The step change project will develop a web service to make available a Linked Data version of AIM25-UKAT, the most up to date version of the UK Archival Thesaurus, which also includes personal name, corporate name and place indexing. It will also build on the Open Metadata Pathway exemplar, which developed a workflow tool to enable archivists to add Linked Data to catalogue entries. These improvements will be integrated with the CALM cataloguing software product, tested by a leading regional record office and rolled out as an improvement in future software releases. It will also be integrated into Historypin, the historical referencing tool.
The main objective of the project are the creation of a practical, usable service to add Linked Data to archive catalogue material via the creation of an API and its application in a real world archival setting.
The main outputs will be:
- An RDFa version of UKAT available via an API
- Enhanced semantic markup workflow tool that can be integrated into other services
- Enhanced AIM25 website with examples of linking with other services from collection level desciptions
- Redesigned CALM and CALMView UI to enable archivists to create Linked Data, express in the front end and connect with relevant external services
- Exemplar of CALM improvements roadtested in Cumbria Archives Service with linking to relevant local sources and user testing
- Linking between catalogue entries in AIM25 and CALM with Historypin images
- External content such as maps and bibliographic records will be connected to archive catalogues to multiply possible research opportunities
- Final report and lessons learned
The project will deliver significant benefits to the HE Archives and wider archives sector. These will include the rejuvenation of UKAT as a useful and up-to-date subject thesaurus via the RDFa version of the index and the API. Step change also builds on the workflow tool, arguably the most important development to come out of the OMP project, which proved its worth in user testing by archive professionals. The tool allows catalogue records to be validated against external services and RDFa to be generated. It also permits enhancement of UKAT by trusted users via appropriate authentication.
These tools and lessons will be immediately applied to CALM, which is the most widely used archival software product in the UK with some 400 institutional customers, many of which are UK universities or research institutions. Archivists who use CALM will see an immediate benefit in an improved backend process to add Linked Data and index their entries, thus speeding up cataloguing and making new collections available to the public more quickly.
Users of such catalogues will also benefit by visibility to other relevant services selected by archivists in consultation with the users and user interest groups. Historypin users will see enhanced metadata assoicated with geo-located images pinned on their UK and world map, pointing users directly at the relevant parts of archive catalogues associated with those locations, thus improving accessibility to catalogues via a very popular website and app.
AIM25 will see significant improvements to enhance use of this important aggregation site for London HE and other archives, including improved linking and visability of associated websites and digital content including external authority records, maps and other content. Cataloguing processes will be streamlined in a similar way to the CALM work by allowing archivists to index their collection level descriptions more quickly and accurately by reference to the definitive UKAT thesaurus in Linked Data format.
Risk Analysis and Success Plan
Risk | Probability | Severity | Score | |
Difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff | 1 | 3 | 3 | Most staff are already employed by partners and this time will be bought out. The project will also distribute knowledge throughout the project to limit the effects if a staff member leaves. Project gaps will be filled by the use of agency staff or internal secondments and consideration will be given to outsourcing aspects of the technical work. |
A complete test bed and evaluation cannot be implemented within the time frame | 2 | 2 | 4 | Project management team will closely monitor progress of objectives and outputs. If necessary, with the agreement of the Programme Manager, some activities can be re-scoped to ensure an effective outputs are achieved. Active and regular communication with the archival community and third party service suppliers is recognised as of key importance and will be offered through regular briefings, news items and contribution to lists. |
Failure to meet project milestones | 2 | 3 | 6 | Produce project plan with clear objectives. Continuous project assessment and close communication between project manager, technical leads, and JISC programme manager to ensure targets are realistic, achievable and focus on project goals. |
CALM-AXIELL goes into receivership | 2 | 2 | 4 | Comparable work will be discussed with Adlib, the second largest supplier of archival cataloguing software in the UK. Failure of this approach will be followed by the development of an application for ICA ATOM. |
IPR
IPR in all reports and other documents produced by the project will be retained jointly by King’s College London and ULCC but made freely available on a non exclusive license as required/advised by JISC. All software and data created during the project will be made available to the community on an appropriate Creative Commons open licence.
Project Team Relationships and End User Engagement
The project manager is Geoff Browell, previously responsible for the Open Metadata Pathway exemplar and is Archives Services Manager at King's College London. He is project manager of AIM25, most recently responsible for delivering a major upgrade with the London Metropolitan Archives. Geoff has been responsible for other JISC, Wellcome Trust and similarly funded projects involving cataloguing, digitisation, digital asset management and app development.
The chief technical developer is Rory McNicholl of the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), where he has worked for some ten years. He developed cataloguing and querying tools for NDAD, and has made substantial contributions to JISC projects including SNEEP, CLASM, MERLIN, PICT qand the SOAS Furer-Hamimendorf digital Collections. He works extensively with complex bibliographic and semantic metadata and was lead developer in the OMP project in 2011.
Projected Timeline, Workplan & Overall Project Methodology
Workpackage 1: Project management, planning and recruitment
Creation of the team through secondment; preparation of the detailed project plan; establishment of the project board; creation & maintainenance the project website and blog; communications with the professional community and third party suppliers; focus group evaluation; and budget management.
Workpackage 2: UKAT Service Development
This package will develop UKAT as a web service for AIM25, CALM, Historypin and the archive and MLA sector as a whole. ULCC will develop a set of services for accessing (and manipulating) the UKAT content and make them available via a RESTful web API and make them available as a nationally supported service. The API will concentrate on the 'Read' element of the CRUD operations. There will be mechanisms for direct access to records and navigation across the thesaurus structure based on the current SKOS schema (http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/). The developed API will handle searching of the content, based both on single strings and blocks of text. Responses to read operations will constitute semantically expressed data and will be available as RDF/XML or JSON. The ability to update, create and delete records via the API will also be added. The AIM25 workflow prototype developed in the course of the JISC-funded Open Metadata Pathway will be used to demonstrate the client-side of this functionality.
Workpackage 3: Development of AIM25 workflow tool
The workpackage will develop the functionality of the workflow tool and roll it out for all AIM25 partners. It will include drag and drop functionality for archivists to select one or multiple RDF-marked terms and drag them into their chosen record(s); a bulk uploader for multiple records sharing similar metadata (which will speed up the workflow still further); to further refine and deploy front end features that display sematic information; and a permission/authentication tool to validate brand new index terms and ensure that they meet National Council on Archives (NCA) rules for the construction of names. ULCC developed a prototype tool to do this reformating of names as part of the OMP. Two professional training sessions will be held at King's College for AIM25 archivists to provide instruction on the value of Linked Data and how to use the new AIM25 workflow tool.
Workpackage 4: Implementing UKAT tool in CALM and CALMView
This package will take the AIM25-UKAT API and OMP/AIM25 tools (packages 2, 3) and implement them in CALM and CALMView (the web front end). It will adapt the CALM UI and CALMView and roll-out this improvement across all CALM instances with successive upgrades. It will draw on lessons from the SALDA project which investigated Linked Data & CALM (http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/salda/2011/02/). The development work will be carried out by CALM with some assistance from ULCC and will incorporate the AIM25-style semantic annotation tool in the UI; permit validation, analysis and selection of metadata against AIM25-UKAT; and express links with semantic services in the front end product. For CALMView, work will embed the semantic properties of stored terms into an archival record's web view using RDFa and/or creation of a SPARQL endpoint for records; and the integration of FLISM-like plugins to link record views to related services (FLISM was developed by ULCC to express semantic metadata, see http://code.google.com/p/flism/). This work will enable the public to click on link on appropriate semantic links embedded in catalogue search returns. The work will draw on tools used in the MERLIN project undertaken by UCL and ULCC that provided an interface to the UNESCO thesaurus in the context of the HILT project.
Workpackage 5: In-service implementation of the CALM upgrade including AIM25-UKAT in Cumbria Archive Service
Th is package will develop, refine, implement and test the changes to the CALM UI and CALMView front end in a leading CALM institution and provide a demonstrator for further review. Cumbria Archive Service will provide detailed input based on real use of CALM by experienced cataloguers, will process as RDF a major sub-section of records (estate, family and local records) comprising 100,000 records, and add sematic markup to a subset of 2,000 of these record entries using the new mark-up tool. The records will then be linked to a number of existing or proposed services such as Wikipedia and Historypin and published live on the CAS catalogue website as an exemplar.
CAS will also lead testing of the new UI and front-end at focus groups of the 14-institition North West CALM User Group including Greater Manchester County Record Office, Liverpool Record Office and Lancashire Record Office; at a focus group of the Friends of Cumbria Archives , a volunteer forum established in 1991 to support the work of CAS. Representatives of the Cumbria County History Trust (Victoria County History – VCH - for Cumbria) will also be consulted in order to determine how VCH data might link semantically with CAS local data. These meets and discussions will inform a final customisation, visual improvement and snagging of the new CALM product. The CAS archivist will also play a key advocacy role throughout, attending key meetings, reporting back to the national CALM User Group will presenting findings at the roadmap consultation.
Workpackage 6: Integration of AIM25-UKAT API with Historypin
This will integrate the AIM25-UKAT API with Historypin to enable links to catalogues containing places that have been marked up sematically via the API. An additional links tab will be added by the Historypin developers to sit alongside descriptions visible in the Historypin map interface to point users back to specific catalogue descriptions. Archive institutions can already bulk upload visual content to Historypin but the AIM25-UKAT API will facilitate automated linking and improve discovery. This work will provide a building block for new crowdsourcing tools currently being developed by Historypin(drawing on projects such as JISC Old Weather (http://www.oldweather.org/) to connect archive, library and museum resources with communities of users to enable users to markup and share content and stories about places.
Workpackage 7: Roadmap consultation
This workpackage is a roadmap consultation, scheduled for May/June 2012, in London which will bring together archive and broader MLA sector practitioners including AIM25 members, CALM users, Historypin, MIMAS, JISC's Discovery, IHR Digital, The National Archives , Vision of Britain, UKAD members and others; representatives of semantic search engines such as Open Calais; and potential content service providers such as Victoria County History and British History Online. It will provide an opportunity to explore and prioritise the creation of suitable services that can be connected by the tools developed in Step change and similar projects. Representation will be sought from InforM25, which has expressed an interest in sharing bibliographic data on books in London, and with which AIM25 already has links; and with the museum sector including Royal Institution Spectrum-compliant museum collections, to examine the value of mixing archival, museum and bibliographc data.
Workpackage 8: Dissemination
This package will run throughout the course of the project and comprise two AIM25 partner evaluation sessions; focus groups for Friends of Cumbria Archives and the North West CALM User Group; papers to the UK Archives Discovery Network 2012 spring conference; the Higher Education Archivists Group, ARA and M25 Library Consortium meetings. The main dissemination event will be the roadmap meeting in May/June 2012. Key staff will attend JISC programme meetings as required and the project manager will maintain a blog and news on public lists.
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Budget
