Monday 19 September 2011

Next steps

Previous posts have highlighted some of the benefits of the project.

Key findings include:

  • An approach to adding supplementary, semantic, metadata that builds on the work practices of archivists rather than imposing a new layer of work
  • Semantic analysis can supplement existing indexing, making its creation faster, more accurate and more consistent
  • Existing natural language processing services such as Open Calais still lack archival-LMA related vocabularies, so have some way to go before they 'learn' the language of libraries, museums, archives, galleries and the research environment
  • Opportunities for enhancing discoverability with roll-over features and drop downs to make Linked Data of mainstream value to users and not the preserve of a minority of technical experts
Next steps
  • Further refinement of the editing interface to make mark-up clearer and with features such as bulk analysis of ISAD(G) records
  • Further testing of sample data across key natural language processing services to ask certain questions - what are they missing? - how accurate are they? - how could they be improved and what role would JISC have in this?
  • More testing of front end delivery pages in AIM25 using external data, particularly geographical and name authority data via projects such as Linking Lives
  • Moving beyond AIM25 to link archive descriptions with other services via an API. Linked Data is only useful if users can connect and aggregate, mix and mash
  • Using services to mix archival, bibliographic and museums content information, and to cross-walk with broader content used by wider audiences (such as genealogical data, metadata for digitised collections - eg newspapers, mapping or crowdsourced data) 
  • Surveying which services need to be created with existing database records, that can then be linked together. This should be user and service-driven with input from major national institutions such as the TNA and BL, as well as JISC

No comments:

Post a Comment