Jim Hahn's Preliminary Exam
PhD student Jim Hahn will present his dissertation proposal, "Algorithmic BIBFRAME and Social Signaling." His preliminary examination committee includes Professor Bertram Ludäscher (Chair); Professor Allen Renear; Associate Professor Jessie Chin; Dr Karrie Karahalios, Professor of Media Arts + Sciences at the MIT Media Lab.
Abstract
The BIBFRAME metadata standard, developed by the Library of Congress, introduces a new model of classes and properties to describe items in library collections. Unlike MARC encoding, BIBFRAME is described in the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The transition from MARC encoding and transmission to BIBFRAME semantic markup presents implementation challenges including technical complexity and knowledge gaps among practitioners. To address these challenges, this dissertation introduces the Model Context Protocol for RDF (mcp4rdf), a system that translates technical BIBFRAME requirements into natural language explanations grounded in the BIBFRAME ontology and authoritative Library of Congress examples. Drawing on social signaling theory, this intervention enables semi-automated BIBFRAME metadata creation supported by contextualized explanations. The overall significance of this work is to provide authentic algorithmic support to learn fundamentals of BIBFRAME metadata creation in practice while preserving and extending professional expertise.
Questions? Contact Jim Hahn.