Indiana U’s Variations project gets money
Hey. How’s it going? I was on vacation for a while there, then taking a bit of a break while I got caught up on things at work, so I have a few things in the backlog here. Hope you had a good summer. (Or winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere.) I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, in case you were wondering. Look for some news about a revived project soon.
Jenn Riley sent out this announcement late last week. Congratulations to them on getting funding for this project! If they do what they want to do, we’ll all benefit.
Indiana University is pleased to announce funding for a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a project entitled “Variations as a Testbed for the FRBR Conceptual Model” <http://www.imls.gov/news/2008/091008a_list.shtm#IN>. This project will build on Indiana University’s expertise in digital music libraries and the well-known Variations digital music library system < http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/variations3/index.html>, and provide a concrete testbed for the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model. This project is focused on testing FRBR in a real-world environment, and on providing data, code, and system design specifications that can be re-used by others interested in FRBR.
These are our primary planned project activities:
- Convert the production Variations system to use a FRBR-compliant data model
- Adjust our existing algorithm for use of MARC records to conform to the FRBR-compliant data model.
- Load FRBR Group 1, 2, and possibly 3 records for all score and recording holdings in the IU William and Gayle Cook Music Library (approximately 80,000 bibliographic records for audio recordings and 105,000 records for scores) into the redesigned system.
- Make FRBRized records available for community use via OAI-PMH, SRU, and batch download.
- Design and implement a new, openly-accessible search interface for discovering FRBRized data
- Design and implement a new cataloging system for FRBRized data that takes advantage of the distinction between the FRBR entities yet supports efficient data entry.
- Perform usability testing on the new end-user and cataloger interfaces to evaluate their effectiveness.
Our project expects to have the following concrete work products:
- A published FRBRization algorithm that operates on multi-Work Manifestations, and
evaluation of its effectiveness- A formal data model for FRBR, if none is available before our project begins
- FRBRized data made available to the community for further testing and analysis
- An openly-accessible system for searching FRBRized music data for community testing and analysis
- Usability evaluations of FRBR-based end-user discovery and cataloging systems
- Figures on the costs of creating FRBRized bibliographic data by both automated and
manual means- Source code for the Variations FRBR-based discovery system.
The three-year project will begin October 1, 2008. We look forward to starting work on this project, and sharing our progress widely.