Cataloging Futures

Report investigating automatic metadata generation tools

Just found this JISC final report: MetaTools - Investigating Metadata Generation Tools [pdf]. If you are interested in the automatic generation of metadata and current tools out there for generating Dublin Core metadata, this report is for you.

(It also covers the development of SOAP and RESTful Web Service interfaces for three metadata generation tools.)

This report is very interesting for me (which is why I just printed off all 98 pages!) because this is the direction we are trying to move in for our digital library development at work. We're not there yet, but "iterative development" is the mantra.

It does mean letting go of creating metadata records one at a time as a final product. This is the shift we all keep hearing that catalogers need to make in order to become metadata librarians. Having been a metadata librarian for a year now, I can honestly say it's hard to let go of the old mindset at first. (And depending on your metadata workflow you may not have to.) But I've had to and have survived the process. In fact, I think if I went back to AACR2/MARC cataloging I'd be a better cataloger. Just a thought.

Dublin Core type vocabulary - any thoughts?

I've been blogging in fits and starts the last 2 months due to my new job. For example, I've read Thomas Mann's response to the LC Working Group report, but just haven't had time to throw in my two cents.

I'm going to try something new on the blog. I'd like to share some of my day-to-day metadata issues and see if the "wisdom of the crowd" can help me out.

So, at work we're considering what controlled vocabulary to use for the Dublin Core element "type." We've decided we want something more that the DCMI Type Vocabulary. I think we're going to use DCT2: Dublin Core Type Vocabulary: Subtypes Working Draft.

It seems the work has stopped on DCT2, but I think it would really work for our bibliographic, text-based resources that make up the bulk of our digital collections. Any thoughts? I'd be interested in suggestions of other controlled vocabularies out there.

Interesting Post on MARC

Here's a post by Bradley P. Allen, founder and CTO of Siderean Software, Inc. on MARC: "Out of the MARC frying pan". He's been reading the RDA discussion list and noticed that some in the cataloging community are hesitant to give up the MARC format.

"From my point of view as a complete outsider to the library community, it's clear that evangelists like Diane Hillman and Karen Coyle have a long way to go to make these type of people comfortable. While there appears in some circles to be excitement in the announcement of the teaming-up of the RDA and DCMI communities to push the standard in the direction of greater relevance to a broader community, I worry that this well-intended effort might fall victim to the technology adoption problems that befell the RDF standard over the last decade. That is, that premature design commitments that fail to take hard-won implementational experience into account provide those resisting change with an excuse to reject new technology."

 

RDA/DC/MARC: "It's All About the Structure"

I ended up not going to ALA, because I was committed to another conference in June. So, this weekend was spent focused on RDA updates at home. I listened to an excellent Talis podcast interview with Diane Hillmann and read Karen Schneider's lengthy post "Out of the Secret Garden: The RDA/DC Initiative". Two very different voices: Karen Schneider's tone is sarcastic until you get about half way into her post. Diane Hillmann is calm and knowledgeable. Their subject matter is the same: the future of library cataloging and metadata standards.

I'll put the gist of some of this in my own words. Library cataloging standards, MARC and AACR2, have served us well in the past, but will not in the future. Computer technology has changed dramatically since MARC was developed 40 years ago. AACR2 was based on a model of libraries when we had card catalogs. In order for library metadata to be useable by communities outside the library (and on the Web) things have to change. Our standards have to be machine-manipulable. This is true of our metadata framework (MARC or whatever replaces it) as well as our content standard (soon to be RDA) and vocabularies. This is the task that must be addressed now for libraries to move forward. It can't wait for future revisions of RDA.

Karen Schneider obscures these issues by criticizing the library community for not having our cataloging standards, e.g., AACR2, in machine readable form, but instead in a text based form. But let's put this into some kind of sane context: the last editon of AACR2 was published in 2002 while in May 2001 the W3C had only just published the XML Schema. Maybe in 2007, If we don't move forward now, then we're to blame. But up until now it's all been too new.

I took 7 1/2 pages of notes listening to the Diane Hillmann interview, so I'm not going to try to cover all the issues discussed. If you're a cataloger suffering through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief about the anticipated changes in cataloging, you'll want to spend some quality time listening to this interview. It's good to know what the Dublin Core community is working on.

Here's what I struggle with: the question that never gets addressed in all these cataloging articles, etc. is the future of MARC. I ask this question at workshops and presentations and no one seems to know. So my question for the library blogosphere is: What's the future of the MARC format? You know it's not just our bibliographic records that are stored in MARC, it's also the Library of Congress name and subject authority files and most libraries' holdings are in the MARC Format for Holdings Data. So, we've made this huge investment to a metadata framework that is, according to some, hopelessly out of date.

Or is it? I've recently found two slide presentations via the Dewey blog "MARC Futures" and "MARC 21 Support System" by Sally McCallum of the Library of Congress. Being slides, they're a bit sketchy. But they seem to hold some promise that MARC will be developed rather than discarded. If MARC 21 is gradually going to move to an XML framework, the changes ahead may not be as radical as some suggest. Any thoughts?

(By the way, the title quote is from Diane Hillmann's interview.)

DCMI/RDA News

"2007-06-04, A new DCMI Task Group is being set up for collaborative work on Resource Description and Access (RDA), a library standard being developed for resource description and access in the digital world, building on foundations established by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). The Task Group, led by Diane Hillmann of Cornell University and Gordon Dunsire of Strathclyde University, is being set up in response to recommendations of a meeting hosted by the British Library on 30 April and 1 May 2007 between people involved in DCMI, the Semantic Web community and developers of RDA. The charter of the Task Group is to define components of RDA as an RDF vocabulary for use in developing a Dublin Core application profile. The work will be done through a mailing list DC-RDA@jiscmail.ac.uk and a Wiki. For more information, please contact Diane Hillmann."

Via DCMI

Diane Hillmann, Second Presenter at the Bibliographic Control Meeting

Diane Hillmann, the second presenter at the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control meeting, has already put her PowerPoint presentation online, titled "Structures and Standards for Our Bibliographic Future".  Don't miss it.  It's a clear vision of what needs to happen to move forward with library metatdata. What impresses me most about this presentation is its clarity, explicating what needs to change and why. To quote one of my cataloger friends, "we want change to be good change" and I think Diane Hillmann's presentation goes a long way to show that our metadata future can be very bright and promising if we make the right decisions now; decisions that require the library community to collaborate with and make our legacy resources available to a wider Web/metadata community.

If you want a quick overview of this presentation, Mark Lindner's informative post is basically a transcription of the PowerPoint slides plus additional notes.

Via Off the Mark

Library School Student Weighs in on Metadata

Some of the library bloggers out  there  writing about cataloging and metadata are library school students. It's interesting to get their take on the future of cataloging coming into the field with a fresh look at the library landscape. Here's a post from one student, "It's all over but the shouting-and the hard work".

A snippet on metadata:

"What impressed me most about nearly all the metadata schemas presented in the last three weeks is the apparent indispensibility of librarians, or persons with library training and/or librarians’ sensibilities, for optimally handling their implementation and utilization.  Even something as simple and straightforward as Dublin Core requires a familiarity with authority control, procedures for standardization of data entry, the ability to follow at times complicated data-entry rules, etc.–the relevant point being that Dublin Core is surely among the simplest of the schemas we were exposed to this term."

The student goes on to bemoan the fact that there are no courses that offer a more in-depth, hands-on approach to metadata:

"Just wish there had been more time–or that the program would consider adding an in-depth, hands-on follow-up course concentrating on two or three of the most important and/or widely used schemas.  In any case, and anyway–here’s to mining the rich future of metadata development and management.  I’m looking forward to it."

I had the same feeling finish library school years ago (circa 1988-1989). I started doing continuation education right out of Rutgers MLS program and haven't stopped yet!

 

More on the RDA Data Models Meeting

Don't miss William Denton's excellent post on the RDA Data Models Meeting.

He provides a link to a post from one of the attendees, Alistair Miles, an expert in the area of the Semantic Web. It was there that I found the link to the meeting wiki page. Take a look--you'll find a lot more information about this meeting and enough background resources to become a veritable expert!

Big RDA News!

Just when you thought there was no cataloging/metadata news ... An RDA Data Model meeting held at the British Library (April 30-May 1) announced the decision that RDA and DCMI will work together on a RDA DC Application Profile.

The announcement from the British Library.

Recommendations:

The meeting participants agreed that RDA and DCMI should work together to build on the existing work of both communities.

The participants recommend that the RDA Committee of Principals and DCMI seek funding for work to develop an RDA Application Profile -- specifically that the following activities be undertaken:

• development of an RDA Element Vocabulary
• development of an RDA DC Application Profile based on FRBR and FRAD
• disclosure of RDA Value Vocabularies using RDF/RDFS/SKOS

Outcomes:

The benefits of this activity will be that:

• the library community gets a metadata standard that is compatible with the Web Architecture and that is fully interoperable with other Semantic Web initiatives
• the DCMI community gets a libraries application profile firmly based on the DCAM and FRBR (which will be a high profile exemplar for others to follow)
• the Semantic Web community get a significant pool of well thought-out metadata terms to re-use
• there is wider uptake of RDA

Also, Karen Coyle's interview with Diane Hillmann concerning the implications of this news.

Via Repositories for the rest of us, Z666.7.L364 (www.jenniferlang.net)