Structured Metadata: Connecting Material Objects in the Digital Sphere

1:30-3:30pm

Why do you want to do this?

DH is

time-consuming & tedious

We may not share the same motivations

"Why" shapes "how"

It has to matter* to you

Metadata!

VRA Core

VRA Core

Linked open data

Связанные данные

Current landscape of tools

Omeka "Classic": Exhibits with images & metadata

Omeka S:

Don't Try This At Home

Tropy: So you're going to an archive...

Are we talking about images or metadata?

What does it look like to work with images directly?

Joys of machine learning

A workflow

Schedule

• Install Tropy
• Generate creative questions 
• Gather images 
• Describe images
• Export to Omeka S

Installation

I Have images

If you already have images related to a current research project, please use them! For you, this will be time to assess how Tropy could help you to organize and describe your research materials.

Sorry, no images here

No problem.  The next few slides will help you.  

Finding Images

What about these images could be useful as evidence?

What information is visible in the image?

What do you know about the image from context, expertise or interpretation?

• Add tags
• Take notes
• Add annotations

annotation

Description as a research task

• Identify research-question-specific features
• Situate item within a set of project images
• First rough articulation of feature names and attributes
• Placeholders for ideas in formation and offshoots
• ...more?

Pedagogy of digitization 

• Make explicit how and what students see in images
• Data vs. metadata
• Choice of descriptive terminology
• Use of visual sources as evidence
• ...more?

Tropy

Labels 

Annotations 

Notes

Computer Vision

Image categorization 

Object detection 

Image captioning

Exporting to Omeka 

Hosting pros & cons

- Miriam Posner, "Money and Time", March 14, 2016

If you are a librarian...

If you are faculty...

If you're a grad student...

If you're not the PI...