Vol 21 | No 2 | Spring 15
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Linked Open Data Grant for Artists' Books Collection

ImageThe UCI Libraries have been awarded a $36,531 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), to provide Linked Open Data for materials in our Artists' Books Collection.

Linked open data has generated attention recently for its ability to enhance metadata and resource discovery through illustrating relationships between information entities and defining roles between information creators and products. This approach and framework provide greater intellectual control for scholarly resources, and facilitate users' access to meaningful information.

The Libraries' Artists' Books collection will be particularly well-served by Linked Open Data enhancement. This heavily used collection reflects overarching strengths in regional history, political activism, books created by women, works created in Latin America, and works that reflect the LGBTQ experience. UC Irvine's curricula draw from artists' books for examples, not only in art and visual studies, but also political and social sciences. The relationships between communities of artists and the subjects of the works, as well as the special printing and artistic techniques used in creating rare or unique monographic works, make them good candidates for alternative thesauri and linked data.

A team comprised of professionals from the Libraries has begun working on this pilot, which will be completed in July 2016. At that time, protocols and templates will be established that can be extended to other parts of the UCI Libraries' collections and borrowed or adapted by other libraries.

This work will be transformative for the Libraries. Shu Liu, Metadata & Digital Resources Librarian, states, "It is the Libraries' first attempt at using digital photography to create surrogates for 3-D, or otherwise complex, books and experimenting with the application of Linked Open Data to make descriptions for these resources available for the next phase of online discovery."

For more information please contact John Renaud, Assistant University Librarian, Research Resources at jrenaud@uci.edu or 949-842-521.