Crosswalks between DCTerms and BIBO Terms?

I am building an Omeka S Site with images of, and metadata for, collection objects, archival documents, and pdfs of historical publications authored by my ‘actors’ – who also wrote the archival documents and collected the objects (in the 18thC). Right now I am trying to find ways to harmonise / crosswalk between DC Terms (Omeka S) and Bibo Terms (Zotero) so that when I import printed literature from Zotero into my Omeka S site, the search functionality will work across both sets of terms. This would enable users to find, for example, a book, an object, and a letter all created by the same person.

I realise that this is also a question of search functionality, and not just of metadata harmonisation. But it would be helpful to know from the Digital Scholar Team if there is anything we can do either BEFORE or AFTER importing a lot of material into Omeka S from Zotero.

We also have what could be described as ‘secondary literature’ which is historiographic commentary. This too is described in Bibo Terms because it is in Zotero. I have an idea about how to create Item Sets and connect these ‘secondary lit’ materials to individual Items by Linked Resource (Bulk editing to add Item Set to an item as a Linked Resource?) But I’m also wondering about using Zotero’s ‘Extra’ metadata field, and/or Zotero ‘Notes’ to bind some of the non-harmonised data together. However, it is not clear if and how Zotero’s ‘Extra’ and ‘Notes’ metadata get integrated into Omeka S metadata once they are imported into Omeka S.

Any advice? I’ll ‘@’ a helpful librarian colleague in here: @Alyx_TJ

Thanks all!

Right now I am trying to find ways to harmonise / crosswalk between DC Terms (Omeka S) and Bibo Terms (Zotero) so that when I import printed literature from Zotero into my Omeka S site, the search functionality will work across both sets of terms.

The ZoteroImport module comes with a crosswalk that maps Zotero fields to Omeka properties. Feel free to modify that file to meet your requirements. Note however that one Zotero field cannot be mapped to more than one Omeka property (e.g. dcterms and bibo). The crosswalk and Import job code could probably be modified to make that possible, but it isn’t possible now.

This would enable users to find, for example, a book, an object, and a letter all created by the same person.

I’m not sure I know what you mean that having duplicate metadata would enable users to find resources created by the same person.

However, it is not clear if and how Zotero’s ‘Extra’ and ‘Notes’ metadata get integrated into Omeka S metadata once they are imported into Omeka S.

As you see in the crosswalk, the “extra” field is not mapped by default. The module does not import notes.

Thanks, Jim! Lightning fast response.

I’m not proposing duplicate metadata, just trying to understand how to harrmonise across two different ontologies. Here’s an example:

I can use DCTerm Creator for

  • Letter writer
  • Object Maker

… but not for ‘Author’ in the BIBO ontology. So if I have a photo of a letter by Jonathan Swift, and a photo of a pipe that he carved himself, how can I be sure that a search of the Omeka S Site for Swift will also return a pdf of the first edition of his Gulliver’s Travels if it is catalogued in BIBO ?

A resource page will have a “Linked resources” section containing all resources that link to it. So, using your example, a user would somehow navigate to the “Jonathan Swift” resource and see all letters, objects, and books that link to him.

Hi Again Jim;

I think you mean something like what I was exploring in this post, kindly answered by John: Bulk editing to add Item Set to an item as a Linked Resource?

I think I understand how to link the resources together at the backend, but am a bit concerned about the phrase 'a user would somehow navigate to the ‘Jonathan Swift’ resource… That’s where aligning metadata standards with the search function is so important. What options are there in shaping how users ‘somehow’ navigate to all this linked info?

Thanks for your patience! CBRfan

A full-text search for “Jonathan Swift” would almost certainly show the corresponding “Jonathan Swift” item. Beginning from the search page, that’s the easiest and most intuitive way users would navigate to that resource.

I guess I don’t understand what you mean by “aligning metadata standards with the search function.” The search function isn’t the optimal pathway to a specific item. Instead, you could show the “Jonathan Swift” item directly on a page using the “Item with metadata” block, or you could link to the item using the “Media embed” block.