Cataloging Futures

Demystifying library standards: a NISO/ALCTS webinar

Demystifying Library Standards: a NISO/ALCTS webinar

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 from 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. (EDT)

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has announced the first in a series of webinars on standards in the library environment. “Demystifying Library Standards,” will focus on placing standards in context. It will be presented by Trisha Davis, Ohio State University, Julia Gammon, University of Akron, Karen Wetzel, NISO, and Pamela Bluh, University of Maryland Law School and current ALCTS President.

The speakers will address why standards are important to libraries and not just in the traditional technical services areas. As libraries are changing and evolving in an increasingly digital world, so are standards. This webinar will explain how standards are critical to the developments in such areas as e resources, user access, description and metadata, licensing and preservation. Some specific standards, both published and forthcoming, will be touched on as examples. Future webinars in the series will discuss those and other standards in more depth. Participants will learn how they can become actively involved in standards development.

If you want to learn how standards can provide benefits to organizations, their users, and yourself and are involved with library technical services, the acquisition and management of e-resources, library systems implementation including ILS, ERMS, link resolvers, and Web interfaces, cooperative electronic arrangements with other libraries, consortia, content providers or long-term preservation activities, then this webinar is for you.

Cost: $20 for NISO and ALCTS members; $25 for non-members.

To register online go to: http://www.regonline.com/ALCTS08.

For questions, email nisohq@niso.org.

RU into URIs?

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) have become a regular part of my life as a metadata librarian. In fact, identifiers have become somewhat of an obsession. So, I was happy to find the URI Resource Pages via the Library of Congress standards website.

JSC April meeting outcomes now available

Important reading for keeping up with the development of the new cataloging content standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA):

The Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) has just issued outcomes from their most recent meeting. The meeting was held in Chicago in April 2008.

An important opportunity

Last week on the cataloging lists, Barbara Tillett writes:

As Chair of the IFLA Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code (IME ICC) I am pleased to invite comments from the worldwide library community on the final draft of the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles and its accompanying Glossary.

In order to provide the appropriate review period and to schedule adequate time to cumulate, analyze, and incorporate comments before the General Meeting of IFLA in August, the Statement is being posted today on a public Wiki. The IFLA Headquarters Office is closed for holiday April 30-May 5th, but as soon as they return we will move the files there and redirect from the Wiki. In the meantime please link to: http://catprinciples.pbwiki.com/ and view and/or download the Statement for your review; and please use the accompanying voting document for your response. [emphasis mine]

UPDATE: The draft and voting form have been moved to the IFLA website.

You might want to take a look back to a post I wrote last year on the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles. I'm looking forward to reviewing and commenting on this important document before the June 30th deadline.

LC using new content standard for rare books: DCRM(B)

I'm very interested in rare books, having been exposed to the wonders of rare book cataloging when I was a fledgling cataloger (circa 1991). At that time, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books had just been published. Now, its successor is available: Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books).

LC's implementation decisions for DCRM(B) were just posted yesterday. One of the interesting thing about these decisions is how much they refer to cataloger's judgment.

The Library of Congress Rare Book Team has been using Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B)) since October 2007 in its cataloging of rare materials. Implementation decisions at the Library of Congress related to options, etc., in DCRM(B) are available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/rarebooks.pdf.

DCRM(B), prepared by the Bibliographic Standards Committee, Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Association of College and Research Libraries in collaboration with the Cataloging Policy and Support Office of the Library of Congress, was published in 2007; it is the successor to the 1991 publication Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books.

Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) is published by the Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service.

New metadata schema - textMD

From the LC website:

textMD is a XML Schema that details technical metadata for text-based digital objects. It most commonly serves as an extension schema used within the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Schema (METS) administrative metadata section. However, it could also exist as a standalone document. In the future textMD can be used within the PREMIS element, additionalTechnicalCharacteristics, an extension for format-specific metadata within the PREMIS preservation metadata Object XML Schema version 2.0.

Essential reading: Metadata for digital libraries

The heart of our digital library at work is the METS standard. So, it's hard for me not to like this report which is very pro-METS. Richard Gartner's Metadata for digital libraries: state of the art and future directions [pdf] is a clarion call for integrated standards and agreed upon best practices in the future library metadata landscape.

Gartner stresses the importance of standards with XML as the common platform. He goes over the top contenders for integrated standards, such as METS, Dublin Core, MODS, MIX, etc. This report is written in a clear style and could function as a good introductory overview of descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata. A very good read for administrators, LIS students, as well as the experienced professional.

Via DigitalKoans

Reading Thomas Mann's response

In his response to the LC Working Group report, Thomas Mann insists that the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are still a useful, essential tool in the serious scholar's arsenal of information-seeking resources. I don't agree with Mann on every point. And I'm a lot more sanguine about LCSH as a discovery tool on the Web. But, we're in basic agreement that the LC subject headings can and will provide valuable subject-rich metadata in the future.

If the Library of Congress doesn't want to continue LCSH management, development, and maintenance (this is still not clear), they should open up this work to the library community. Just morph the subject authority records into XML (or some other Web-friendly format) and mount them on the Web as an open-source tool.

I think it's interest that there's no clamour to stop using other controlled vocabularies, like the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). So, is this a debate/conversation about the value of subject-rich metadata or about where the Library of Congress wants to allocate taxpayers' dollars, as Mann suggests?

Interoperable metadata - How do we get there?

Interoperability is a buzzword in the library community. In the past we had pretty much one system of standards with regard to metadata creation. Now we're grappling with diverse forms of metadata. Here's a document, Harmonization of Metadata Standards [pdf], that nicely lays out the issues involved.

Via DigitalKoans

RDA development: An iterative process

The cataloging discussion lists were all a buzz last week with opinions about the future cataloging code, Resource Description and Access (RDA). This was spurred on by the perfect storm: the LC working group's recommendation to halt work on RDA; Martha Yee's new cataloging rules, an alternative to RDA; and Michael Gorman's scathing criticism of RDA in his new, yet to be published article.

It seems the defenders of RDA are in the minority, but if I had to weigh in I'm with them. The RDA drafts do have problems. But I agree with Shawne Miksa, who said on AUTOCAT:

How about a reality check? RDA is not scheduled to be released until 2009. It is not going to be released tomorrow and it certainly is not going to be implemented tomorrow. The library community doesn't seem to be ready for a lot of things, but a lot of things happen regardless. If we don't actually take a step forward, then we don't actually move forward.

And I think Laura Smart has it right also:

All I really know is that RDA will be an imperfect work-in-progress for quite a long time. We all have to accept that we will have a release-refine-release cycle and that we won't get perfection the first time out. Otherwise we'll wait forever.

Diane Hillmann thinks we should look at RDA development as an iterative process:

I think that, should the RDA process stumble along and a few checkbooks open to provide some money for the DCMI/RDA work to get started soon, what we'll end up with is something that is a decent first iteration of what we want to do. If you think, as I do, that we MUST move to a process of iterative development and experimentation (and then back around again) in order to move sufficiently swiftly to play in a world with Google, Amazon and that mob, then what we end up with at the end of the process (rocky as it is) has to be good enough to start with, and we'll work on it to make it better. Because, frankly, we don't have the time to go through something more ponderous and stately to come up with a perfect standard. It's no longer that kind of world. To some extent, it never has been--those with long memories will recall how long it took to get AACR2 off the launching pad, and what we have now is quite a bit different than what we started with.

So, here's my two cents. A lot of work has go into RDA to develop a cataloging code that will provide us with a standard for a digital and print collections in a Web environment. That is where we need to be because that's where our users are. So, let's trust the process, roll up our sleeves, and continue on with the tedious, but essential task of studying and commenting on the RDA drafts.