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Metadata are fundamental in establishing a digital library and museum while domain communities describe, interpret and manage different digital objects. Although many metadata formats and sets have been developed, it is difficult to choose an appropriate format and conversion is problematical, especially for the Chinese materials. This paper is a progress report from the Metadata Taskforce Group designing Chinese metadata for the digital library and museum project (DLMP) at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The group’s top priority is to construct goals, principles and procedures while designing the metadata format for Chinese contents. Not only does the Metadata Taskforce Group present the analysis of content attributes of Formosan Plain indigenous people, but also several marked achievements and findings are suggested, such as the metadata record structure and criteria of selecting and evaluating the current metadata formats.

In this study, the distinctive functional features of linked data (LD) catalogues were investigated to contrast with existing online public access catalogues (OPACs) and discovery systems using a checklist approach. The checklist was derived from a literature review and is composed of 10 items as follows: self-descriptive and dynamic content for resource description, linkage to external LD sources and online services, aggregation of knowledge contexts into knowledge graphs (KGs), URI-based link discovery, representation and query of LD relationships, URI-based serendipitous discovery, keyword recommendation, faceted limitation and browsing, visualization and openness of data.

Ten functional features derived from the literature were checked against existing LD catalogues offered by libraries, archives and museums (LAMs). The LD catalogues were regarded as qualified subjects if they offered functional features that were distinct from current OPACs and discovery systems through URI-based enrichment and aggregation from various LD sources. In addition to individual organizations, LD union catalogues were also included. However, LD hubs, such as ISNI, OCLC WorldCat Entities, VIAF and Wikidata, were excluded. In total, six LD catalogues from LAMs were selected as subjects for examination.

First, LD catalogues provide similar KG information through URI combination, and KGs also facilitate information serendipity, including social-document, intellectual, conceptual, spatial and temporal contexts and networks of corporate bodies, persons and families (CPFs). Second, LD catalogues have transformed the “seek first and browse later” paradigm into a “seek or browse” paradigm by refreshing the browsing function of traditional card catalogues with preview and new options to facilitate LD identification and discovery. Third, LD catalogues have refined keyword recommendation with the addition of the following fields: person’s title, CPF relationships, entity type and LD source. Lastly, a virtual union LD catalogue is offered.

The proposed checklist revealed the unique/improved functional features of LD catalogues, allowing further investigation and comparison. More cases from the fields of medicine, engineering science and so on will be required to make revisions to fine-tune the proposed checklist approach.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to propose a checklist of functional features for LD catalogues and examine what the results and features of LD catalogues have achieved and are supported by from ontologies across LAMs. The findings suggest that LD provides a viable alternative to catalogues. The proposed checklist and results pave the way for the future development of LD catalogues and next-generation catalogues and also provide a basis for the future study of LD catalogues from other fields to refine the proposed checklist.

Since Gutenberg invented printing in the fifteenth century, the book has become one of the most important information carriers for knowledge distribution, academic research, cultural heritage, and preservation. With advancements in technology both of electronic publishing and universal distribution and access on the Internet, the electronic book is supposed to become another revolution for information dissemination. This paper examines electronic books by giving a review of their historical development, definition and scope, characteristics and constraints, typology, related issues for library services, and user preferences. Consequently, this paper finds that electronic books only bring several evolutionary changes to the current operations of publishing and distribution in comparison with traditional books. The electronic book is just as much a consequence of the application of innovative information technologies as Gutenberg’s were for paper books. A revolutionary change is still required for the electronic book to become ubiquitous.

This paper seeks to adopt FRBRoo as an ontological approach to integrate heterogeneous metadata, and transform human-understandable format into machine-understandable format for semantic query.

Two cases of use with museum artefacts and literary works were exploited to illustrate how FRBRoo can be used to re-contextualize the semantics of elements and the semantic relationships embedded in those elements. The shared ontology was then RDFized and examples were explored to examine the feasibility of the proposed approach.

FRBRoo can play a role as inter lingua aligning museum and library metadata to achieve heterogeneous metadata integration and semantic query without changing either of the original approaches to fit the other.

Exploration of more diverse use cases is required to further align the different approaches of museums and libraries using FRBRoo and make revisions.

Solid evidence is provided for the use of FRBRoo in heterogeneous metadata integration and semantic query.

This is the first study to elaborate how FRBRoo can play a role as a shared ontology to integrate the heterogeneous metadata generated by museums and libraries. This paper also shows how the proposed approach is distinct from the Dublin Core format crosswalk in re-contextualizing semantic meanings and their relationships, and further provides four new sub-types for mapping description language.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the behaviour preferences and patterns of the organisation of information by taggers, including usage of tags, tag categories and implicit patterns embedded in social tags.

The sample was 4,390 social tags (1,777 unique) from 1,661 articles published in 16 library and information science journals selected from CiteULike between February and March 2011. Using application profiles, a tag category model served as a framework to develop two sets of hybrid tag categories for analysing the distribution of tag categories and their implicit patterns.

The frequency of tag categories was consistent with that of individual tags and obeyed a power law distribution. In total, six implicit patterns embedded in tags – syntactical, semantic, mnemonic, genre, contextual hybrid relations and split term – were discovered.

Although this study focused solely on investigating taggers' behaviour preferences and patterns, the results of this study may shed light on tagging practice, query formulation and construction of controlled vocabularies.

A set of hybrid tag categories consisting of title, function, content and topic‐related categories is proposed to delineate the distribution of social tags and taggers' behaviour preferences, and implicit patterns embedded in tags are generalised. These patterns may be useful for tagging practice, query formulation and construction of controlled vocabularies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a Resource Description Framework (RDF)-based approach to transform metadata crosswalking from equivalent lexical element mapping into semantic mapping with various contextual relationships. RDF is used as a crosswalk model to represent the contextual relationships implicitly embedded between described objects and their elements, including semantic, hierarchical, granular, syntactic and multiple object relationships to achieve semantic metadata interoperability at the data element level.

This paper uses RDF to translate metadata elements and their relationships into semantic expressions, and also as a data model to define the syntax for element mapping. The feasibility of the proposed approach for semantic metadata crosswalking is examined based on two use cases – the Archives of Navy Ships Project and the Digital Artifacts Project of National Palace Museum in Taipei – both from the Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program.

As the model developed is based on RDF-based expressions, unsolved issues related to crosswalking, such as sets of shared terms, and contextual relationships embedded between described objects and their metadata elements could be manifested into a semantic representation. Corresponding element mapping and mapping rules can be specified without ambiguity to achieve semantic metadata interoperability.

Five steps were developed to clarify the details of the RDF-based crosswalk. The RDF-based expressions can also serve as a basis from which to develop linked data and Semantic Web applications. More use cases including biodiversity artifacts of natural history museums and literary works of libraries, and conditions, constraints and cardinality of metadata data elements will be required to make revisions to fine tune the proposed RDF-based metadata crosswalk.

In addition to reviving contextual relationships embedded between described objects and their metadata elements, nine types of mapping rules were developed to achieve a semantic metadata crosswalk which will facilitate the design of related mapping software. Furthermore, the proposed approach complements existing crosswalking documents provided by authoritative organizations, and enriches mapping language developed by the CIDOC community.

It is a tradition in libraries to offer scholarly materials for supporting research and education. In the digital age, it becomes both a challenging issue and an opportunity for libraries to provide electronic resources ofscholarly materials in networked environments. Owing to slow network traffic speed and traffic jams resulting from connection between the Internet and the Taiwan Academic Network, Academia Sinica has introduced a great number of electronic databases to its end users by applying mirroring technology. Academia Sinica also cooperates with other organisations and consortia in Taiwan to set up a new resource sharing paradigm for libraries. This case has so far proven to be a workable and practical solution with consortia’s support and coordination. Consequently the information providers and agents also get the expected profit under reasonable, affordable, and profitable principles.

In 1998, the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model which is composed of four entities (work, expression, manifestation and item) and their associative relationships (primary, responsibility and subject), was proposed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The FRBR model can be deployed as a logical framework for proceeding metadata analysis and developing metadata format. This paper presents a case study of the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taipei to examine the feasibility of the FRBR model. Based on the examination of case study at the NPM, the FRBR model is proven to be a useful and fundamental framework for metadata analysis and implementation. Findings show that the FRBR model is helpful in identifying proper metadata elements organization and their distribution over the FRBR entities. The model is more suitable for media‐centric and association‐rich contents. However, in order to refine the FRBR model as a common framework for metadata, it would also require supportive mechanisms for management responsibility relationships for the workflow consideration and refine the distinction between work and expression entity.