Cataloging Futures

Testimony to the LC Working Group now available!

Over on the website for the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control they've posted the testimony submitted by institutions and individuals. Should make for some interesting reading as we patiently wait for LC's official response to the Working Group's recommendations.

Testimony Submitted to the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (December 15, 2007)

Part I - Organizational and Institutional Submissions [PDF, 638 KB]

Part II - Submissions by Individuals [PDF, 725 KB]

Future of cataloging: act globally, think locally

Just thinking out loud:

Lots of furious conversations on the future of cataloging happened this week on the AUTOCAT list. I read through these conversations last night. They were sparked by Thomas Mann's response to the LC working group report, On the Record.

There use to be a slogan, "Think globally, act locally." I think we need to turn this slogan around. The cataloging community needs to "act globally, think locally." We need shared, free bibliographic data on the Web and we need to move away from repetitive local silos (thanks, Karen).

But also on the Internet everyone has a niche (market). And guess what, on the Web libraries need a niche too. It's no surprise that special, unique collections are now the focus of many digital libraries. It's what's unique in our collections that will draw readers/users/ patrons to us on the Web.

The future of cataloging is intrinsically tied to the future of libraries. And the future of libraries is what we can offer to readers that is added value beyond the full-text resources that will continue to proliferate the Web.

The future of cataloging: a Palinet symposium

I've been invited to be on the response panel for The Future of Cataloging: A Palinet Symposium that will be held at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia on May 29th. The keynote speaker will be Karen Calhoun. I'm really excited about attending this symposium and participating in the conversation in a different context (outside the comfort of the blog). Here's more information:

The Future of Cataloging: A PALINET Symposium
Thursday, May 29, 2008, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

[Update: the link for registration.]

Program Agenda

Keynote Address

• Karen Calhoun, Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, will present an overview of the current state of cataloging and the future direction of bibliographic control.

Response to Keynote Address Panel Discussion

• Beth Picknally Camden, Goldstein Director of Information Processing, University of Pennsylvania
• Diane Hillman, Research Librarian, Cornell University and Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)/Resource Description and Access (RDA) Task Group
• Christine Schwartz, Metadata Librarian, Princeton Theological Seminary

Hot Topics - featured presentations from cataloging practitioners

• Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Current Development and Implementation Plans for Resource Description and Access (RDA)--John Attig, Monograph Cataloging Librarian, Penn State University
• The Significance of the Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control--Nancy Fallgren, University of Maryland Libraries Digital Access/Metadata Librarian, Johns Hopkins University and Consultant to Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
• The Impact of Cataloging Developments on Hidden Collections--Christine Di Bella, Archivist and Project Director, PACSCL Consortial Survey Initiative, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• The Role of Integrated Library Systems (ILS) and Next Generation Catalogs--John Ockerbloom, IT Senior Project Leader, University of Pennsylvania

Break-out discussion groups with the featured speakers will follow each presentation.

Summary and Closing Remarks

• M. Dina Giambi, President-Elect, Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association and Assistant Director for Library Technical Services University of Delaware Library

Thomas Mann's response to the LC working group report

Thomas Mann responses to the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control report in his new paper: "On the Record" but Off the Track [pdf]. This 38-page paper is a must-read for the future of cataloging debate.

Updated FRBR and some thoughts on "expression"

Another interesting cataloging news item is that there's an updated version of FRBR now available online. On the FRBR discussion list, John Hostage writes:

The full text of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) incorporating the amended definition of the expression entity as well as the errata identified to date has been made available on IFLANET in both PDF and HTML formats. [emphasis mine]

For the first time, the HTML versions of both the current text and the original 1998 text include the tables, rather than just references to the PDF version.

So what about this amended definition of "expression"? The way I understand it the expression entity is less hard and fast in its definition. There seems to more room for interpretation as to what constitutes a new expression. Here's part of the revised text:

Inasmuch as the form of expression is an inherent characteristic of the expression, any change in form (e.g., from alpha-numeric notation to spoken word) results in a new expression. Similarly, changes in the intellectual conventions or instruments that are employed to express a work (e.g., translation from one language to another) result in the production of a new expression. If a text is revised or modified, the resulting expression is considered to be a new expression.Minor changes, such as corrections of spelling and punctuation, etc., may be considered as variations within the same expression. [emphasis mine]

On a practical level, the degree to which bibliographic distinctions are made between variant expressions of a work will depend to some extent on the nature of the work itself, and on the anticipated needs of users and on what the cataloguer can reasonably be expected to recognize from the manifestation being described.

RDA/MARC working group established

Lots of interesting cataloging news this week. I was able to glimpse it going by as I looked up from full-immersion in METS and Dublin Core (that "other planet" that the non-MARC metadata folk live on). First up, some MARC news.

Yesterday on the MARC and RDA discussion lists, Marjorie E. Bloss, RDA Project Manager, announced the establishment of the RDA/MARC Working Group:

Under the auspices of the British Library, the Library and Archives Canada, and the Library of Congress, an RDA/MARC Working Group has been established to collaborate on the development of proposals for changes to the MARC 21 formats to accommodate the encoding of RDA data. With the implementation of RDA anticipated for late 2009, the Working Group will be drafting proposals for review and discussion by the MARC community in June 2008.

Although the MARC 21 formats support the encoding of descriptions created according to a wide range of content standards, the close relationship between AACR and MARC 21 has contributed to the efficient exchange of information among libraries for decades. The RDA/MARC Working Group will identify what changes are required to MARC 21 to support compatibility with RDA and ensure effective data exchange into the future.

Members of the RDA/MARC Working Group are:

• Everett Allgood (New York University and CC:DA Liaison to MARBI)
• Corine Deliot (British Library)
• Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress)
• Bill Leonard (Library and Archives Canada)
• Sally McCallum (Library of Congress)
• Marg Stewart (JSC Liaison to the RDA/MARC Working Group)
• Martha Yee (UCLA Film and Television Archive)

The new cataloger

Roy Tennant's article, The New Cataloger, is from 2006, but I discovered it only recently. In it he describes what the future tasks of catalogers might look like. In very practical terms he lays out tasks that are very different from what we're doing now:

• Working with a variety of non-MARC metadata
• Working with new cataloging tools
• Harvesting, the automated gathering of metadata
• Normalizing and enriching batches of metadata
• Quality control of automated processes

New formats, new tools, new tasks (yikes, this sound like my new job!)

Karen Coyle's RDA presentation at Code4Lib

Over on the LibLime Developers' Blog, Galen Charlton provides a nice overview of Karen Coyle's keynote presentation on RDA given at the recent Code4Lib conference. I particularly like this section of "Frequently Unanswered Questions":

Of course, a shift to RDF and a more formalized cataloging model would be a drastic change, and raises, as Karen Coyle calls them, some Frequently Unanswered Questions:

• Is FRBR the right conceptual model?
• Is RDF the right format?
• What happens to MARC?
• Who will be in charge?  How will things be decided?

There are other questions — how will library catalogs, data stores, and ILSs have to change if RDA over RDF transpires? How will the existing corpus of MARC data be migrated? How will the systems vendors, open source projects, and cataloging vendors adapt, to say nothing of catalogers, cataloging teachers, and library schools?

Some much needed future of cataloging humor

I like to stay current on what the LC staff are thinking about this whole future of cataloging debate. So, I often check the Library of Congress Professional Guild's future of cataloging web page.

Here's a new addition: "Steroid" Scandal Rocks Major League Libraries by Daniel Cohen. This tongue-in-cheek look at the current discussion is priceless. Gimme some of that street-grade metadata!

Many feel that the cost factor will limit future creation of such “pharmaceutical grade” metadata. According to Library Science experts, the discontinued support of “metadata laboratories” at institutions like the Library of Congress will eventually cause the supply of high quality metadata to dry up. “When you no longer have places like the Library of Congress creating this powerful stuff, you will see the performance of library searching systems come back down to the level that nature intended,” said one anti-metadata activist.

Some commentators feel that the crackdown on high-quality metadata labs is wrongheaded. “We have seen that this stuff works to enhance performance. Why not make the top quality stuff available to everyone? That’s the only way to really level the playing field,” says metadata advocate Harley Trion. “If we close down the labs creating high-quality metadata, you will see widespread adoption of street-quality metadata like social tagging and folksonomies, because that’s all you will be able to get. I’d rather know that my kids were using metadata that is made in a clean lab with experts and quality assurance processes than have them experimenting with street-grade metadata of unknown origin and quality.”

Barbara Tillett on RDA and FRBR

Yesterday on the FRBR discussion list, Arlene Taylor writes:

Barbara Tillett has updated the RDA section of her chapter in the book _Understanding FRBR_ that I edited. Her updated section is now available at http://lu.com/FRBR/

Due to publishing schedules, the section published in the book reflected the way RDA was shaping up prior to the October changes that now more clearly show the relationship of RDA to FRBR.

You'll want to read Tillett's short, informative overview of RDA development and its relation to the FRBR model. Here's a section on the JSC work leading up to Resource Description and Access (RDA):

A "Format Variations Working Group" was formed to look at FRBR's relationship to the new rules. Jennifer Bowen chaired this group. One member, Pat Riva from Canada, took her sabbatical to analyze where FRBR terminology might be substituted in the AACR2 rules. Among the recommendations was to use the term resource to be an overarching word to express the materials in a library's collection or things that would be part of the greater bibliographic universe. Another recommendation was to use only the FRBR terms when they accurately reflected the intention of the rule. The Working Group also recommended a structure for uniform titles that builds on the identification of the work, then the expression, then the manifestation, and finally the item, through added data elements as needed. If one needs to cite a work, then only the work elements need be included. If one needs to point to a specific item, then the full string including elements to identify the specific item are included.