I have this concept of opening access to our Fedora data, then combining that with our library catalog data and our library web site data (people and services). But what is the goal for this, who would make use of it, and why would they care? The data is related by subject areas and, in that respect, certainly helpful to researchers to be more tightly coupled than it is now. But how would it work and what could people do with it?
I’ve tried imagining scenarios for using this data as I write narratives for conference and grant proposals but so far my conference proposals and funding tries have fallen kind of flat, so that makes me wonder if this is a thing at all or if I’m making up something that nobody wants? I’m also not sure if I have a research question or merely a software development problem. I think there might be a research question in the questions above? Some frustration, first inclination is to become a monk and leave the situation…
Young MC aside, here are some possibilities: First I have examples of making use of the metadata once it’s opened up from Fedora. For instance, a researcher could analyze geographic locations across time for all digitized photographs at Indiana University. A student could do subject analysis across all sheet music collections we host. A historian could map correspondence from different time periods in American history from our collections. Expanding on those examples to examples of using a data set combining digital collections with the library catalog and the library web site seems like the next step. [taking a break, eating a sandwich, thinking about this one]…
How about this: finding non-digital resources, real life people, and actual services at our institution related to any of the above examples would make a combined data set useful. That combined data set would offer research-related resources to help understand the data and people and services to support the analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of findings based on that data. Analyzing geographic locations across time for all digitized collections might connect to geocoding books, articles on time-based mapping projects, subject-specific books and articles related to the photographers or time periods from the digitized photos in Fedora. Librarians and training resources for GIS on the libraries web site would be useful for the historian along with university-wide GIS training, online resources, and contact info.
So that’s one example, and we have all of that data that can be combined to provide this info, I’m sure of it. Is there interest in doing this sort of research with our digitized collections? Historypin has shown interest in taking at least a portion of our digital photograph collection and doing just this sort of mapping. The technology for making data work this way is there, it’s a matter of providing the data so researchers can easily access it (combining and exposing our data) and providing the tools, training, and support needed for these same researchers to explore the data. I don’t think any researcher out there working in a subject area that isn’t technology-focused already has a research question directly related to geo-locating all digital photographs at Indiana University, but that exploration can certainly lead to research questions. It’s the same reason we realized digitized versions of these items needed to be created and made available in the first place – so they can be explored by anyone, anywhere, at any time. This is expanding on the way these collections can be explored. This expansion doesn’t answer specific questions, but it opens doors to explore our history and what we know from different perspectives.
So my research question is: How do you usefully combine digital repository, library catalog, and library web site data so researchers can take it all in and do cool things?
This is a direction but maybe more of a light at the beginning of the tunnel than at the end. Off to do my own discovery…
