Putting Scotland’s information on the map: metadata issues
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Transcript of Putting Scotland’s information on the map: metadata issues
Putting Scotland’s information on the map: metadata issues
Gordon Dunsire (Centre for Digital Library Research) and Penny Robertson (Scottish
Library and Information Council)Presented at the second annual CIGS seminar on Metadata issues and
Web2.0, National Library of Scotland, 30 Jan 2009
Scotland’s Information: http://www.scotlandsinformation.com
Metadata sources (1)
• Collection-level descriptions from the Scottish Collections Network (SCONE) database– Including location details
• Geographic metadata
• Google Maps– Several map types covering Scotland
• Road map, terrain map, satellite imagery, Google Earth imagery
– Markers to indicate places on the maps
Metadata sources (2)
• Marker icons– Open source set created by Benjamin Keen
• More versatile than the default Google Maps icon
• Captions for Dewey Decimal Classification top 1000 numbers– DDC Summaries freely available provided
copyright is acknowledged
• Library of Congress Subject Headings
SCONE and Google Maps
• Dynamic mashup– Live (meta)data from SCONE and Google Maps
brought together at point-of-use
• Single intersection: the geocode– Latitude and longitude metadata– Defines a point on the map
• SCONE database structure amended to store geocodes for places
Geocoding
• Possible to geocode in real-time– Submit an address to Google Maps; get geocode
• But Google advises storing geocodes if a lot of places are involved– Reduces impact on Google Maps server resources
• Only 6 figure precision required for current level of map granularity (detail)– And archive/library/museum building granularity
Obtaining geocodes (1)
• Google Maps geocoder– http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?key={mykey}
&output=csv&q={postcode}• {mykey} obtained by registering with the Google Maps
API (Application Program Interface) website• Can use address instead of postcode, but results may
be ambiguous
– But only first part of postcode used, so precision is reduced
• And sometimes postcodes are just plain wrong
Obtaining geocodes (2)
• Google Maps API applications created by developers– API allows geocode to be displayed for any point
on the map• Not a feature of the Google Maps service
– API website has list of third-party applications
• Our personal preference is Minimap– Firefox browser add-on
• Free, easy to install
Minimap add-on for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=minimap
Mashing (1)
• Google Maps API uses Javascript– Functions for implementing maps, controls, markers
• Get metadata from SCONE– Including address, geocode, collection information– Via Adobe ColdFusion script acting on MS SQL Server
• Use Javascript to parse metadata and create map markers– Geocodes
• And “information windows” to attach to markers
Mashing (2)
• Other metadata interoperability approaches are available
• Possible to output SCONE metadata in various formats– JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)– KML (Keyhole Markup Language)
• API website has tutorials, examples, reference documentation
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/index.html
http://econym.org.uk/gmap/
SCONE and DDC
• SCONE collections are classified using DDC– DDC summaries have English captions for first three
levels (digits) of a DDC number• Metadata cannot be mashed dynamically
because no DDC server– But OCLC developments in this area
• See European DDC Users Group website• See also pilot OCLC Terminology Services website
• Excel spreadsheet downloaded, parsed, and added to SCONE database
– A static mashup
DDC tag clouds
• Use captions as tags– Tags weighted according to number of collections
classified with first three summary digits• Hierarchical thesaurus browse implicit in the
decimal notation– E.g. 5xx, 51x, 512
• Idea originated at University of Adelaide in 2006– Early example exposes some issues
Classification caption issues
• [Unassigned]– Notation not currently in use
• Accommodation for expansion
– But still some hits on the catalogue ;-)
• Hierarchical de-contextualisation– E.g. “Of anonymous and pseudonymous works”
• De-contextualised duplication– E.g. “Education, research & related topics”
SCONE and LCSH
• Scone collections have multiple LCSH subject headings– WebDewey/HILT has DDC<>LCSH interoperability
• But not currently in the public domain, so future redundancy cannot be avoided
• LCSH web services still in development– Classification Web allows in-site retrieval, but doesn’t
support application mashups– LCSH being registered in SKOS (Simple Knowledge
Organisation System) – a Semantic Web standard• So SCONE has to copy the headings into the database
– Another static mashup
LCSH issues
• Difference between Geographic main topics and geographic subdivisions– i.e. MARC21 651 vs 650– E.g. 651 $a Aberdeen (Scotland)– E.g. 650 ... $z Scotland $z Aberdeen
• Similarity between main topic and standard subdivision (again, different MARC encoding)– E.g. $a History; $x History
Mashing DDC and LCSH (partial screenshot)
Great expectations• Develop dynamic mashups if/when DDC and
LCSH are fully Webified (Semantic Web) and free of copyright restrictions– Even better if good APIs are developed
• Introduce Web2.0 interactivity for professional community• E.g. Collection metadata maintenance; additional
tagging• Utilise other Google Maps mashups
– Wikipedia (descriptions of places); Panoramio (photographs of places)
We’ve only just begun ...
• Thank you• [email protected] (Gordon)• [email protected] (Penny)