Introduction of Kai Eckert

My name is Kai Eckert. I am a computer scientist working for the
Mannheim University Library as a subject specialist for math and
computer science. Additionally I support the IT department in various
projects and I am responsible for the linked data activities of our library.

Before my change to the library, I worked several years as software
developer, followed by a position as a researcher and PhD student (still
work in progress) at the group of Heiner Stuckenschmidt [1].

During this time, I worked on a project for thesaurus based automatic
indexing, a cooperation with the Mannheim University Library and the
German Central Library for Economic Sciences (ZBW). Since then, I am
more and more involved in the library domain.

My research focusses on the semi-automatic creation and maintenance of
thesauri and other concept hierarchies. As part of it, I developed a
software for the analysis and visualisation of concept hierarchies,
called Semtinel [2]. For the proper representation of the thesauri, I
used SKOS, but had some difficulties to find a good representation for
the automatic indexing results that would fit into existing library
infrastructures.

The most natural way seemed to be reification (or named graphs, both
were equivalent for my purposes), but I could not find any practical
advice about its use for library data. At the Dublin Core conference, I
presented a paper about these thoughts, introducing the general concept
of metametadata based on RDF reification. [3]

Currently, the general area of linked data in the library domain is my
main interest. Beside the LLD-XG, I am also working in the Provenance-XG
[4], but mainly because I contributed my use cases from the DC paper.
The whole area of provenance metadata is too broad and not in my focus.
Instead, I am interested in metadata provenance (a new name for my
metametadata, not to be confused with provenance metadata), and here I
am now in charge and co-lead the recently created DCMI Metadata
Provenance Task Group (together with Michael Panzer). [5]

Finally, I also have a twitter account (recently reactivated) [6] and a
blog [7].

Regards,

Kai

[1] http://ki.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/people/kai_eckert.html
[2] http://www.semtinel.org/
[3] http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs/article/view/973/948
[4] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Main_Page
[5] http://dublincore.org/groups/provenance/
[6] http://twitter.com/kaiec
[7] http://blog.kaiec.org/

-- 
Kai Eckert
Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim
Fachreferat Mathematik, Informatik, Wirtschaftsinformatik
Schloss Ostfluegel
68131 Mannheim
Tel. 0621/181-2946  Fax 0621/181-2918

Received on Tuesday, 6 July 2010 08:55:48 UTC