Cataloging Futures

Bibliographic control webinar Q&A

2009-11-05T09:08:40-05:00

Interesting Q&A follow-up from last month's NISO webinar: Bibliographic Control Alphabet Soup: AACR to RDA and Evolution of MARC. Barbara Tillett and Diane Hilmann weigh in on a variety of questions.

Barbara Tillett: RDA is not a format. It's a set of cataloging instructions on the identifying characteristics for the things we wish to control in the bibliographic universe. If you still are using an ILS when you start describing things according to RDA, you'd still be using MARC bibliographic records and MARC holdings records (and MARC authority records) for the foreseeable future. [emphasis added]

Looks like the immediate future's not so scary, changey after all!

h/t Notatu Dignum

New LC future of cataloging reports

2009-10-31T10:02:59-04:00

It's been almost two years since the Library of Congress report, On the Record, was presented to the cataloging community. You may recall that LC established the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control to study the future of cataloging and LC role in it. (By the way, search the Cataloging Futures categories "WoGroFuBiCo" and "WGFBC" for a whirlwind tour of this issue!)

Yesterday, LC released a new, related report and study:

On the Record Report Recommendations the Library of Congress Should Pursue Over the Next Four Years: Report to the Associate Librarian for Library Services, OTR Report Implementation Working Group, Regina Reynolds and Bruce Knarr, co-chairs (09/15/09)

Read final report [PDF, 142 KB]

Library of Congress Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace, R2 Consulting LLC (www.r2consulting.org), Ruth Fischer, Rick Lugg (October 2009)

Read study [PDF, 723 KB]

h/t ResourceShelf

What library cataloging on the Web might look like

2009-10-28T07:16:27-04:00

Check out Alexander Johannesen's post: On identity. Johannesen is a technologist who has experience working in a library. Here he shares his vision of how library cataloging could be done in the future:

Let me exemplify with how I would like to see future library cataloging being done ;

I have a resource of sorts at hand, it could be a book or a link or a CD or something. Doesn't matter, but for the example it's written by Frank Herbert, apparently, and is called "Dune Genesis." It's an eBook. I pop "Frank Herbert" into a textbox of sorts, the system automatically does some searching, and finds 5 URIs that match that name. One of those URIs are WikiPedia and another is The Library of Congress. That means LoC has verified that whatever explain the subject of "Frank Herbert" is at the URI at WikiPedia, and that there is a reasonable equality between the two; one WikiPedia page, one authority record at LoC. The other URIs more or less confirm it (and this speaks to trust and government) I choose to accept the LoC URI as a author subject URI. Nothing more needs to be entered, no dates, no names, no nothing. Just one URI.

Now I pop the name "Dune Genesis" into by tool, and it does its magic, but it return only a WikiPedia URI, and because it's tradition not to "trust" WikiPedia it means I have a "new" record I need to catalog. However, the WikiPedia URI contains RDFa, so my tool asks if I want to try and auto-populate meta data, and I choose yes. Fields gets populated, and I go over them, controlling that they are good, add some, edit some, delete some, and hit save.

Two things now happen; the system automatically create an URI for me, a subject identity URI that if resolve will point to a page somewhere on our webserver with our meta data. That URI is fed back into whatever loop that tool uses for federated URIs, it could be library custom-made (see EATS below, or look to the brilliantwww.subj3ct.com website for federated identity management) or something as simple as Google (for example, I use Ontopedia a lot, so if I do do "Alexander Johannesen Ontopedia", I will get as a first result a page representing an URI I can use for talking about me). This creates a dual system of identity, one for the subject, one for the meta data about the book, both using the same URI.

Do you dig it? Can you see it? Can you see the library world slowly using such a simple mechanism for totally ruling the meta data and identity management boulevard, or what? I pointed to Conal Tuohy's EATS system. Make him give it to you, collaborate to make this just work, open-source and make make it a tool for librarians to automatically create, use, harvest and share identities and resources using the same URIs, and you've got what you need.

James Weinheimer's catalog and cataloging blog

2009-10-25T11:06:21-04:00

One of the most prolific and interesting voices on the electronic discussion lists is James Weinheimer (I'm sure you know that already). So, I was glad to find that James is using a blog as a brain dump for his AUTOCAT and NGC4LIB listserv posts.

From the first post of his First thus blog:

I have posted so many messages to listservs that I thought I might try a blog. We'll see how long it lasts. So, I shall occasionally forward my listserv messages to this blog and slightly rework them when appropriate.

I am very interested in metadata and the future of the library profession (that is, if there is to be one) and how librarians--especially catalogers--can try to control their own futures.

A worth cause and a worth blog!

ONIX to MARC and back again: OCLC's Metadata Services for Publishers

2009-10-17T11:27:07-04:00

Interesting metadata news! OCLC is now offering a program to enrich publishers' ONIX metadata, an XML metadata standard used by publishers.

OCLC now offers Metadata Services for Publishers, a new service that takes publishers' ONIX title metadata, enriches it using WorldCat mining and mapping techniques, and delivers the enhanced ONIX metadata back to the publishers for use in their systems. The publishers' enhanced metadata is then made available early in the data creation process to libraries for use in selection, acquisition and technical services workflows. Information seekers also benefit from Web discovery of this metadata via WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of library resources.

OCLC also offers Contract Cataloging for Publishers.

OCLC Contract Cataloging for Publishers is another service that creates MARC records using publishers' electronic title data as a starting point. OCLC offers cataloging solutions for publishers and vendors that need to provide MARC records to libraries. More information about OCLC services for publishers can be found on the Web site.

If you want to learn more about this, check out the ALA Midwinter 2009 program, From ONIX to MARC and Back Again: New Frontiers in Metadata Creation at OCLC. It's a very informative presentation by Renee Register of OCLC. Her description of the crosswalking of ONIX to MARC and MARC to ONIX illustrates exciting possibilities for ehanced, enriched metadata creation if libraries and publishers work together. Renee respectfully emphasizes the intellectual contribution of both publisher and library metadata creators.