UNT’s Digital Collections recently implemented a new section of metadata just for robots—or at least for machines. The bulk of our descriptive item records contain who/what/where/when information telling human readers more than they sometimes want to know about the document, photograph, or artifact they are viewing online. But our records also contain useful links to services and machine-readable data that relate to the digital object. To help humans share these links with machines, we’ve compiled them into a single list available near the end of each metadata record.

According to Associate Dean Mark Phillips, whose current research interests focus on machine learning in libraries, “We have always had different ways that users can interact with our digital objects. By providing an easy way to discover and use these links and services, we hope that others will find new ways to interact with the digital resources we have online.”

We expect the links to aid users with development, research, and innovation. So robots, read on. We’re speaking your language.