2020-July-21 Being solo no more, LD for Beginners track (Crane, Hood, Liu, Pappas, Reidt, Vandale)
Channel: LD4
Date: 2020-07-22

In 2018, the cataloging librarians from the three branches of University of Houston libraries (UH Main, UH Clear Lake and UH Downtown) formed a study group with the goal of understanding the concepts of BIBFRAME and Linked Data, testing the BIBFRAME editor and exploring ways of converting MARC records to BIBFRAME. The group has come up with a self-paced study plan and met monthly online to discuss a list of self-prepared questions related to the learning materials. Since then, through conferences and serendipitous contacts, the group has grown to include seven catalog librarians from multiple institutions across the country. The group has adjusted the study plan and decided to continue meeting monthly on a set topic. So far we have reviewed what we learned last year on the basic concept of linked data, and now we are furthering our knowledge with study plans on Sinopia editor and Wikidata. In the future, we hope to work both individually and collaboratively across the institutions to design and implement linked data projects that will make our collections more visible on the web. The lightning talk will highlight the rationale behind forming the study group. We hope the example of our study group can help solo librarians who feel alone to reach out and connect with like minded colleagues. Because we all have different strengths, we can learn from each other and the collaborative nature of the group can keep us motivated. In our talk, we will also cover the design of the study plan, discussion questions, and tools used to facilitate the monthly discussions.