Cataloging Futures

New book: Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front

I've been waiting for this one. Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto is now available in paperback.

This collection of critical and scholarly essays addresses the state of cataloging in the world of librarianship. The contributors, including Sanford Berman, Thomas Mann, and numerous front-line library workers, address topics ranging from criticisms of the state of the profession and traditional Library of Congress cataloging to methods of making cataloging more inclusive and helpful to library users. Other essay topics include historical overviews of cataloging practices and the literature they generate, first-person discussions of library workers' experiences with cataloging or metadata work, and the implications behind what materials get cataloged, who catalogs them, and how. Several essays provide a critical overview of innovative cataloging practices and the ways that such practices have been successfully integrated in many of the nation's leading libraries.

JSC April meeting outcomes now available

Important reading for keeping up with the development of the new cataloging content standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA):

The Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) has just issued outcomes from their most recent meeting. The meeting was held in Chicago in April 2008.

An important opportunity

Last week on the cataloging lists, Barbara Tillett writes:

As Chair of the IFLA Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code (IME ICC) I am pleased to invite comments from the worldwide library community on the final draft of the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles and its accompanying Glossary.

In order to provide the appropriate review period and to schedule adequate time to cumulate, analyze, and incorporate comments before the General Meeting of IFLA in August, the Statement is being posted today on a public Wiki. The IFLA Headquarters Office is closed for holiday April 30-May 5th, but as soon as they return we will move the files there and redirect from the Wiki. In the meantime please link to: http://catprinciples.pbwiki.com/ and view and/or download the Statement for your review; and please use the accompanying voting document for your response. [emphasis mine]

UPDATE: The draft and voting form have been moved to the IFLA website.

You might want to take a look back to a post I wrote last year on the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles. I'm looking forward to reviewing and commenting on this important document before the June 30th deadline.

Letter from Deanna Marcum on RDA

A letter from Deanna Marcum was just posted to the AUTOCAT list. It provides the joint statement of the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library on Resource Description and Access. Some excerpts:

The three national libraries agreed on the following approach: First, we jointly commit to further development and completion of RDA. Second, following its completion, a decision to implement the rules will be based upon the positive evaluation of RDA's utility within the library and information environment, and criteria reflecting the technical, operational, and financial implications of the new code. This will include an articulation of the business case for RDA, including benefits to libraries and end users and cost analyses for retraining staff and re-engineering cataloging processes.

Together, we will:

• Jointly develop milestones for evaluating how we will implement RDA
• Conduct tests of RDA that determine if each milestone has been reached; paying particular attention to the benefits and costs of implementation
• Widely distribute analyses of benefits and costs for review by the U.S. library community
• Consult with the vendor and bibliographic utility communities to address their concerns about RDA

Included among the tests that will be developed to assist in formulating implementation decisions:

• Usability testing with cataloging staff, i.e. librarians and technicians, experienced and newer staff from the three national libraries in consultation with representatives from the U.S. library community (including OCLC and library vendors) about its participation in the process
• Testing of records for a broad array of materials created during usability studies to determine compatibility with existing record sets and ensuring records are usable and understandable for our end users
• Testing the feasibility of integrating this new cataloging standard into all relevant technology systems

The three institutions agreed that these steps will be followed and, if there is a decision to implement RDA, that the implementation would not occur before the end of 2009.

UPDATE: Letter and joint statement [pdf] now available on the LC Working Group website.

LC using new content standard for rare books: DCRM(B)

I'm very interested in rare books, having been exposed to the wonders of rare book cataloging when I was a fledgling cataloger (circa 1991). At that time, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books had just been published. Now, its successor is available: Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books).

LC's implementation decisions for DCRM(B) were just posted yesterday. One of the interesting thing about these decisions is how much they refer to cataloger's judgment.

The Library of Congress Rare Book Team has been using Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B)) since October 2007 in its cataloging of rare materials. Implementation decisions at the Library of Congress related to options, etc., in DCRM(B) are available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/rarebooks.pdf.

DCRM(B), prepared by the Bibliographic Standards Committee, Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Association of College and Research Libraries in collaboration with the Cataloging Policy and Support Office of the Library of Congress, was published in 2007; it is the successor to the 1991 publication Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books.

Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) is published by the Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service.

Martha Yee's new article - cataloging et al.

Martha Yee has a new article available at the UC eScholarship repository, Cataloging, Compared to Descriptive Bibliography, Abstracting and Indexing Services and Metadata.

Cataloging is compared to descriptive bibliography, to enumerative bibliography and abstracting and indexing services as well as to metadata created by Web search engines or by nonprofessionals at sites such as Amazon.com. These four types of metadata are compared with regard to object of the description, functions, scope, number of copies examined, collective vs. individual creation, standardization, authority control, evidence, amount of descriptive detail, degression, time span the data is intended to last, and degree of evaluation.

New book: Metadata for digital resources

Jenn Riley's new book that she co-authored with Muriel Foulonneau is now available in both hardcover and paperback. (I have dropped it into my husband's Amazon shopping cart!)

Metadata for Digital Resources is intended to be a practical handbook for those embarking on digitization projects or implementing a metadata program in a cultural heritage institution. It goes beyond introductory explanations of various metadata standards to cover issues of their practical implementation and in-depth discussion of the role of metadata in the larger information environment. We believe this book will be useful for those preparing to begin their first project involving non-MARC metadata, and for those looking to take the next step from one-off metadata projects to a more systematic and strategic approach.

New metadata schema - textMD

From the LC website:

textMD is a XML Schema that details technical metadata for text-based digital objects. It most commonly serves as an extension schema used within the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Schema (METS) administrative metadata section. However, it could also exist as a standalone document. In the future textMD can be used within the PREMIS element, additionalTechnicalCharacteristics, an extension for format-specific metadata within the PREMIS preservation metadata Object XML Schema version 2.0.

Essential reading: Metadata for digital libraries

The heart of our digital library at work is the METS standard. So, it's hard for me not to like this report which is very pro-METS. Richard Gartner's Metadata for digital libraries: state of the art and future directions [pdf] is a clarion call for integrated standards and agreed upon best practices in the future library metadata landscape.

Gartner stresses the importance of standards with XML as the common platform. He goes over the top contenders for integrated standards, such as METS, Dublin Core, MODS, MIX, etc. This report is written in a clear style and could function as a good introductory overview of descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata. A very good read for administrators, LIS students, as well as the experienced professional.

Via DigitalKoans

Interesting cataloging/metadata links

Back when I was a kid, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock was the book to read. One of the concepts he wrote about was "overchoice." This seems to have come true with the Web. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed with the amount of information out there concerning library issues. I hope this blog continues to help focus in on some of the important cataloging/metadata blog posts, papers, articles, etc. as I start a 2nd year of blogging (yesterday was the blog's 1st birthday!).

Here's some things I've found interesting lately:

• Karen Coyle's presentation from the recent Code4Lib Conference, R&D: RDA in RDF, or: Can Resource Description Become Rigorous Data? [PDF]. Slides annotated with notes. This is excellent.
• Lorcan Dempsey points out an article, Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search? [PDF] One intriguing conclusion from this study of user assigned tags: "It may be more efficient to train librarians to label domains than to ask users to tag." Hmm.
• On one of my very favorite blogs, repositories for the rest of us, Laura Smart mentions Diane Hillmann's trainer screencasts for the LC workshop she developed Metadata Standards and Applications. Slides with voice-over from Diane Hillmann.