OpenRefine, formerly known as Google Refine, is a powerful open-source tool for working with messy data. As the amount of data grows, so do the errors and inconsistencies, leading to more time required to manually correct these issues. This course will introduce and review OpenRefine, the software which allows users to quickly view, identify inconsistencies in, and enhance a variety of data.

* This culminating course is required to complete your micro-credentialing requirements. (optional) - What is micro-credentialing? Do you work with large amounts of metadata? Do you wish you had ways to work with this metadata more efficiently? This 3-course credential program will introduce you to MarcEdit and OpenRefine, two powerful tools for manipulating data, plus the Python programming language.

* This culminating course is required to complete your micro-credentialing requirements. (optional) - What is micro-credentialing? Do you catalog? Do you plan digital projects? Do you wish to better understand the role of metadata and how it works?

Authority control, the process of ensuring consistent use of access points in bibliographic records, helps library users discover all relevant information within a library’s catalog. To be effective, authority requires record maintenance. This session will cover the basic principles of authority control and guide users on maintaining consistency in authority records.

Linked data is a method of representing and sharing data that connects information across different sources and domains. It can offer many benefits to libraries through improved data quality, enhanced discoverability of resources, and data sharing among institutions. This course covers the principles of linked data and demonstrates the use of semantically rich data in libraries.

Authority control is the process of ensuring that all access points in a library catalog are used consistently, and it is a great help to patrons and library staff in identifying and locating library material. But it also can be overwhelming for librarians who are not familiar with it. This session covers the principles of authority control and the value that it brings to library users.

Do you deal with library data or metadata? Perhaps in your library catalog records, digital repository metadata, or even spreadsheets? As the amount of data we deal with grows, so do the errors and inconsistencies in that data, resulting in the manual correction of these issues becoming even more time consuming. To help you with your data clean-up needs, this course will review OpenRefine, the software which allows users to quickly view, identify inconsistencies in, and enhance a variety of data.

Do you want to do more with your MARC records? Are you looking for an easy way to add or delete fields, split a batch of records into several groups, or extract particular fields to create a report? This course will walk you through how to do all of these tasks and more, starting with the basics of how to download and install the free MarcEdit software.

* This course is eligible for micro-credentialing (optional) - What is micro-credentialing?

Special metadata projects often require specialized vocabularies beyond the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Many libraries are now supplementing their MARC records with terms from other thesauri. This course covers taxonomy design and development of controlled vocabularies. Topics include types of controlled vocabularies, taxonomy planning, and design, structure and relationships in a taxonomy, and taxonomy management and maintenance.

MarcEdit and OpenRefine are two powerful tools to help handle metadata clean-up issues. Detect misspellings and inaccuracies in your data and remedy them with OpenRefine. Quickly update large quantities of MARC records with MarcEdit. Learn to harness their power to work smarter, not harder.