Cornell Project Proposal

Cornell University Library (CUL) proposes to undertake work in the following two areas: Community development of a library ontology extension for the rare materials community and original metadata creation for noncommercial LPs from the Afrika Bambaataa collection. First, working with the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC), Princeton University and Columbia University, CUL plans to define an extension ontology for the description of rare materials. The data particularly relevant to rare materials often pertain to the instance and item level; however, item level data (e.g. provenance, binding) are not well defined by current library linked data models. And second, CUL proposes to perform original metadata creation for approximately 1,000 noncommercial LPs in the Afrika Bambaataa collection natively in RDF. This collection forms part of Cornell’s extensive archive devoted to this founding figure of Hip Hop culture, which is in turn part of Cornell’s larger Hip Hop Collection. This collection supports a growing body of international scholars and educators who study Hip Hop not only for its global influence on popular music, art and style, but also for its role in articulating social and political issues. As such, it offers a promising testbed for exploring the use of linked data techniques to extend the reach of descriptive metadata. Metadata creation can begin making use of BIBFRAME as it is articulated now and incorporate the music ontology refinements that are parts of Stanford’s projects as they become available.