January 22, 2024

The Secret Life of UW Libraries Catalogers and Metadata Specialists

Student Spotlight: Zhuo Pan

You may be surprised to hear that before you can access a library resource when you need it, a lot of work must be done to get that resource into the UW Libraries catalog. A whole department of librarians, staff, and students are quietly working away behind the scenes to get new resources into the catalog and to find innovative ways to enhance the Libraries’ metadata. This series of blog posts will highlight our brilliant student employees and the work they do to make your tasks of searching, identifying, selecting, and obtaining library resources easier and more effective.  

Zhuo Pan came to the University of Washington iSchool’s MLIS program after earning a Bachelor’s in Library Science from Wuhan University. Given his prior study and experience, the UW Libraries’ Linked Data Team (an informal group focused on linked data projects) was thrilled to bring Zhuo on board as a student Library Data Specialist in February 2022. 

What is linked data? We’re glad you asked. You might be familiar with standard web technologies such as HTTP, which uses hypertext links to serve up web pages for human readers to interpret. Machines cannot make much sense of web pages or their often-complex relationships to one another when they are in document form. Linked data builds on standard web technologies such as HTTP in a way that makes the information on the internet automatically readable for computers as well as humans. It also interlinks data with other data on the web using languages called ontologies that express specific types of relationships, so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. You may also hear people refer to linked data as the Semantic Web.  

What is RDA? RDA is an international set of cataloging standards which the UW Libraries follows in describing library resources. RDA publishes a linked data ontology alongside its cataloging rules so that libraries, museums, and galleries may express their descriptions as linked data.

Libraries are very interested in linked data because it has the potential to connect our users with information outside our collections from all over the web, enriching the user experience and enabling researchers to access more information than ever before.

The Linked Data Team at the University of Washington Libraries has been pursuing a linked data implementation of Resource Description and Access (RDA), an international library resource description standard already in use by library catalogers across the world, for a number of years because it is a more granular (and we think, more useful) ontology than others used to express library data as linked data. The UW Libraries has been a leader in this work, which you can learn more about through the UW Libraries Semantic Web Blog.

Zhuo exceeded the Linked Data Team’s high expectations with his work ethic, productivity, self-motivation and strategic thinking during his work on several projects at the Libraries. Zhuo began contributing to the MARC21 to LRM/RDA/RDF Mapping and Transformation Project, supervised by Theo Gerontakos and managed by Crystal Yragui, at the start of his employment. His deep theoretical knowledge of the Resource Description & Access (RDA) rules and ontology made him a respected colleague on an international team of world-recognized experts. 

RDA is an international set of cataloging standards which the UW Libraries follows in describing library resources. RDA publishes a linked data ontology alongside its cataloging rules so that libraries, museums, and galleries may express their descriptions as linked data. 

…Currently, libraries around the world are preparing to move from the existing  non-linked-data format to linked data. 

Currently, libraries around the world are preparing to move from MARC21 (the record-based, non-linked-data format we are used to seeing when we search the UW Libraries for resources) to linked data. In order to do this, libraries need to transform their MARC21 data to linked data formats, and create editing environments for new resource descriptions to be recorded. Zhuo made significant contributions to discussions, ontology mapping work, and the transformation code accompanying the ontology mapping. Zhuo’s work on this project will aid the international RDA user community in transforming their legacy MARC21 data to the RDA linked data format. 

Zhuo’s MLIS Capstone project, Sinopia MAPs, worked toward the related goal of enabling the creation of new RDA metadata descriptions using RDA’s ontology through a set of templates. The direct creation of resource descriptions as linked data rather than as records which need to be converted to linked data using complex mappings and transformation processes avoids the losses of specificity that come along with transforming data from MARC. Supervised by Benjamin Riesenberg, Zhuo drafted a set of templates for describing print books, demonstrating a deep, professional-level knowledge of the RDA data model and numerous other sources of internationally-adopted documentation and instructions. He documented his template design well, and showed outstanding skill in the types of coding needed to get the job done. Templates for other types of resources will be created based on the print books templates Zhuo drafted, eventually allowing metadata professionals to describe all library resources in a similar way.

“My time as a student employee at UW Libraries gave me both a solid foundation and a forward-thinking approach that have served me well in launching my career in library tech services.” – Zhuo Pan

All of the work Zhuo has done on these two projects will help the University of Washington Libraries convert the existing catalog to linked data and change cataloging practices to linked data in the future. This will translate to high-quality linked data that guides users toward the information they need within the UW Libraries collections and across the Semantic Web.

Zhuo graduated with his MLIS in Spring 2023, and began his career as a Resource Description Resident Librarian at Duke University Libraries after a celebratory farewell lunch with the Linked Data Team. We hope to continue working with Zhuo on international library metadata projects, and are proud of his success.

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