Outcomes of the hackday

Joshua Seufert from the Bodleian KB Chen China Centre Library presented the catalogue data which he had brought along with him.  One of the outcomes was the conversation between librarians and technologists. Although we see the same data, we perhaps have very different questions about it: such as the desire and / or the initial idea versus the reality of creating the service in terms of required resources to realise it.

Some work was done on integrating the catalogue with the Chinese Biographical Database Project using AJAX. Some work needs to continue on it but provides an initial piece of work to provide biographical data within the catalogue search.

Book, author and title authority files in XML were created from the catalogue using linked data principles. Given the old database was on a DOS system and needed a little updating, this shows a method of doing this without losing any authority.

The final hack was a project on the Oxford University Research Archive to visualise some of the data in the feeds.

The Open Knowledge Labs Timemapper project was demonstrated as well as another tool for displaying data to users. There were numerous conversations around the OCLC data and potential ways of enriching existing sets.

Having the Bodleian Chinese data provided the best project of the day and it was an unexpected pleasure. The next event is at Cambridge University Library and looks likely to be held over two days. I think there might one out West as well but more details as and when they arrive.

Thanks to the Oxford e-Research Centre for hosting us, Jenny Molloy from the Open Knowledge Open Science group, the Bodleian Libraries and the Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services for their help and time.

A storify of some of the tweets is here: https://storify.com/iaine/stacks-unbound

Arrangements for the day

The initial plan is to gather from 9.00 am at the Oxford e-Research Centre (7 Keble Road, Oxford) and plan / form groups until 9:30 or a little later. Then we can make stuff and discuss until about 4.00pm when the groups come back together to talk about what has built or begun during the day. I’m fairly sure that we’ll go to a pub afterwards. There are sandwich shops nearby so we’ll take a consensus approach for lunch on the day.

It really does not matter if the project is not completed within the make day, we encourage continuing these projects after the event.

Bodleian Chinese Studies data available at make day

The Bodleian’s Chinese Studies Librarian has generously offered us their Chinese catalogue for the Stacks Unbound hack day. The catalogue includes metadata of the Bodleian Chinese Collections, Chinese Special Collections as well as the Chinese holdings of the China Centre Library and the Sackler Art Library. The catalogue might offer some intriguing avenues and does include Chinese characters so might be a good technical challenge as well.

One idea mentioned is to enrich the catalogue (about 80MB in TXT format) with other content sources such as the Chinese Biographical Database which is free to download and offers an online XML API. Further enrichment might be possible with data from other free resources.

New data sets for the Stacks Unbound make day

Cambridge University Library have told us about three record sets that are available for use at the Oxford Stacks Unbound make day.

The sets are:

  • Enriched OCLC Worldcat records
  • Major vendors sets (including records from Research Libraries UK and the British Library)
  • What appears to be part of CUL’s own record set that show changes in mark up.

These data set are available for download from their data website (http://data.lib.cam.ac.uk/datasets.php) and a SPARQL endpoint is also available (http://data.lib.cam.ac.uk/endpoint.php).

Announcing Stacks Unbound

Stacks Unbound is a making day with library data, from catalogues to metadata.

Libraries are important resources for learning and culture. By metaphorically unbinding the stacks and coming together, we can explore what is possible. From linking WWI publications to compiling data on species to generating a timeline of pirate and cat publications, we hope to emulate and build on the success of previous events at RLUK and the British Library.

We aim to bring developers, librarians and researchers together to make and experiment with the resources that are available and new ones. You do not have to be a developer to join the event. We need people with ideas or problems to solve, stories and narratives to tell.

Here some possible themes to spark some ideas:

  •   Finding Open Access articles and journals.
  •   Linking data sets together
  •   Visualising the data

Here are some data sources to spark ideas. 

If you have data that we can use but cannot make it to the event, you can register the data set with us via the registration form. We hope to have other data sets and will post about these when they become available.

Although this event is in Oxford at the Oxford e-Research Centre , we hope that other libraries will be interested in either joining us in person or virtually, or holding similar events as well.

You can join even if you cannot make it to Oxford on Twitter. The hashtag is #stacksunbound

When Saturday, 22 November 9 – 5 pm

Where Oxford e-Research Centre

Registration form

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HexkRWkaGmkhn_VitziDwRLb9KctMpwcx4pAixJ7TEM/viewform