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• g.dunsire@strath.ac.uk (Gordon)• scotearl@slainte.org.uk (Penny)