| CARVIEW |
I work as the Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist (explained) at the Penn State University Libraries, where I hold the faculty rank of Associate Librarian. My role spans traditional and emerging technologies, with a focus on the Libraries’ catalog and discovery. I am currently leading a library systems migration project.
My research agenda has long been driven by concern for the working conditions of colleagues. Sometimes this concern rises to the surface of the research, such as with the Collective Responsibility Forum; other times it directly motivates it, as in interviews with library system maintainers or the essay “Repository Ouroboros”; and even when it is not at the forefront, concern for labor and morale often motivates the underlying question, such as my survey on rates of faculty self-deposit into institutional repositories. Even my creation of EADiva.com, a user-friendly version of the EAD tag library, was driven by a concern that my fellow library school students pass their metadata classes without needing to be technical experts and be able to use EAD at their internships and first jobs.
I am currently writing up my sabbatical research on the longer-term impacts of library systems migration, particularly staff who use these systems daily. I’ve spoken about this as a keynoter at VALA 2024 and Code4Lib 2025. I blog periodically about library topics from reflections on library data and systems to concrete tutorials to thoughts on the field in general.
I’ve been a quilter since I picked up a copy of Quilting for Dummies in 2000 and have begun posting my quilts on this site as well. I’m also the caretaker for a pollinator garden and an anxious pitbull, a game designer/writer, a ham radio operator (KC3AF), a progressive Mennonite, and a GLAM mastodon instance moderator.
Interests
- Labor and maintenance
- Linked data
- Cataloging and metadata ethics
- Quilting and texile arts
- Ham radio (KC3AF)
Education
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Master's Degree in Library Science, 2013
University of Maryland iSchool
Experience
Associate Librarian - Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist
Penn State University Libraries
Engaging with the Libraries’ discovery, cataloging, and metadata systems to improve access, data, and user experiences. Research interests include: maintenance of cataloging and discovery systems, contingent labor, ethics in practical cataloging, and linked data work.
Responsibilities include:
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Leading a project to migrate the Libraries from the ILS we have used for 25 years to a new LSP (currently working on the RFP).
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Improving the Libraries’ discovery through the implementation and maintenance of a Blacklight library catalog. Managing the Libraries’ Summon platform and collaborating on its homepage search.
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Engaging with systems vendors about improvements to discovery and cataloging systems.
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Leading Penn State’s participation in PCC Wikidata pilot along with wikidata workshops. Exploring opportunities for creation and use of linked data within library data projects.
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Solving complex data reuse and reporting projects with data from sources including the library’s catalog, ArchivesSpace, and WorldShare. For example: identified library materials with possible arsenic in bindings, assisted Special Collections with data for planning a space management project, and queried WorldCat holdings across BTAA libraries to support a colleague’s research.
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Working with campus partners to understand how their data may become more discoverable, whether through library contexts or linked data.
Previous titles:
- Assistant Librarian, September 2017-June 2023
- Sally W. Kalin Early Career Librarian for Technological Innovations, July 2021-June 2024
Awards received: 2024 University Libraries Award, Penn State University Libraries
Assistant Librarian - Digital Collections Librarian
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame
Implemented working digital collections infrastructure in CurateND, the library’s institutional repository.
Accomplishments included:
- Consulted with librarians, curators, and external stakeholders to bring collections into the library’s exhibit platform and/or institutional repository.
- Set development priorities for the library’s exhibit platform and institutional repository. Exploring integrations between library systems.
- Developed and refined metadata for load into the institutional repository.
- Developed and maintained pipelines for dissemination of EAD finding aids from Rare Books and Special Collections and Archives units through the institutional repository and into the library’s catalog and special collections sites.
- Created documentation for users and processes for the library’s technical platforms.
Metadata Librarian II
Cadence Group at NASA Goddard
Serials and Continuations Specialist
Jacob Burns Law Library
Projects
Publications
Supporting Doctoral Research in Sociology in the BTAA
Supporting research by Stephen Woods about citation practices in sociology dissertations. I used WorldCat APIs and Z39.50 queries to determine which journals were held in some manner by which BTAA institutions (and comparing with Stephen’s citation analysis). The project was a fun opportunity to test some methods of querying data. As mentioned in the article, there is no way to review actual holdings so our test was simply for the presence of a record, indicating some degree of holdings at some point in time.
Crossing Silos: Assessing the Utility of Identity Attributes in Name Reconciliation
Even as librarians have spent the past twenty years documenting the rich world of scholarly communication beyond the catalog, repositories and catalogs too often remain completely siloed from each other. Current practices and tools to unite the two focus entirely on matching names, an imprecise method requiring substantial time spent on review. This article presents results of an experiment incorporating the attribute and citation data present in Library of Congress Name Authority Records and local faculty database records into the process of authority reconciliation. Adding tests for employer affiliation, educational history, and academic department produced improved, highly accurate match results.
The Ethics of Sustaining Linked Data Infrastructure
The development of linked data vocabularies and infrastructure remains primarily project-based. While such experiments and short-term initiatives move the field forward, they often overlook the demands of ongoing maintenance and sustainability. Because linked data infrastructure and vocabularies are fundamentally interdependent, the deprecation or disappearance of one project cascades to damage other vocabularies and systems which had incorporated it into their design. Such losses undermine the development of a robust semantic web, particularly harming those who don’t have the expertise or infrastructure to adapt quickly. In this chapter, we review several key cases of loss and rescue and propose maintenance and sustainability as core ethical responsibilities in linked data development.
Selected Presentations
Scaffolding Possibility: Systems, Stress, and Small Acts of Care
Waiting for Production: Making Use of Long Liminality
The Interdependent Library System: Revisiting Human Aspects of Library Automation
Another thing that’s true about me…
Regular expression cartoon under Creative Commons NonCommercial 2.5 Generic license, original image at XKCD.com.