Visualizing linked data in

UBC Open Collections

Carolina Roman Amigo
Paul Joseph
Richard Arias-Hernandez
Context
- Directed Study and Co-op Project, co-supervised
by a SLAIS faculty and a UBC librarian.
- Aim was to explore the potential uses of the
Open Collections Research API for infoviz,
linked data, and digital humanities projects.
- We developed simple web applications providing
data visualizations of collections metadata linked
to external datasets. Available here:
https://ubc-library.github.io
- This presentation focus on development process
of the UBC Institute of Fisheries Field Records
web application.
UBC Open Collections
https://open.library.ubc.ca

- Aggregates content from UBC

Library's open access digital
repositories.
- Has a research API that
provides machine-readable
access to collections metadata
and transcripts.
UBC Institute of
Fisheries Field Records
- 11021 field records, over a
more than 100 year period.
- Contains latitude and
longitude metadata.
- Each record lists fish species
collected in a given location,
plus habitat conditions.
UBC Institute of
Fisheries Field Records
- 11021 field records, over a
more than 100 year period.
- Contains latitude and
longitude metadata.
- Each record lists fish species
collected in a given location,
plus habitat conditions.
Encyclopedia
of Life
Aggregates “knowledge
of the many life-forms
on Earth from books,
journals, databases,
websites, specimen
collections, and in the
minds of people
everywhere”.
How to enhance this collection and make
it more accessible to researchers?
Link both datasets, enriching OC collection metadata.

Show geographical location of records on a map.

Process Overview
Getting metadata Cleaning Reconciling Building Interface
Getting the metadata
Get data using a php script
available on the OC API page.

It returns a metadata txt file for

each record in the collection.

Merged files to one single txt

file using a python script.

Import it to OpenRefine for the

cleaning step.
Cleaning
The data was cleaned using
OpenRefine.

Latitude and longitude had to

be formatted to the standard
CARTO understands:
"0 30 S"@en --> -0.3

The fish species metadata

needed cleaning and clustering
to fix inconsistencies:
"Ambassis sp."@en > Ambassis
Reconciling
Use OpenRefine
reconciliation service to link
our fish species to EOL
species entries.

It suggests the best three

matches for each value for
you to review.

It also retrieves EOL id,

useful to build the URIs for
linking.
Interface building
Export the data in a csv format
for use in CARTO builder.

Georeference the data in

CARTO.

Aggregate records in the same

location using a SQL query in
CARTO.

Customize interface using the

builder.
GitHub Repo with step by
step process and files
https://github.com/ubc-library/open-
collections-api-case-fisheries
 Thank you!
carolamigo@gmail.com