suzanne pilsk presentation to sil board 2012
TRANSCRIPT
Partnering In Research: The Smithsonian Libraries,
Index Animalium &
Taxonomic Literature, 2nd Ed
Suzanne C. Pilsk Metadata Librarian
Smithsonian Libraries
Smithsonian Institution
African Art
African American History and Culture
Anthropology
American Art
American History
Asian and Middle Eastern Art
Aviation history and Space Flight
Design and Decorative Arts
Environmental Management and Ecology
History of Science and Technology
Latino History and Culture
Materials Research
Modern and Contemporary Art
Museology
Native American History and Culture
Natural History
Postal History
Tropical Biology
Trade Literature
World’s Fair Ephemera
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Support for the Sciences Taxonomic Nomenclature
Identifying and Naming of Species New, Old, Re-name, Misspellings, Synonyms,
Homonyms, Splits, Joins, …. Authorship: Who, When, Former …
Rules: International Code of Botanical Nomenclature International Code of Zoological Nomenclature International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria
Importance of Publication
Who Writes
Publishes
and Distributes
FIRST
WINS
Justification of NH Libraries!
In any well-appointed Natural History Library there should be found every book and every edition of every book dealing in the remotest way with the subjects concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn, Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922
“Veni, vidi, vici – and now history: Botany’s new rules allow English to replace Latin in Describing Species” Washington Post 19 January 2012
Libraries and Librarians
Tools of the Trade
Index Animalium / Sherborn
Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition
Metadata Fail
Digitization
Will they find it?
If you digitize it …
Search Gone BAD!
Metadata Successes
Compiled between 1890-1933 Covers literature 1758-1850
More than 9,000 pages Published in over 30 volumes
Indexes more than 400,000 names
The Squire
Connecting Index to Sources
Bibliography = Metadata
Sherborn’s Bibliography: Zoological Miscellany (Leach’s). 3 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1814-17.
Library’s Catalog: The zoological miscellany : being descriptions of new, or interesting animals / by William Elford Leach
"362382","SIL34_02_24_0193","6101","splendens Turdus, W. E. Leach, Zool. Miscell. II. 1815, 30.”
ID Image ID Page Name & reference
Database Parsing To Find Pieces and Parts
Index Citation Species Name to Page
Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition
Taxonomic Literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types (second edition)
15 volumes guide to the literature of systematic botany published between 1753 and 1940
Organized by author ~ Citation for the author’s surname
Numbered entries of the author’s publications ~ Suggested short-title & abbreviation of short-title for use in taxonomic publications
TL2 is a standard by which author’s names and titles should be abbreviated
Digitizing The Entire Title: Scope of Work
• Approximately 11, 500 scanned pages • Average of 3,300 characters per page • Approximately 44, 000 author entries • Image files approx. 9 GB in size
★ Linked Open Data – 5 Stars ★
★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open licence
★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)
★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context
• Shareable
• Extensible
• Re-Usable
• International
FOAF: Friend of a Friend
Linked Open Data Subject Predicate Object
Subject – A “thing” with a unique identifier
Johan Wilhelm Palmstruch
TL2 id <Palmstr>
Predicate – A “verb” with a unique identifier
Illustrated
RDA <Illustrator>
Object – A “thing” with a unique identifier
Svensk Botanik
TL2 id <7247>
Triple Stores
Johan Wilhelm Palmstruch
Illustrated
Svensk Botanik
TL2 BOTid <Palmstr> RDA <Illustrator> TL2 BKid<7247>
TL2 BKid <7247> RDA <Illustrator> TL2 BOTid <Palmstr>
TL2: Linked Open Data
Botanists Pages Triple Stores of Name relationship to Books Name relationship to Standard Abbreviation
Book Pages Triple Stores of Book relationship to Name Book relationship to TL2 Numbering Book relationship to Standard Abbreviation
http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
SIL
TL-3
Future
Life and Literature Conference 2011
Life and Literature Conference 2011
Life and Literature Conference 2011
Compelling Use Cases for Digitization Including cool and unexpected Once digitized, text is just text Significant amount not discoverable
“So in not fully investigating the product of the digital projects, are we selling scholarship short? What scholarship in the digital age means? And what are the real tools we need to do it?” Elycia Wallis, Museum Victoria
Thanks To Many
• Joel Richard
• Martin Kalfatovic
• Grace Costantino
• Courtney Shaw
• Keri Thompson
• Robin Everly
• Interns too numerous to name
• Volunteers too numerous to name
• Gilbert Borrego
• Carolyn Sheffield
• Bianca Crowley
• Becky Morin
• Mike Lichtenburg
• David Remsen
• Patrick Leary
• Chris Freeland
• Rod Page
Contact information: [email protected]
Interesting Sources Index Animalium www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/indexanimalium
Taxonomic Literature (3) www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2
Connecting Content
research.calacademy.org/library/fieldnotes
The Field Book Project
www.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/index.html
Linked Open Data
linkeddata.org/
Life and Literature Conference
http://www.lifeandliterature.org/
Smithsonian Institution
www.si.edu/
Biodiversity Heritage Library
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Internet Archive
www.archive.org/