2025-06-25

Housekeeping

Introductions for new folks: Ella Thompson, Metadata Specialist at Harry Ransom Center

Action items from last meeting:

Announcements:

• TCDL call for planning committee members coming soon

• Ann is retiring in August

• Josh is working full time at UTL

Updates from the field

• Library of Congress June 2025 BIBFRAME Update Forum coming up Monday, June 30, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT via Zoom.

  • Recording link will be posted to the Library of Congress BIBFRAME site.

• ALA Linked Data sessions (June 26-30) (Paloma attending ALA, will take notes and report out next meeting)

  • OCLC cataloging community meeting – new developments in OCLC cataloging, including plans for BIBFRAME

  • The Mothman Properties: Exploring linked data at West Virginia University

  • BIBFRAME in Production: Practical Insights and Case Studies from UC Davis and Penn Libraries

  • Making It Real: Preparing for BIBFRAME in Public Libraries

  • PCC and Linked Data: Successes and Challenges of Implementing Linked Data

• ELUNA conference session highlights forthcoming (Benn Chang at UTL attended and can share takeaways soon)

  • Linked Data and AI: Harnessing the power of both for transforming Library Services

  • Navigating Challenges and Embracing Opportunities: Advancing Linked Open Data Initiatives in Libraries

Debrief on Open Data presentation

• Slides from presentation by Michael Shensky and Bryan Gee, UT Libraries, Research Data Services

  • What could RDS do with Linked Open Data?

    • Since UT Libraries and other Texas Digital Library members are using the Texas Data Repository, perhaps the Linked Data Notification API in Dataverse feature could be useful?

      • seems more like citation notification, as opposed to linked data applications we are used to thinking about

      • Related recent paper: Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Search in Dataverse (2023)

      • https://coar-notify.net/specification/  

      • https://coar-notify.net/use-cases/  

      • https://coar-notify.net/use-cases/linking/ (most relevant for our many sites?)

  • How can RDS help this group?

    • partner to brainstorm/explore ideas and projects that would be valuable to researchers and faculty

Debrief on Primo Person card and page user study

All

See Person cards/pages in UTL Primo Sandbox environment

Irene Sibi’s project report:

• Recommendations

  • Provide context and transparency

  • Navigation and visibility

  • Order of authorship

• Discussion

  • Is it worth it to provide context about information that could be inaccurate and upholds bias?

  • Can that tradeoff be mitigated with information literacy?

  • Ideas about how to share outcomes of this report locally and with Ex Libris Primo user community and Ex Libris development:

    • UTL Discovery Services Advisory Group discussion

    • Ex Libris Idea Exchange

    • Primo community listserv

    • Annual Primo enhancement request cycle

  • Chatter on Primo community listserv about this feature seems to have died down this year - how widely-adopted is it now?

  • What would results of another similar study with students interviewed look like?

  • UT Dallas has this feature in production - Melanie will ask Misu Kim if she or someone else there would be willing to join us and discuss.

  • Grappling with concept of completeness - what is enough to be satisfactory?

    • OCLC entities have visual cue/tool about level of completeness

  • Ideas for mitigating some of these concerns:

    • add an expandable disclaimer option in the Person Info Card panel with text that institutions could control

    • add an option for users to request more information about a person, giving user communities agency to prioritize authority work by information professionals - related to NACO “Lite” and EMCO

NOTE:

• Related enhancement requests in round 1 of 2025 Primo enhancement voting cycle (none of these made it to final round of voting in progress):

  • Person Entity - Option to hide or suppress the Person Page and Person Info Card at the individual level (b/c of complaints about inaccurate information in Wikidata, and time needed to review and address it)

  • Person Entity - Ability to Opt Out from Wikidata (for same reasons mentioned above)

  • Enable the use of local data sources to enrich Person Entity LOD (eg. for faculty with lots of author data on university websites, databases, and academic platforms, that are not “notable” enough to garner Wikipedia/Wikidata entries)

Entity reconciliation for place names and venues

• Entity boundaries for places and venues

  • Is wikidata a good model? Are there better models out there?

  • Distinctions between physical building and organization inhabiting building

  • Distinctions between building/venue and events that happen there

  • Differences b/t what HRC and Architecture are doing in regards to those distinctions?

  • Recent project working on new thesaurus for HRC venues coming from playbill collections - splitting creative works from productions

    • Venues moved into new vocabulary, out of people/organizations node

    • Theaters no longer being thought about as corporate entities

    • Trying to define venues based on ownership - Olympic Theater, ownership has changed over time, using distinct entries for each period of ownership (of building, or theater company?), challenging approach that has pros and cons, just as using physical address is also challenging.

  • CONA consolidating all related relationships into 1 entity record

Wrap-up

Next meeting is July 23rd

• We’ll pick up where we left off with discussion of entity reconciliation for place names and venues

• Planning speakers for future meetings: Josh presentation on Wikidata items, Misu from UT Dallas

• Ongoing discussions: how to work with RDS? Primo Author Card feasibility?

• Paloma out on July 23rd