Cataloging Futures

New NISO/OCLC report: Streamlining book metadata workflow

I just started this one, but can already tell it's a must-read.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and OCLC Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) have just issues this white paper: Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow[pdf].

The white paper was commissioned by NISO and OCLC as a follow-up to the Symposium for Publishers and Librarians held by OCLC on March 18-19, 2009 to discuss book metadata. This paper analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. With the number of book formats multiplying and the amount of digital content growing rapidly, the metadata required to support the discovery, sale, and use of content by a global audience is increasing exponentially. At the same time economic pressures on all stakeholders in the supply chain from publishers, wholesalers, booksellers, metadata vendors, and librarians present greater challenges to providing quality and comprehensive metadata at every point in the cycle. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the process and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more efficient.

New report: Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD)

There is so much to read right now in cataloging and metadata that it's hard not to feel overwhelmed. Last night I was clueless as to where to begin. But this morning I decided that the report that should go to the top of the pile is: Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) [pdf].

This is the third conceptual model along with FRBR and FRAD.

The draft report is now open for public comment. If you're inclined (like I am) to throw in your two-cents, the comments have to be emailed in by July 31, 2009.

Via Catalogablog and The FRBR Blog

New metadata tool under development: Vocabulary Mapping Framework

A couple of the other cataloging blogs posted this news over a week ago. But I also wanted to weigh in on the Vocabulary Mapping Framework [pdf].

Work is under way to create an extensive and authoritative mapping of vocabularies from major content metadata standards, creating a downloadable tool to support interoperability across communities.

The work is an expansion of the existing RDA/ONIX Framework into a comprehensive vocabulary of resource relators and categories, which will be a superset of those used in major standards from the publisher/producer, education and bibliographic/heritage communities (CIDOC CRM; DCMI; DDEX; DOI; FRBR; MARC21; LOM; ONIX; RDA – see reference section below for details).

The resulting tool will be known as the Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF).

This is the kind of tool that will be very helpful for metadata work, not just in the future, but right now.

For example, last year I mentioned that I'd been using XQuery to map Dublin Core elements to CrossRef XML Metadata Deposit Schema elements to create XML documents to submit to CrossRef, our DOI provider. I definitely could have used the VMF for that project.

RDA to be published end of November 2009

From the RDA-L list:

News from the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA:

• Finalization of RDA text: The RDA text was handed to the co-publishers on schedule on 22 June. RDA is scheduled to be released at the end of November 2009. [emphasis mine]
• New Chair: Alan Danskin will be the JSC Chair from 1 July 2009.Danskin is the Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator at the British Library.
• During July, the JSC Secretariat will move to the British Library: jscsecretary@bl.uk
• Web site: The JSC Web site has moved to http://www.rda-jsc.org/. There are redirections in place from the old site to pages on the new site explaining the change.

Nathalie Schulz
Secretary, JSC

My question: What happened to the RDA Online demo scheduled for May 2009?

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.