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Infrastructure for heritage institutions – ARK PID’s

November 3, 2020November 11, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Infrastructure, Library

In the Digital Infrastructure program at the Library of the University of Amsterdam we have reached a first milestone. In my previous post in the Infrastructure for heritage institutions series, “Change of course“, I mentioned the coming implementation of ARK persistent identifiers for our collection objects. Since November 3, 2020, ARK PID’s are available for our university library Alma catalogue through the Primo user interface. Implementation of ARK PID’s for the other collection description systems […]

Infrastructure for heritage institutions – change of course

June 23, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Infrastructure, Library

In July 2019 I published the first post about our planning to realise a “coherent and future proof digital infrastructure” for the Library of the University of Amsterdam. In February I reported on the first results. As frequently happens, since then the conditions have changed, and naturally we had to adapt the direction we are following to achieve our goals. In other words: a change of course, of course. Projects I will leave aside the […]

Infrastructure for heritage institutions – first results

February 24, 2020February 25, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Infrastructure, Library

In July 2019 I published the post Infrastructure for heritage institutions in which I described our planning to realise a “coherent and future proof digital infrastructure” for the Library of the University of Amsterdam. Time to look back: how far have we come? And time to look forward: what’s in store for the near future? Ongoing activities I mentioned three “currently ongoing activities”: Monitoring and advising on infrastructural aspects of new projects Maintaining a structured dynamic overview […]

Infrastructure for heritage institutions

July 11, 2019January 11, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Infrastructure, Library

During my vacation I saw this tweet by LIBER about topics to address, as suggested by the participants of the LIBER 2019 conference in Dublin: It shows a word cloud (yes, a word cloud) containing a large number of terms. I list the ones I can read without zooming in (so the most suggested ones, I guess), more or less grouped thematically: Open scienceOpen dataOpen accessLicensingCopyrightsLinked open dataOpen educationCitizen science Scholarly communicationDigital humanities/DHDigital scholarshipResearch assessmentResearch […]

Ten years linked open data

June 4, 2016February 13, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Library

This post is the English translation of my original article in Dutch, published in META (2016-3), the Flemish journal for information professionals. Ten years after the term “linked data” was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee it appears to be time to take stock of the impact of linked data for libraries and other heritage institutions in the past and in the future. I will do this from a personal historical perspective, as a library technology professional, […]

Maps, dictionaries and guidebooks

August 3, 2015February 3, 2020 Lukas KosterData

Interoperability in heterogeneous library data landscapes Libraries have to deal with a highly opaque landscape of heterogeneous data sources, data types, data formats, data flows, data transformations and data redundancies, which I have earlier characterized as a “data maze”. The level and magnitude of this opacity and heterogeneity varies with the amount of content types and the number of services that the library is responsible for. Academic and national libraries are possibly dealing with more […]

Standard deviations in data modeling, mapping and manipulation

June 16, 2015February 3, 2020 Lukas KosterData

Or: Anything goes. What are we thinking? An impression of ELAG 2015 This year’s ELAG conference in Stockholm was one of many questions. Not only the usual questions following each presentation (always elicited in the form of yet another question: “Any questions?”). But also philosophical ones (Why? What?). And practical ones (What time? Where? How? How much?). And there were some answers too, fortunately. This is my rather personal impression of the event. For a […]

Analysing library data flows for efficient innovation

November 27, 2014February 14, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

In my work at the Library of the University of Amsterdam I am currently taking a step forward by actually taking a step back from a number of forefront activities in discovery, linked open data and integrated research information towards a more hidden, but also more fundamental enterprise in the area of data infrastructure and information architecture. All for a good cause, for in the end a good data infrastructure is essential for delivering high […]

Looking for data tricks in Libraryland

September 5, 2014January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

IFLA 2014 Annual World Library and Information Congress Lyon – Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge After attending the IFLA 2014 Library Linked Data Satellite Meeting in Paris I travelled to Lyon for the first three days (August 17-19) of the IFLA 2014 Annual World Library and Information Congress. This year’s theme “Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge” was named after the confluence or convergence of the rivers Rhône and Saône where the city of […]

Library Linked Data Happening

August 26, 2014January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

On August 14 the IFLA 2014 Satellite Meeting ‘Linked Data in Libraries: Let’s make it happen!’ took place at the National Library of France in Paris. Rurik Greenall (who also wrote a very readable conference report) and I had the opportunity to present our paper ‘An unbroken chain: approaches to implementing Linked Open Data in libraries; comparing local, open-source, collaborative and commercial systems’. In this paper we do not go into reasons for libraries to […]