An XML Example of CDWA-Lite
Over the past few months I’ve been developing and teaching an online course for the library technician program at Mohawk College. It’s called Introduction to Metadata and Meatadata Applications and this is the first time that this course has been offered.
One of the metadata schemes that we looked at was CDWA-Lite which is a schema based on the Categories for Describing Works of Art (CDWA), the conceptual framework for the terminology used in the scholarship on works of art.
I had some difficulty locating a good example to demonstrate the XML coding for this schema and in the end created my own from scratch. I thought I’d share this adding at least one more example for someone else to stumble upon if they happen to be looking at CDWA-Lite.
This example is based on the information for a Turner watercolour found on the CDWA website. Inlcuded here is an image of the XML file. If you’re interested in the “raw” XML file you can grab that here.
For more on CDWA-Lite see the documentation for the schema.
Bibliographic Framework Report Released
So the Library of Congress released Bibliographic Framework as a Web of Data: Linked Data Model and Supporting Services a couple of days ago. Haven’t had a chance to read this yet but look forward to doing so. The buzz is that there is some good analysis here.
“The Initiative aims to re-envision and, in the long run, implement a new bibliographic environment for libraries that makes “the network” central and makes interconnectedness commonplace … this document presents a high-level model for the library community for evaluation and discussion, but it is also important to consider this document within a much broader context, and one that looks well beyond the library community.”–Introduction
Wonderful Continuum Concert This Evening
The Continuum Contemporary Music season was off to a fine start this evening with some wonderful pieces by Butterfield, Smith and Dutch composer Martijn Voorvelt. There was a rather long cue when I arrived at the Music Gallery at a few minutes before concert time, which for a contemporary music concert struck me as a little unusual. And once inside I discovered a large crowd and few choices for a good seat in the pews.
The concert opened with Christopher Butterfield‘s Music for Klein and Beuys which I thoroughly enjoyed and was surprised to read was written in 1987. An interesting ensemble including bass recorder, melodica and banjitar with some lovely newspaper tearing and crumbling to punctuate sections of the piece.
Linda C. Smith‘s piece Brush Line provided a lovely instrumental texture that supported what I think was an intentionally understated mezzo-soprano. The result was a voice that was truly part of the ensemble rather than sitting atop an instrumental accompaniment.
The last two pieces were a “musico-dramatic study” by Martijn Voorvelt from The Netherlands. Actually quite an entertaining and theatrical pair of pieces which Jennifer Waring indicated are the beginnings of a larger composition focusing on the unfortunate death of Frederick the “liberal German crown prince” in 1888.
It was a great evening with fantastic performances by all and especially the tenor Cristopher Mayell and mezzo-soprano Marion Newman; although, I have to admit, I left with the words “random stabbing” running through my head and an uncomfortable urge to clear my throat.
End of Second Day at LVI 2012 – more pics
It’s over! It was a great conference and congratulations to John Joergensen and Núria Casellas for putting together a great collection of presentations for Track 5, Data Organization and Legal Informatics.
Clay Shirky delivered a great opening plenary this morning talking about crowdsourcing, openness and “cognitive surplus.” Time to stop watching TV and start working on shaping the web, at least that’s one conclusion to draw (Wikipedia=100 million hours of work; U.S. TV viewing=200 billion hours per year).
Clay Shirky delivering a great plenary.
Then it was Jerry Goldman and Matt Gruhn talking about the multimedia Oyez Project and some fascinating work on machine readable access to U.S. Supreme Court information. Broccoli was high on the word cloud for this session.
Jerry Goldman
Matt Gruhn
Had a chance to take a short walk around Ithaca at lunch and check out more of the gorge.
Hey, that’s me at the top of Catherine St.!
Gorgeous!
The gorge at Stewart St.
After lunch Track 5 started to bunch up a bit with two half hour programs; although some seemed like hour programs compressed into that half hour. Yoshiharu Matsuura and Amy Huey-Ling Shee talked about translation issues between Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China. Interesting to see the different interpretations and English translations of the same and similar ideograms.
In the second half hour Michael Curtotti shared his research on visualizing the law. I think visualization of data is an area that will become increasingly important especially as we start negotiating our way through linked data on the semantic web.
Michael Curtotti
The next double whammy began with a write in presentation with Susan Newell Hart comparing Lexis and Westlaw and their development of the digest and citator components of their platforms. Very interesting to hear about Lexis using machine algorithms to catch up with the legacy of human created digests created by Westlaw.
Susan Newell Hart
The second half of this hour featured Pompeau Casanovas presenting his research on crowdsourcing “relational law” and I was really disappointed that we didn’t have time to hear more about this very interesting area of research. He raised some great questions: how do you define knowledge when you can connect everything together; what is law today?; what is a legal document?
Pompeu Casanovas
The final pair of presentations began with Lee Hollaar and his statutory “time machine.” This was an interesting report on an older project and I would have liked to have had an opportunity to see this in action.
Lee Hollaar
Søren Nielsen and Rasmus Lohals shared their experience with optimizing Danish statutory law so that they had better exposure in general search engines on the web. Loved the “extreme search” option that they provided on their own site.
Søren Nielsen
Rasmus Lohals
Thanks for the hospitality Cornell Law School and Itahca. Enjoyed the conference!
Sunset over the Ithaca gorge.
P.S. Gotta get me a real camera …
Some Pics from the Law via the Internet Conference
So I’m down in Ithaca attending the Law via the Internet congference. It’s a beautiful little city surrounding Cornell University and nestled against Cayuga Lake. It being October the leaves are starting to change colour which provides some wonderful vistas.
I’m essentially following Track 5 which is focused on Data Organization and Legal Informatics. Here are some shots of the speakers I had an opportunity to hear today.
Richard Susskind delivering this morning’s opening plenary at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Mr. Susskind delivered a talk almost identical to the one he gave at AALL in Boston this past summer. Still good to hear it again. Although, as my colleague Louis Mirando noted, he did not mention his view that, “Law schools have always been on the cutting edge of tradition.” 
After the plenary we trooped over to Myron Taylor Hall crossing “the gorge” with this wonderful view from the bridge:
View from the bridge over “the gorge” at Cornell University.
Beautiful fall colours.
I then heard Anurag Acharya, the founding engineer for Google Scholar talk about how they are providing access to U.S. case law. Very interesting, but still wondering how they define “significance” without any reference to a classification structure.
Anurag Acharya talking about legal search and Google Scholar.
After lunch I heard Phillipe Grand’Maison and Daniel Poulin talk about statistical analysis of Supreme Court of Canada decisions and the idea of the “half-life” of a digital document.
Daniel Poulin discussing statistical perspective of SCC decisions.
I then enjoyed Philip Chung from AustLII talk about citation searching in a session provocatively titled, “Searching Without Search Terms.”
Philip Chung, one of the AustLII developers.
And the last session was delivered by Enrico Francesconi from the Institute of Theory and Techniques of Legal Information. A fascinating talk on the impact of semantic web technology on legal information.
Enrico Francesconi talking about legal information and the semantic web.
A great first day at LVI 2012. Looking forward to tomorrow!
Sophistication of Library Resource Description Structures
This is a provacitive statement by Ronald J. Murray writing with Barbara Tillett in their paper, “Cataloging Theory in Search of Graph Theory and Other Ivory Towers“:
“… library resource description structures — when teased out of their book and card and digital catalog implementations and treated as graphs — are arguably more sophisticated than those being explored in the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Library Linked Data initiative.”
Murray explores this idea in a series of presentation slides he’s posted on SlideShare.
Book Meme
Remembered this blog of mine the other day and finally sought it out to see if it’s still around. Surprisingly yes.
Reading through some of the old posts and came across this book meme and thought I’d try it out again.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
“Proper selection among the many books available was crucial because ‘if a scholar does not have the books required for his subject, he does not enjoy the privleges of a scholar.’”
Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know
Soundcloud
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to this space. Almost surprised it’s still here …
I’ve been exploring the Soundcloud a bit today. I’ve been following them on Twitter but haven’t had a chance to venture inside yet. Seems like a pretty good arangement. The server is situated in Berlin which is different from the usual U.S. based sites and therefore might attract a broader listener base.
The free account provides 2 hours of free time to host your music, DJ sets, work in progress, loops, and other sounds that you might want to share with the cloud. I’ve just now put up a few of my older tracks on Soundcloud; I’ve still got bits and pieces of things on Noisehead, MySpace, CD Baby but there are a couple of tracks here that I don’t think I’ve put up anywhere else.
The Jam, for example, is an interesting one that I haven’t listened to for quite a while. I remember recording it though. It’s an improvisatory exercise finding inspiration from within itself. Kind of an overlapping musical narrative that continuosly feeds off of each musical thread suggesting new directions as the piece proceeds. I like it. Hope you’ll give it a listen and maybe leave me a comment or two.
Lost in the Cloud – NYT Op-ed.
He makes a good point re: potential effect of the cloud on innovation:
“But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice orFirefox. … This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software.”
Lost in the Cloud
By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
Zittrain is the author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It and will be a keynote speaker at the AALL conference which I’ll be attending over the next few days in Washington, DC.
