendees.

Margaret “Annie” Glerum is Head of Complex Cataloging at Florida State University Libraries in Tallahassee, Florida. Currently Vice-Chair/President-Elect of OLAC (Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc.), she formerly was member of OLAC's Cataloging Policy Committee and the committee's Revising Streaming Media Best Practices for RDA Task Force. Ms. Glerum also is member of the JSC RDA/ONIX Working Group, co-chair of the ALCTS Technical Services Workflows Efficiency Interest Group, and former co-chair of the Bibliographic Control and Discovery Subcommittee of the Cataloging, Authorities and Metadata Committee of the Council of State University Libraries of Florida. She received a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor of Music, Music Theory and Composition from Stetson University.

Dominique Bortmas is the Metadata Librarian at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. While earning her MLIS through Kent State University, she was the Complex Cataloging Specialist at Florida State University. Before relocating to Florida, Dominique held her first library position at Kent State University as an Audio-visual Cataloger. She earned her BA in English and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University.

• Finding a New Metadata M.O.: Metadata Automation on a Budget at a Medium-Sized Institution

​Presented by Joseph R. Nicholson, Metadata Librarian at University of North Carolina-Charlotte

Abstract: At UNC Charlotte, ambitious plans for digital projects in Islandora, the institution’s new repository, confronted several major obstacles: staff shortages, skill deficits, and the difficulties of moving from an out-of-the-box digital asset management system to an open source product. Compounding these difficulties, recent commitments to granting agencies and donors required the library to shift very quickly from a boutique to a mass-digitization production model and yet to describe materials at a level of detail uncommon in mass-digitization projects. Authority control was an essential ingredient of the projects, as was the ability to leverage local authority control efforts to produce a stream of new authority records to contribute to the NACO program. In addition, UNC Charlotte needed a way of seamlessly incorporating donor-contributed metadata into workflows, a requirement of one of the projects. The incommensurateness of the ambitious scope of the projects with the library resources available initially threatened to hamstring the library’s new digitization efforts. Data conversion tools like Open Refine and XSLT, neither of which UNC Charlotte had used extensively in the past, as well as a carefully considered use of Excel spreadsheets and Google forms, have been essential in helping the organization overcome these obstacles. This presentation will focus on UNC Charlotte’s use of several of these tools to swiftly create, clean, organize, and transform metadata created from several different sources in spreadsheets and Google Forms. In particular, it will spotlight how UNC Charlotte has used Open Refine’s templating functions and XSLT both to transform descriptive spreadsheet metadata into XML of various flavors and to parlay authority data recorded by non-specialists into MARC.

Joseph Nicholson is Metadata Librarian in the Special Collections Department at J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he is responsible for original cataloging throughout the library, creating and transforming metadata for digital projects, and coordinating authority control efforts. He has a BA and an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a MA in English literature from the College of William and Mary.

For more information, including how to register, visit the 2016 ALCTS Virtual Preconference web page. 

This virtual preconference is generously sponsored by Springer Nature

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