Project Pipeline: Preservation, Persistence, and Performance

TL;DR

This paper presents a pipeline for transforming historical analog vocabularies into digital, linked data formats, implementing persistent identifiers, and integrating them into a system for research and analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pipeline that converts 1910 LCSH into SKOS, implements PIDs with an ARK resolver, and integrates data into HIVE for scholarly analysis.

Findings

Successfully transformed 1910 LCSH to SKOS format

Implemented persistent identifiers with ARK resolver

Enabled automatic metadata generation in HIVE

Abstract

Preservation pipelines demonstrate extended value when digitized content is also computation ready. Expanding this to historical controlled vocabularies published in analog format requires additional steps if they are to be fully leveraged for research. This paper reports on work addressing this challenge. We report on a pipeline and project progress addressing three key goals: 1) transforming the 1910 Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) linked data standard, 2) implementing persistent identifiers (PIDs) and launching our prototype ARK resolver, and 3) importing the 1910 LCSH into the Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering (HIVE) System to support automatic metadata generation and scholarly analysis of the historical record. The discussion considers the implications of our work in the broader context of preservation, and the conclusion summarizes our work and identifies next steps.