GSLIS - Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship

Collections and Curation

CIRSS projects in this sector focus on how to build, represent, and make accessible research collections, with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities associated with the curation and federation of digital collections for long-term, distributed use. The ongoing funded research projects are complemented by a study group dedicated to metadata standards and associated research problems.

Digital Collections and Content (DCC)—Begun in 2002, this IMLS-funded project provides integrated access to the digital content developed through the IMLS National Leadership Grant (NLG) program. Current work is aimed at creating federations based on principled selection and integration of sources and exploiting the relationships between collection-level and item-level metadata.

Opening History (OH) - Investigating the aggregation of distributed and complementary cultural heritage collections to build contextual mass for historians, and developing techniques for browsing and linking to related resources outside of OH.

Data Curation Education Program (DCEP)—This project supports a new concentration in the MSLIS curriculum and is working to defining a set of best practices in the emergent field of data curation.

Data Curation Education in Research Centers (DCERC) - The Data Curation Education in Research Centers (DCERC) will develop a model for educating Library and Information Science masters and doctoral students in data curation through field experiences in research and data centers. We will implement a graduate research and education program in data curation to bring students into the world of scientific data curation. Building on the strengths of our partners-the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, we address needs for research expertise and scientific data curation professionals.

Metadata Roundtable—A weekly meeting of CIRSS researchers, students, and affiliates to discuss metadata standards issues and developments and the metadata-related works in progress in CIRSS and elsewhere in the digital library community.

Folktales, Facets, and FRBR — Through the project Folktales, Facets, and FRBR, CIRSS affiliated faculty members Kathryn La Barre and Carol Tilley propose to enhance access to folktales through the systematic and rigorous application of facet analysis and the development of user- and task-focused models of information representation.

Preserving Virtual Worlds — The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction.

Intermediary Models for Institutional Repository Development (IMIRD)— A pilot project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation exploring institutional repository development strategies at three research universities and the role of librarians in these initiatives.

ECHO DEPository — A three-year digital preservation research and development project in partnership with OCLC, funded by the Library of Congress.

PLDS Statistical Report — An annual survey on behalf of the Public Library Association to collect information on income, expenditures, circulation, technology at North American public libraries.

Current Activities

DCEP-H interim report to IMLS submitted.

IMLS DCC Advisory board conference call scheduled for February 20, 2009.

IMLS DCC interim report submitted to IMLS.

Folktales, Facets, and FRBR project funded by OCLC / ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant Program

Publications

Zavalina, O., Palmer, C. L., Jackson, A. S., Han, M. (2008). Assessing Descriptive Substance in Free-Text Collection-Level Metadata. Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Berlin, Germany, September 22-26, 2008.

Renear, A. H., Wickett, K. M., Urban, R. J., Dubin, D. (2008). The Return of the Trivial: Problems Formalizing Collection-Level/Item-Level Metadata Relationships. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries: JCDL 2008, Pittsburgh, PA, June 16-20, 2008.

Jackson, A. S., Han, M., Groetsch, K., Mustafoff, M., Cole, T. W. (2008). Dublin Core Metadata Harvested through OAI-PMH. Journal of Library Metadata. 8(1).