Cataloging Futures

New print edition: OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards

A print version of the new fourth edition of OCLC's cataloging documentation, Bibliographic Formats and Standards, is now available.

Here's the scoop from SOLINET's Check It Out! blog.

RDA News: IFLA RDA Satellite Meeting Presentations

Just posted on the AUTOCAT discussion list: IFLA RDA Satellite Meeting presentations

Dear Colleagues:

The PowerPoint presentations and speaker notes from the IFLA RDA Satellite Meeting held in conjunction with the 2008 IFLA Conference are now available on the JSC website. You can find them at:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rda.html#presentations

Cordially,

Marjorie
Marjorie E. Bloss, RDA Project Manager
2827 West Gregory Street
Chicago, Illinois 60625
USA
1-773-878-4008
1-773-519-4009 (mobile)

Marjorie_Bloss@msn.com

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?