mcn 2014: make one, contribute many: sharing image metadata via lido

Using LIDO in the Real World: Emerging Practice in Museum Metadata Sharing

In presentation order:

Erin Coburn, Independent Consultant Emmanuelle Delmas-Glass, Yale Center for British Art Rob Lance!eld, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University

William Ying, Artstor Piotr Adamczyk, Google Cultural Institute

MCN 2014, Dallas, 22 November 2014

Using LIDO in the Real World: Emerging Practice in Museum Metadata Sharing

Make One, Contribute Many: Sharing Image Metadata via LIDO

Rob Lance!eld Manager of Museum Information Services Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University @roblance!eld

MCN 2014 Museum Computer Network

Dallas 22 November 2014

Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University:

•  More than 24,000 objects, chie"y original prints and photographs

•  Intensive access by students and faculty for teaching and learning from objects

•  Only 2.5 FTE total museum staff (two full-time, one half-time)

Make One, Contribute Many: Sharing Image Metadata via LIDO | @roblance!eld #MCN2014

With such a small museum staff…

•  …time for anything is zero-sum with time for many wholly unrelated things.

•  …if the process that serves a new goal is not every bit as efficient as it can be, the time needed to serve that goal will have undue impact on existing work, seriously delay the new work, or both.


For DAC content sharing to gear up in that context, we needed a means of…

•  …minimizing time needed to prepare structural aspects of metadata sharing

•  …contributing to multiple aggregators (and ideally, individuals online as well) via one format, not tailored one-offs.

•  …quickly generating new data sets.


The clear candidate: LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects).

•  LIDO could carry all needed content.

•  The main image aggregators we’re working with could both accept it.

•  Our collection information system had the prospective capability to export it.


Our means of generating LIDO needed to…

•  …leverage existing tools and resources.

•  …enable rapid tuning of structure and mapping: what !elds, what elements.

•  …support not only batch contributions, but also direct public download online.

DAC Collection Search infrastructure, built on EmbARK Web Kiosk, helped us do this quickly.


Web Browser

EmbARK Collection Manager collection information:full dataset

4D Server

Virtual Machine in University ITS Data Center

LIDO implementation at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University

EmbARK Web Kiosk

DAC Collection Search: dac-collection.wesleyan.edu

4D Web Server

Virtual Machine in University ITS Data Center

DAC Collection Search page for an object record

DAC LIDO template (just an

XML file)

collection information:

redacted

LIDO link onobject page

2. The datafile is periodically copied for web use. Before the copy goes onto the web server, all content in certain fields is redacted (as always, not only because LIDO will be served).

1. Back of house: no LIDO is generated here. Along with general metadata, LIDO-specific content is set here to later populate elements such as lido:recordType, and to mesh with EmbARK/4D conditionals in the DAC LIDO XML template to support on-the-fly control of such things as lido:resourceSet inclusion.

3. DAC Collection Search then uses EmbARK Web Kiosk, the redacted DAC datafile, and a DAC LIDO XML template to create LIDO in response to web browser requests over http.

Make One, Contribute Many: Sharing Image Metadata via LIDO | @roblancefield #MCN2014


XML template on DAC Collection Search server (runs on EmbARK Web Kiosk / 4D):


Template uses 4D HTML Tags to pull in content from EmbARK Web Kiosk data !le:


4D conditionals control inclusion of certain LIDO elements for each object record:

Public download


Public-facing LIDO link (way down in the fine print) on each object-record page:


Excerpt from LIDO generated on the "y from public LIDO link on an object page:


Conditional element for works with no known copyright restrictions:


Conditional resource elements for works that have DAC Open Access Images:

The template is just XML, making revision straightforward. Compare this part of it…

…with sample LIDO record output from the same part of the template:

For example, a conditional that tests for content in the field that holds ULAN IDs…

…includes the lido:actorID element if an artist is in ULAN, or excludes it if not.

Anyone can download as many single LIDO records as they wish. How to make batch records for institutional supply of single-!le metadata for image groups?

•  Same XML template (only one to tune).

•  Private, crafted URL makes LIDO !le for a found set of records (private due to its server load, not a policy constraint).


To minimize the ongoing/recurrent time it takes to share DAC object metadata, this approach focused on up-front tuning of one automated way to produce LIDO.

But—does not tailoring metadata on the museum (supply) side risk increasing the work each aggregator needs to do? How best to reduce the chance that it might?


THINK BIG: To reduce the need for one-off parsing of LIDO from different museums, aim to use it as consistently as possible everywhere.

“But everybody’s LIDO is different…” —An Anonymized Aggregator’s lament

We in museums may elicit this refrain less often by making our LIDO more alike.


start small: The Davison Art Center and the Yale Center for British Art both have signi!cant print holdings and use LIDO to contribute metadata. We’ve started working to… •  …harmonize our LIDO practice as much

as we can in each of our local contexts. •  …document the differences necessary

to mesh well with local collection data.


(and aim to) Create… 1.  …a better understanding of where

our current LIDO practices differ. 2.  …a subtle evolution of those practices,

to harmonize them wherever possible. 3.  …a “discordance” document, so tuning a

parser to ingest LIDO for prints from the DAC and the YCBA may become easier.

4.  …a LIDO pro!le for prints? Open question.


Starting with pairs of similar records, …


…find where they differ. For example:


A parting example of starting small, as illustrated in the preceding slide:

DAC and YCBA cataloging both include a !eld that describes and transcribes inscriptions, combining description and transcription for practical reasons.

LIDO has two elements in which that text might go: inscriptionDescription and inscriptionTranscription. A reasonable case can be made for or against each. The DAC uses inscriptionDescription; the YCBA uses inscriptionTranscription. Agreeing to use one of those elements could incrementally simplify parsing LIDO from the YCBA and DAC. Harmonizing practice in this kind of way may make metadata aggregation easier.


More about LIDO: http://lido-schema.org

Make One, Contribute Many: Sharing Image Metadata via LIDO Rob Lance!eld, Manager of Museum Information Services Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University | @roblance!eld

Using LIDO in the Real World: Emerging Practice in Museum Metadata Sharing MCN 2014 | Museum Computer Network | Dallas | 22 November 2014

#MCN2014

mcn 2014: make one, contribute many: sharing image metadata via lido

Technology

museum metadata sharing

image metadata

lido lightweight information

lidospecific content

lido rob lance

general metadata

eld mcn

object recorddac lido