Cataloging Futures

MARBI and the future of the MARC format?

Yesterday on the MARC listserv, Elizabeth Plantz (National Library of Medicine) and Tina Shrader (National Agricultural Library) raised concerns as to why the Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI) has nothing on their agenda on the future of MARC for the upcoming ALA Annual Conference meetings.

Their questions for MARBI are worth reading as the Library of Congress begins its work investigating a possible transition away from the MARC format, a 40+ year old library metadata structure.

Transitioning from the MARC format (it might really happen!)

It's not too often that opening your email becomes a transformational moment, a "Wow" moment. Well, that was yesterday for me when the announcement came down from LC: Transforming our Bibliographic Framework: A Statement from the Libraray of Congress. I sort of though a movement away from MARC was never going to happen (at least not in my work-lifetime). This statement is the direction a lot of us have been waiting for.

As the REM song goes, this really could be "the end of the world as we know it."

A website has been set up for all the activity surrounding this initiative: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative. I will keep an eye on it with cataloger-like, detail-oriented intensity. So, we'll see what this brings, but it sure does seem like a postive step forward.

Update: See also John Mark Ockerbloom's interesting take from an open data perspective.

Revisiting MARC must die

The "MARC must die" meme has resurfaced in several places lately. It refers to Roy Tennant's prescient article by the same title from 2002.

So, over the weekend I printed it off to re-read it and then discovered, self-described library-geek, Sally Chambers will be presenting a workshop next week (at ELAG 2011) entitled: MARC must die? Developing a shared vision for the future of bibliographic metadata.

Sally also gives a preview of her workshop on her blog: Will MARC survive ELAG 2011?

Any thoughts, predictions? Any worthy MARC replacements?

Update: See also: Roy Tennant's article, A bibliographic metadata infrastructure for the twenty-first century, 2004.

Webinar: Implications of MARC tag usage on library metadata

The webinar to accompany the new MARC tag usage report is now available:

Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata

In this webinar, some of the authors of the recently published report, Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata Practices (.pdf), presented evidence gathered and analyzed by the RLG Partnership MARC Tag Usage Working Group to inform library metadata practices, with a focus on machine applications.

A transcript of the webinar chat (.pdf) is provided below as a supplement to the recordings.

Contact Karen Smith-Yoshimura with questions or comments.

•.pdf of webinar chat transcript (36.7K/4pp.)

•.wmv (65.3MB/1:00min.)

Found at the OCLC Research events webinar page.

Tools of our trade: AACR2/RDA and MARC

New slides from Ann Chapman, research officer at UKOLN.

Tools of our Trade (RDA, MARC21) 2010-03-15

View more presentations from Ann Chapman.

h/t Cultural Heritage

New OCLC/RLG cataloging report on MARC tag usage

This new OCLC Research/RLG Partnership report looks like a must-read: Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata Practices[pdf].

There will be a free webinar about this report on March 18th.

h/t TSLL TechScans

Bibliographic control webinar Q&A

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

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

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.

NISO webinar: AACR2, RDA, and MARC

Can't make it to a library conference? This NISO Webinar looks like a great opportunity. It's happening next week, October 14th. (If you can't make it on the 14th, you can register for access to the archive for one year.)

Bibliographic Control Alphabet Soup: AACR2 to RDA and Evolution of MARC

1:00 - 1:10 p.m.: Introduction & Welcome

Karen A. Wetzel, Standards Program Manager, NISO

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director, NISO

1:10 - 1:30 p.m.: AACR2, RDA, VIAF, and the Future: From There to Here to There

Barbara Tillett, Chief, Policy and Standards Division, Library of Congress

This presentation will focus on the differences between RDA and AACR2 and how the new code will better enable linked data for user access in the Web environment.

1:30 - 1:50 p.m.: RDA Elements and Vocabularies: a Step Forward from MARC

Diane Hillmann, Director of Metadata Initiatives, Information Institute of Syracuse 

As the lynchpin of hugely successful efforts by libraries to provide information on their holdings to both local and remote users, MARC has had an illustrious presence. However, the format is beginning to fail libraries as many of our partners and potential partners in a greatly enriched information ecosystem do not "speak" MARC but handle their data in very different ways. RDA elements and vocabularies represent the distillation of library descriptive knowledge, optimized for use within an environment that speaks XML, RDF, and linked data, and which seek to express that knowledge in an FRBR-aware manner. This webinar will provide a brief overview of RDA elements and vocabularies.

1:50 - 2:10 p.m.: Data-driven Evidence for Core MARC Records

William Moen, Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas

This presentation will discuss results from an IMLS-sponsored research project that examined 56 million WorldCat bibliographic records and analyzed patterns of use by catalogers of available fields/subfields. The data provide evidence that can inform specifications for core records based on catalogers' practices.

2:10 - 2:30 p.m.: Question & Answer Session

Allan Cho's new article on RDF, MARC, and the Semantic Web

Allan Cho, who blogs over at Allan's Library, has a new article out: How RDF Can Use MARC in the Semantic Web World: Using Existing Library Cataloguing Methods in Organizing the Web.

BTW, Allan also blogs at: The Postcolonial Librarian.