Tag Archives: metadata

Welcome to Sue Graves!

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Sue Graves has joined the Metadata Unit in the Technical Services Department of the Libraries. She comes to the Smithsonian with a history of technical services experience in law, academic and public libraries and a brief contract stint involving the historic shelf list at the Government Printing Office.

Sue graduated from the University of Vermont with a major in English and a minor in French and has dabbled with graduate studies in English and Library Science. She enjoys working in libraries, seeking a more subdued side of life, as she apparently attracts interesting and often improbable events, ranging from the cat sitting on a burning candle and running through the early 19th century farm house she rents in upper Maryland to being yanked from a car at gun point and handcuffed for suspected carjacking.

SueGraves
Settling into the temporary space in Natural History has given Sue the opportunity for a new adventure in the library world; both while working and discovering NMNH’s back hallways and hidden elevators. She leaves the ‘wild things’ in Northern Maryland at 0 dark thirty every morning to investigate the Meta Monsters of Smithsonian Research Online, SIRIS, and scanning projects like the TL2 as well as newly developing projects using Drupal. Sue joins us in the usually quiet work environment with a plethora of new and exciting projects.

— Suzanne Pilsk

The Secret Life of Images

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This space age ceiling fixture was created by the Edward F. Caldwell Lighting Company between 1932 and 1940 for the Rockefeller Center and can be found in the Libraries digital collection, Shedding Light on New York, Edward F. Caldwell & Co.

What happens if a design teacher visits the website and downloads the image to use in research and forgets where it came from or the image ends up on flickr? If the image has no associated embedded metadata, well, then it basically has lost its identity.

Luckily for the photo and for the Libraries it has embedded metadata to show what it is and where it came from. Embedded metadata is now included in basically all digital files, from Word documents to digital photographs. When embedded metadata is automatically created by a scanner or camera it is usually technical in nature, and in the case of most cameras or phones includes geospatial information. Embedded metadata can also be added using tools like Adobe Bridge to help describe what the file is and who created it.

Across the Smithsonian, from the library to the many archives and museums, thousands of images are created and generated weekly. In spring 2009, the Embedded Metadata Working Group (EMDaWG) was created out of a grass roots effort that quickly became pan-institutional for the express purpose of creating best practices for the embedding of metadata in images. The best practices were developed to help determine core descriptive metadata and to help describe what an image is or is about and where the image came from. The embedded metadata helps to identify images that travel outside of the Smithsonian’s many image databases, as well as makes the image self-describing as it makes its way through the many channels within the Smithsonian.

The full paper about this project, along with the best practices can be found in the Smithsonian Libraries SRO.

—Doug Dunlop

Dublin Core Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA—October 20-22, 2010

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December is the time of year to reflect back on the past twelve months. Back in October, I had the chance to visit Pittsburgh for the first time, as well as attend my first Dublin Core metadata conference.

While at the conference, I had the privilege of presenting a paper on the work of a Smithsonian pan-institutional working group, EMDaWG (Embedded Metadata Working Group), in a presentation entitled, The Case for Implementing Core Descriptive Embedded Metadata at the Smithsonian.

The presentation slides are available on SlideShare and the paper is available either through the Dublin Core site, or through the Libraries' Smithsonian Research Online (SRO). DublinCore

The conference was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the Dublin Core metadata initiative and the community that makes the initiative happen. Dublin Core started with the seed concept of cataloging the web and has evolved into a lingua franca metadata schema used as the basis of other schemas such as VRA Core (Visual Resources Association) and Darwin Core and pioneering work on the Semantic Web.

When not at the conference, I was able to enjoy some Pittsburgh favorites such as a Primanti Bros. sandwich and the Warhol Museum.

—Doug Dunlop

Technical Services Intern—Caitlin Whiting

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Caitlin's blogOne recipient of the Libraries' new Professional Development Internship is Caitlin Whiting. Caitlin is working this summer with metadata, electronic journals, and marc records in Technical Services. She is currently enrolled in the MLS program at the University of Maryland, College Park, with an expected graduation date of May 2011. Caitlin has a 4.0 GPA at Maryland, and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Oregon.

Caitlin has experience with the Horizon library system, serials check in and receiving, and basic cataloging activities in a research library environment.

Caitlin was attracted to the Technical Services Division Professional Development internship because of her strong interest in libraries that foster international scholarly communication and research, and her desire to use technologies that support that mission. Thus far, Caitlin has expanded her cataloging skills as she creates and edits MARC records for electronic journals in the Library catalog.

A recent Biodiversity Heritage Library metadata project had her researching bibliographic records of works listed in the Index Animalium, a vital piece of scholarship from the early 20th century which compiles the names of thousands of species known at that time. Also, she has assisted with name authority work and editing of citations of Smithsonian publications before their inclusion in the Smithsonian’s digital repository. These projects have helped develop her holistic understanding of technical services as an integral component of the Libraries.

Caitlin plans to pursue a career in technical services, and is looking forward to being a part of such a dynamic and ever-changing field. She has taken a bibliographic control course, which included classification and subject analysis theory, along with parsing and putting together simple MARC records. Caitlin will be taking a technical services seminar in the fall, hoping to learn more in-depth of the issues, challenges and trends in technical services

—Polly Khater

Madeline at the Smithsonian

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Madeline Priest joined the Libraries for a two-month internship this summer. A senior and history major at Elmira College in Elmira, N.Y. Priest applied for an internship because of her long fascination with the Smithsonian. A northern Virginia resident who hails from Fairfax, VA., Priest has visited all of the museums several times since her childhood. Her stint with the Libraries will also fulfill Elmira College’s unique requirement of 240 hours in a career-related internship before graduation.

This summer, Priest collaborated with Lilla Vekerdy and Kirsten van der Veen of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, which is located in the National Museum of American History, on various projects. She also worked with metadata librarian Doug Dunlop at the National Museum of Natural History on assignments such as the Libraries' Ackermann project, digitization of a 19th century British journal featuring politics, fashion, interior design and travel.

Priest is a member of several notable organizations on the Elmira College campus, such as Amnesty International, choir, and the history club. Her favorite movie is Spinal Tap and her favorite television show is Freaks and Geeks.—Liz O'Brien

photo by Liz O'Brien

Madeline Priest