Student Forum (Open Session)

As a characteristic part of Chinese cultural heritage, bronzes are important research objects for historians and humanist scholars to study ancient China, and it is a unique way for the pubic to learn about Chinese culture. For historical reasons, many exquisite bronzes were lost overseas and collected by museums in America, France or Japan. With the Open access implemented by most museums, the data of Chinese bronzes have been published with varying degrees of detail. A systematic understanding of bronzes' culture could be a positive impact for the cultural exchange for the public. The project aims to enhance the process of information-seeking and utilization among Chinese bronze-related cultural heritage. How to aggregate the scattered data of overseas Chinese bronzes together is a key component of this project. In linked data environment, this project proposes an aggregation framework for the virtual reunite for the overseas bronzes, referring to Getty Vocabularies experiences. Currently, it is in the pilot stage. In the future, the final version is to provide a platform for professionals to facilitate the communication and research, and also, for the communication of the culture of Chinese ancient bronzes among public.

For a class project as part of the Master’s of Library and Information Science program at Syracuse University, we collaborated with the Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Resource Center (TBCBRC) to create a metadata workflow for staff and volunteers to use as they digitize physical resources. The central challenge was recommending low-cost solutions to keep this process accessible for the TBCBRC, a community cultural heritage institution. Additionally, staff and volunteers had limited prior experience with metadata, so we did not want to recommend an overly complicated workflow. The primary components of our recommendation include a metadata intake form built using Google Forms, a prototype map visualization generated via Tableau Public, and an optional data model that can be adapted to meet the evolving data storage needs at the TBCBRC. The purpose of this project was to assist the TBCBRC in making metadata more accessible to its users. In particular, the map visualization allows users to interact with the center’s resources differently than using a search bar. This workflow lowers barriers to metadata record creation, enabling the archive’s stakeholders to have more control over how they organize their cultural heritage materials.

Method: This pilot study compared MTI indexing with human indexing for 20 articles, each representing a journal from PubMed’s Abridged Indicus Medicus (AIM) list. Of the 20, 10 had the highest 2020 Journal Impact Factors (JIFs), and 10 had the lowest 2020 JIFs. Results: 1) The MTI and human indexers both assigned more terms to articles in the high JIF list, but the mean difference in terms between the high and low JIF lists was 6.4 for the MTI and only 2.3 for humans. 2) The MTI used the check tag “Human” in all applicable instances, but failed to use the check tag “Aged” whenever it was used by a human. 3) In all 6 instances where both sex check tags were used, the MTI ranked “Male” before “Female,” with a difference in rankings of 3-61 places. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the MTI carries over existing biases for mainstream medical topics over under-represented allied health topics, and support existing observations that the MTI’s check tag identification is poor without full text access. This may lead to risks of compromising the integrity of MeSH and widening existing inequities between subject areas and populations.

Makerspaces and Fab Labs are growing in popularity and creating many resources as a result. While there is a great deal of research into starting a makerspace, and managing its physical space, there is a dearth of literature discussing organizing and managing the digital resources created. Approaching this issue from a library and information science background, we created a system of organization useful to both staff and patrons. Based on the digital resources of one makerspace, the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab, we created a metadata schema, described in a data dictionary, that will create a structure and organization to allow findability, while remaining simple to use for staff and patrons. This case study was supervised by Professor Inkyung Choi at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.