This highly practical handbook teaches you how to unlock the value of your existing metadata through cleaning, reconciliation, enrichment and linking and how to streamline the process of new metadata creation. Libraries, archives and museums are facing up to the challenge of providing access to fast growing collections whilst managing cuts to budgets. Key to this is the creation, linking and publishing of good quality metadata as Linked Data that will allow their collections to be discovered, accessed and disseminated in a sustainable manner. This highly practical handbook teaches you how to unlock the value of your existing metadata through cleaning, reconciliation, enrichment and linking and how to streamline the process of new metadata creation. Metadata experts Seth van Hooland and Ruben Verborgh introduce the key concepts of metadata standards and Linked Data and how they can be practically applied to existing metadata, giving readers the tools and understanding to achieve maximum results with limited resources. Readers will learn how to critically assess and use (semi-)automated methods of managing metadata through hands-on exercises within the book and on the accompanying website. Each chapter is built around a case study from institutions around the world, demonstrating how freely available tools are being successfully used in different metadata contexts. This handbook delivers the necessary conceptual and practical understanding to empower practitioners to make the right decisions when making their organisations resources accessible on the Web. This will be an invaluable guide for metadata practitioners and researchers within all cultural heritage contexts, from library cataloguers and archivists to museum curatorial staff. It will also be of interest to students and academics within information science and digital humanities fields. IT managers with responsibility for information systems, as well as strategy heads and budget holders, at cultural heritage organisations, will find this a valuable decision-making aid.

The authors ix

A word of thanks xi

Foreword Sebastian Chan xiii

Glossary xv

1 Introduction 1

1 Metadata at the crossroads 1

2 Definition and scope of key concepts 3

3 Position and originality of the handbook 4

4 Structure and learning objectives 5

5 Get in touch' 8

Note 8

References 8

2 Modelling 11

1 Introduction 11

2 Tabular data 17

3 Relational model 22

4 Meta-markup languages 28

5 Linked data 43

6 Conclusion 49

7 Case study: linked data at your fingertips 52

Notes 69

References 69

3 Cleaning 71

1 Introduction 71

2 A new field of data quality 73

3 Data profiling 77

4 Conclusion 88

5 Case study: Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts 90

Notes 107

Bibliography 107

4 Reconciling 109

1 Introduction 109

2 Controlled vocabularies 112

3 Semantics and machines 124

4 Bringing controlled vocabularies to the web 128

5 Enabling interconnections 132

6 Conclusion 135

7 Case study: Powerhouse Museum 137

Notes 155

References 156

5 Enriching 159

1 Introduction 159

2 The potential of crowdsourcing 162

3 Embracing scale 164

4 Gold mining for semantics 168

5 Managing ambiguous URLs 175

6 Conclusion 179

7 Case study: the British Library 180

Notes 193

References 193

6 Publishing 197

1 Introduction 197

2 Identifying content with URLs 199

3 Marking up content 203

4 A web for humans and machines 211

5 Conclusion 219

6 Case study: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum 222

Notes 241

References 241

7 Conclusions 243

1 Statistics, probability and the humanities 244

2 Market forces 247

3 Use of URLs 248

4 Engage 249

Note 249

References 249

Index 251

Seth van Hooland is an assistant professor at the University libre de Bruxelles (ULB). After a career in the private sector for a digitization company, he obtained his PhD in information science at ULB in 2009. Following a post-doc position at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Seth joined the Information and Communication Science Department at ULB and became the academic responsible for their Master in Information Science. In the spring semester of 2014, he taught a special course on linked data at the Information School of the University of Washington. He is also active as a consultant in the document and records management domain for both public and private organizations. PA\Ruben Verborgh is a researcher in semantic hypermedia at Ghent University — iMinds, Belgium, where he obtained his PhD in computer science engineering in 2014. He explores the connection between semantic web technologies and the web's architectural properties, with the ultimate goal of building more intelligent clients. Along the way, he has become fascinated by linked data, REST/hypermedia, web APIs and related technologies. Ruben is the author of a book on the interactive data transformation tool OpenRefine and several publications on web-related topics in international journals.

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