Page 106 - Building Digital Libraries

General-Purpose Technologies Useful for Digital Repositories

<marc:subfield code=“a”>Diaries.</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“2”>lcgft</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
<marc:datafield tag=“655” ind1=“ “ ind2=“7”>
<marc:subfield code=“a”>Autobiographies.</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“2”>lcgft</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
<marc:datafield tag=“655” ind1=“ “ ind2=“7”>
<marc:subfield code=“a”>Biography.</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“2”>fast</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“0”>(OCoLC)fst01423686</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
<marc:datafield tag=“655” ind1=“ “ ind2=“7”>
<marc:subfield code=“a”>Diaries.</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“2”>fast</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“0”>(OCoLC)fst01423794</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
<marc:datafield tag=“700” ind1=“1” ind2=“ “>
<marc:subfield code=“6”>880–07</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“a”>Chen, Shiju,</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“e”>editor.</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
<marc:datafield tag=“700” ind1=“1” ind2=“ “>
<marc:subfield code=“6”>880–08</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“a”>Cai, Shengqi,</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code=“e”>editor.</marc:subfield>
</marc:datafield>
</marc:record>

This snippet of data includes just the controlled content found within the
record. In this case, we have a mix of names and a wide range of subject
vocabularies. This metadata would provide a rich set of content for a local
system, but these are just strings within the system. The metadata doesn’t
enable the system to know anything about these values outside of the infor-
mation embedded within the metadata. If these terms change, or need to be
updated, this must be done manually within the system. If these vocabular-
ies are related to other data or match other vocabularies, this information
wouldn’t be captured. So, while this snippet provides rich data for the system
to utilize, it is “dumb” data, in that this information only exists as a string
of data.
It is this notion of context and the interconnectivity of data that has
pushed the cultural heritage community towards semantic data principles.
Today, libraries are just experimenting with embedding linked data or URI
10
endpoints into their data in order to shift their metadata from simple strings
to strings+. By simply adding URI endpoints to the example above, we get
the following:

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