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Sarah Weeks, profile picture
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OMG! My metadata is as fresh as the Backstreet Boys: How Google Refine can update, clean up and link your metadata to the wider world

The presentation discusses using Google Refine to clean and link metadata, specifically in the context of matching books with Nordic American publishers. By employing various data-cleaning methods and clustering techniques, significant reductions in unique values for cities and publishers were achieved, which enhanced the identification of potential candidates for special collections. Additionally, the presentation highlights the integration of linked data from Freebase and SPARQL endpoints to further enrich metadata management.

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OMG! MY METADATA IS AS FRESH AS THE BACKSTREET BOYS: HOW GOOGLE REFINE CAN UPDATE, CLEAN UP AND LINK YOUR METADATA TO THE WIDER WORLD SARAH BETH WEEKS LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2013 WEEKSS@STOLAF.EDU @RASCALWHALE
SAMPLE PROJECT: NORDIC AMERICAN IMPRINTS Situation: Wanted to match publishers of our books against a list of important Nordic American Publishers (compiled by Penny Huf fman) to find materials for our special collections. Problem: Hard to compare when publication info is not controlled:
ANSWER: GOOGLE REFINE! Google Refine can “match and merge” messy data filled with: Random, leading or trailing spaces stray punctuation typos odd capitalization  and more!
CREATE YOUR PROJECT USING ANY SPREADSHEET
USE “COMMON TRANSFORMS” TO FIX “WHITESPACE” PROBLEMS IN A SINGLE CLICK
3. CLEAN UP STRAY CHARACTERS ([].?:) USING “TRANSFORM” AND REGULAR EXPRESSIONS (OR JUST USE EXCEL FIND AND REPLACE FOR THIS)
4. REPEAT COMMON TRANSFORMS
5. CLUSTER AND EDIT
(THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS)
FUNCTION 1: FINGERPRINT (MOST RELIABLE)
NGRAM METHOD (STILL RELIABLE: MORE MATCHES BUT LESS RELIABILIT Y AS YOU DECREASE NGRAM SIZE)
PHONETIC MATCHING (ESPECIALLY USEFUL WHEN DEALING WITH TRANSLATED TEXT)
(MORE FALSE MATCHES TO WATCH FOR WITH PHONETIC FUNCTIONS)
NEAREST NEIGHBOR (PPM) MATCHING (SLOWER AND MORE FALSE MATCHES BUT CATCHES WHAT OTHER METHODS MISS)
(SET RADIUS HIGHER, BLOCK CHARACTERS LOWER TO GENERATE MORE MATCHES)
AFTER USING OTHER METHODS, RUN THROUGH FINGERPRINT AND NGRAM AGAIN
BE AWARE THAT THINGS THAT WEREN’T CLUSTERED WON’T HAVE BEEN FIXED
6. USE THE TEXT FACET TO SEE ALL UNIQUE VALUES
YOU CAN SCROLL THROUGH THE LIST TO SPOT CHECK FOR PROBLEMS
CLICK EDIT TO T YPE NEW TEXT FOR ALL CELLS WITH THIS VALUE
OTHER CLEAN-UP WE DID: PUBLISHERS
OTHER CLEAN-UP WE DID: GIFT NOTES
ALSO WORKS FOR NUMBERS/DATES
END RESULT?  Using Google Refine we were able to reduce the 3230 unique values for city (260|a) to just 1153. For publishers (260|b) we went from 11342 unique names for publishers to approximately 6500.  This project helped to identify over 2,000 potential candidates for our Nordic American Imprints collection. (These are still being evaluated).  The controlled publishers, cities of publications and dates will be added to a local 9xx field for faceting in our future special collections discover tool. Users will be able to browse our Nordic American Imprints collection by publisher, city or state.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!! LINKED DATA!!!
FREEBASE IS THE DEFAULT SERVICE (WIKIPEDIA -ESQUE DATA OWNED BY GOOGLE)
CHOOSE THE RIGHT “T YPE” AND MOST CELLS WILL BE AUTO-MATCHED
FOR THE REST CLICK THE OPTIONS TO SEE WHAT EACH REPRESENTS  Then click “Match All Identical Cells” (or double checkmarks) to link all cells with this text to this Freebase topic
OR “SEARCH FOR MATCH” TO BRING UP AN AUTO-FILL LIST TO CHOOSE FROM
EVEN COOLER: NOW YOU CAN BRING DATA IN FROM FREEBASE!
CHOOSE WHAT INFO YOU WANT TO ADD
THIS NEW DATA IS NOW ADDED TO YOUR SPREADSHEET
TO SEE WHAT COLUMNS (DATA) YOU CAN ADD FROM FREEBASE: Browse the properties at: http://schemas.freebaseapps.com /
MATCH LOCAL SUBJECT HEADING TO LC (FREEYOURMETADATA.ORG)
SPARQL ENDPOINTS  Install the RDF Extension for Google Refine http://refine.deri.ie/  SPARQL Endpoints  http://labs.mondeca.com/sparqlEndpointsStatus/index.html  CKAN Data Hub: http://datahub.io/dataset/
ADD SPARQL-BASED RECONCILIATION SERVICE
THANK YOU! Questions? Link to a public version of this presentation at my (personal) blog: gardenandalibrary.blogspot.com I’m also happy to take questions by e- mail weekss@stolaf.edu