Presentation at the workshop "The Challenges of Publishing Finding Aids in a Digitally Joined-Up World" (The Hague, December 2014) about the use of controlled vocabularies to connect archival descriptions in digital environments. Diskussion about the results at the EHRI project.

1. The use of controlled and structured
vocabularies in a digitally joined-up world
CONNECTING
COLLECTIONS
03-12-2014

Kepa J. Rodriguez (Gottingen State and University Library)

Yael Gherman (Yad Vashem)

2. Outline
 What is a vocabulary?
 Interlinking collections
 Sharing vocabularies

3. What is a vocabulary?

4. Some questions...
 Do you use vocabularies in your institution?
 What kind of vocabularies?
 Who manages the vocabularies?
 Are there linked to other vocabularies?

5. Some types of vocabularies

Keyword lists: non structured list of lexical items.

Structured vocabularies as thesauri:

They give information about the structure of the
knowledge in a institution or project.
 Authority files:

Mostly named entities used as access points

Persons, coorporative bodies, places,
organizations, etc.

6. Interlinking data (1)

7. Interlinking data (2)

8. Interlinking data (3)

9. Interlinking data (4)

10. An example in EHRI (1)

11. An example in EHRI (2)

12. Sharing vocabularies
Requirements:

Vocabularies should be visible

Vocabularies should be understandable

Format should be machine readable
Reuse of shared vocabularies:

Give more precission to the definition

Enrich the vocabulary itself adding (new content, new
languages)

Use for cataloging

13. Strategy at the EHRI project (1)
 EHRI has a central vocabulary: the EHRI thesaurus
 Terms, places, personalities, etc.
 Function of the thesaurus: interlink the collections in
the EHRI portal
 EHRI didn't take in account the necessity of
agreements with the collection holders.

14. Vocabularies not interlinked

15. Strategy at the EHRI project (2)
 Experiments: addition of (validated) access points
before the import.
– NIOD: we linked terms used in the image
collection with thesaurus terms.
– ARA Book: we linked around 30% of terms to
the EHRI Thesaurus
• Access points to all selected fonds.
– Yad Vashem: work in progress for terms and
personalities.
• Good coverage.

16. Experiment
exactMatch
exactMatch
EHRI-terms/?term-
195
“collaboration”@en
EHRI-terms/ara-
terms/term-53
“collaboration”@en

17. Sharing vocabularies: alternative approach
Connect federated vocabularies

18. Benefits
Researchers:
– Browse holdings across institutional boundaries
– Find unknown relationships among records
Content holders:
– Enhance meaning and findability

19. In general
 Meaning should be transparent and easy to
understand
 Add scope notes, if possible with English translation
 Use standard formats: SKOS, RDF
 If the concept or term exists in other vocabularies,
add the link. That helps to understand the meaning

20. Examples of linkable vocabularies

21. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and
Genocide Studies (NL)
CEGES-SOMA Centre for Historical Research
and Documentation on War and Contemporary
Society (BE)
Jewish Museum in Prague (CZ)
Institute of Contemporary History Munich – Berlin
(DE)
YAD VASHEM The Holocaust Martyrs’ and
Heroes’ Remembrance Authority (IL)
The Wiener Library – Institute of Contemporary
History (UK)
Holocaust Memorial Center (HU)
HL-senteret Center for Studies of Holocaust
and Religious Minorities (NO)
NAF National Archives of Finland (FI)
The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute (PL)
King’s College London (UK)
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen – Göttingen
State and University Library (DE)
Athena RC/IMIS (GR)
DANS Data Archiving and Networked Services (NL)
Shoah Memorial, Museum, Center for Contemporary
Jewish Documentation (FR)
ITS International Tracing Service (DE)
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (DE)
Terezín Memorial (CZ)
Beit Theresienstadt (IL)
VWI Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for
Holocaust Studies (AT)
CONNECTING
KNOWLEDGE

22. CONNECTING
COLLECTIONS
The use of controlled and structured
vocabularies in a digitally joined-up world
03-12-2014