data management – commonplace.net

Infrastructure for heritage institutions

July 11, 2019January 11, 2020 Lukas KosterData, Infrastructure, Library

During my vacation I saw this tweet by LIBER about topics to address, as suggested by the participants of the LIBER 2019 conference in Dublin: It shows a word cloud (yes, a word cloud) containing a large number of terms. I list the ones I can read without zooming in (so the most suggested ones, I guess), more or less grouped thematically: Open scienceOpen dataOpen accessLicensingCopyrightsLinked open dataOpen educationCitizen science Scholarly communicationDigital humanities/DHDigital scholarshipResearch assessmentResearch […]

Maps, dictionaries and guidebooks

August 3, 2015February 3, 2020 Lukas KosterData

Interoperability in heterogeneous library data landscapes Libraries have to deal with a highly opaque landscape of heterogeneous data sources, data types, data formats, data flows, data transformations and data redundancies, which I have earlier characterized as a “data maze”. The level and magnitude of this opacity and heterogeneity varies with the amount of content types and the number of services that the library is responsible for. Academic and national libraries are possibly dealing with more […]

Standard deviations in data modeling, mapping and manipulation

June 16, 2015February 3, 2020 Lukas KosterData

Or: Anything goes. What are we thinking? An impression of ELAG 2015 This year’s ELAG conference in Stockholm was one of many questions. Not only the usual questions following each presentation (always elicited in the form of yet another question: “Any questions?”). But also philosophical ones (Why? What?). And practical ones (What time? Where? How? How much?). And there were some answers too, fortunately. This is my rather personal impression of the event. For a […]

Analysing library data flows for efficient innovation

November 27, 2014February 14, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

In my work at the Library of the University of Amsterdam I am currently taking a step forward by actually taking a step back from a number of forefront activities in discovery, linked open data and integrated research information towards a more hidden, but also more fundamental enterprise in the area of data infrastructure and information architecture. All for a good cause, for in the end a good data infrastructure is essential for delivering high […]

Looking for data tricks in Libraryland

September 5, 2014January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

IFLA 2014 Annual World Library and Information Congress Lyon – Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge After attending the IFLA 2014 Library Linked Data Satellite Meeting in Paris I travelled to Lyon for the first three days (August 17-19) of the IFLA 2014 Annual World Library and Information Congress. This year’s theme “Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge” was named after the confluence or convergence of the rivers Rhône and Saône where the city of […]

Beyond The Library

March 22, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

The BeyondThePDF2 conference, organised by FORCE11, was held in Amsterdam, March 19-20. From the website: “…we aim to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology”. Basically the conference participants discussed new models of content creation, content dissemination, content consumption, funding and research evaluation.Because I work for an academic library in Amsterdam, dealing with online scholarly information systems and currently trying to connect traditional library information to related […]

(Discover AND deliver) OR else

January 7, 2013February 14, 2020 Lukas KosterData

The future of the academic library as a data services hub Is there a future for libraries, or more specifically: is there a future for academic libraries? This has been the topic of lots of articles, blog posts, books and conferences. See for instance Aaron Tay’s recent post about his favourite “future of libraries” articles. But the question needs to be addressed over and over again, because libraries, and particularly academic libraries, continue to persevere […]