Cataloging Futures

Karen Schneider on the cataloging establishment

Karen Schneider challenges the cataloging establishment in a post she wrote recently on the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (or what is now fondly known as WoGroFuBiCo, Bill Denton's stylish acronym). I think it's worth listening to what she says:

I read LC’s report as comfort food: yes, yes, we should do many things… real soon now… but since there’s no plan or timeline attached to any of this, rest assured you can just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s all part of the task force pyramid scheme, in which one report begets many more.

I like that Roy keyed in on the word, “control.” Every time I hear someone talking about “controlling” bibliographic data, I chuckle, a low throaty laugh intended to convey my disbelief that anyone thinks we will still be controlling anything in fifty years. Thirty. Ten. Five. Now, will the Big O yield some of that control itself?

Many of us in LibraryLand worry that we’re just one black swan away from “game over,” but not the muckety-mucks of cataloging. They remind me of Bush on global warming: needily grounded in beliefs and practices the rest of us see as not only foolish and outdated, but pernicious.

I have to disagree with Karen. I actually think the picture for the future of cataloging is one of a new type of order and data control based on Web developments, like the Semantic Web. How we do things may be very different, but much of what we value now: shared standards, controlled vocabularies, unique identifiers, etc. is exactly what leaders in the Web community are working on also. If you don't believe me just start reading a little about the Semantic Web initiatives to see that they're goals are similar to our traditional library goals.

Also, please don't take this as an attack on uncontrolled data, e.g, tags. Surely, in the future there will be room for both.

Future of MARC and the Semantic Web

I've been blogging for about 6 months now and have 100+ library blogs in my reader. But one topic I'm really interested in doesn't get much press: the future of Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC).

When it is mentioned, MARC usually gets a bad rap. It's often viewed as worn out legacy metadata better suited for card catalogs with an antiquated late 1960's data structure that mystifies computer programmers when they first encounter it.

However, lately I've read a few things that say otherwise. Some say MARC is very good metadata--it just needs to be morphed into something more Web-friendly. This more positive view describes MARC as a complex metadata format, with a good level of granularity--well suited for what it was intended for at the time it was developed.

Here's one of those voices. In a post primarily about libraries and the Semantic Web, Richard Wallis comments on MARC:

So does the library world pack up its knowledge and collaborative spirit and jump on the SW bandwagon, leaving the good, but old creaking and inflexible library standards such as Z39.50 and MARC, behind? - In the very long term probably yes, but over the next while what libraries are doing today, in the way they are doing it (with the exception of the format of the odd MARC tag), is still very valuable. [emphasis mine]

I would contend that, from a cataloguing point of view, libraries are providing more value than current software packages and their user interfaces can make full use of. Some of this value is being shown by the work around faceted browsing, FRBR and the like, but this is just scratching the surface. Transferring/transforming the data in to RDF, opens up opportunities to walk or browse through the semantic relationships expressed between records and external resources to deliver a more holistic view of a resource and its place in the world.

The discussions I have watched go past can be characterized; as a binary choice between RDF and MARC. That is wrong. As we, and others, have shown MARC is a rich source of data that can drive the expansion of the semantic web. [emphasis mine]

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

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!