Cataloging Futures

LC working group report: an insider's view

I'm still on the lookout for blogging coming out of last month's ALA Midwinter conference. Here's one you'll definitely want to read: Anthony R. D. Franks shares the text of his presentation at the ALCTS Cataloging Management Discussion Group. The topic was the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control's final report. Franks is the Team Leader, Cooperative Cataloging Team at the Library of Congress.

Two of the many buzzwords flying about are "sustainable" and "unsustainable" The way we have done things at LC is unsustainable. Either we now no longer have the staff, or soon we will not have the staff, to support our habitual labor-intensive workflow for cataloging, training, review, and editorial functions. We will no longer be given the staff and the funding to go on as we have done.

I don’t think that I’m shocking anybody who does not work at LC by saying that there are things others do better than we do. So, let’s let everybody do what they do best, accept the communal results, and move on. This is not a burden. It is what each of us is already doing. We simply must find a way to share the products of this labor.

ALA Midwinter: Moving Library Services to the Network Level

ALCTS Forum
Moving Library Services to the Network Level
January 14, 2008

Speakers: Matt Goldner, Karen Calhoun, Diana Brooking, Glenn Patton

One of the necessary skills for future catalogers/metadata librarians is the ability to think creatively about metadata and how we communicate with our users. I really liked this forum. Instead of giving us all the answers, the OCLC presenters posed questions and invited us to think creatively about how we could take metadata management to the Web.

I was surprised that the Wikipedia model for WorldCat metadata enrichment was unthinkable to a couple of the catalogers at the forum. The cataloging community desperately needs to step back, set aside economics and current workflows, and imagine a different way of doing things. These PowerPoint slides with the speakers' notes contain the kind of questions we need to be asking ourselves.

• Web-Scale Cataloging and Metadata Management
  (Matt Goldner/Karen Calhoun, OCLC - PDF of PowerPoint slides, with notes)
• Rethinking WorldCat Maintenance
  (Glenn Patton, OCLC - PDF of PowerPoint slides, with notes)
• Network Level Cataloging: The View from a Member Library
  (Diana Brooking, University of Washington - PowerPoint)

ALA Midwinter: Library of Congress Working Group Report

ALCTS Cataloging and Classification Section Forum
Library of Congress Working Group Report
January 13, 2008

Speakers: Diane Dates Casey, Bob Wolven, Mary Catherine Little, Mary Charles Lasater

Having just been released a few days before, the LC working group's report, On the Record [pdf], was a hot topic at the conference. Rather that walk through this session point by point. I'll try to pull out some of the highlights of this highly anticipated forum.

Changes between the draft and final report

According to the working group members present these are some significant changes:

• Suspending work on RDA is a stronger recommendation
• FAST removed so that the recommendation would not be specific [to one system]
• Recommendation 5 is improved [evidence base and LIS education]
• FRBR recommendations more concrete

Diane Dates Casey

Diane Dates Casey, 1 of 3 ALA representatives to the Working Group, was the first speaker. She challenged the library community to work on implementation of the report's recommendation. This work will be a collaborative endeavor with many involved. Diane walked us through the first part of the report: sections  1, 2, and 3.

Bob Wolven

Bob Wolven, the PCC representative to the Working Group, went through the second half of the report. At least that was the plan. But he decided to revisit the earliest part of the report with some additional ideas--an excursus of sorts. He discussed redefining the principles of bibliographic control. We have a wide array of resources that need good metadata and will not always use AACR2/MARC to describe them. People are coming at libraries in more ways. Resources not managed by librarians, e.g., Google Book Search. WorldCat.org is mixing books and articles. So, there is no one standard that will cover everything. We need to think about our standards as modular standards applied selectively. Relationships will be managed via identifiers, not uniform description. He emphasized that there was no more safe haven and that we need to stop thinking of designing for one place.

After walking us through sections 3, 4, and 5, Bob Wolven, asked us to consider the rationale of the report's recommendations with regard to its guiding principles. Do the recommendations follow the guiding principles?

Beacher Wiggins

During the question and answer period, Beacher Wiggins, Director of the ABA Directorate at the Library of Congress, gave a rundown of LC's plans. They have not made any decisions concerning the report. Three diverse groups have been formed at the Library of Congress. There will be a broad review within LC and they will react to the recommendations point by point. They will also continue to work with the working group. LC does not have a timeline, but it should be late winter or early spring.

Diane Hillmann

Diane Hillmann spoke during the Q & A session. She announced that enough funding had been received to start the DCMI/RDA work announced last May.

Mary Charles Lasater

Mary Charles Lasater gave an ALCTS update concerning the working group report. They will prepare a response to the report in the next 3-4 months. ALCTS intends to take a leadership role in the dialogue about the report.

ALA Midwinter 2008: RDA Update Forum

Resource Description and Access (RDA) Update Forum
January 13, 2008
Speaker: John Attig, ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA

Before I get into the forum details, here are 4 documents that are key to understanding the next steps forward to RDA implementation:

• RDA Implementation Scenarios [pdf], Tom Delsey, RDA Editor
• A New Organization for RDA
• Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)
• Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) [pdf]

(Your cataloging/metadata life will go a lot smoother if you take some time to study these documents!)

On to the RDA forum. I had the good fortune to hear John Attig speak twice about RDA because I attended the CC:DA meeting the day before. This was helpful. He discussed 4 topics:

• A new organization for RDA
• Content of the draft section currently being reviewed
• Other decisions taken at the October 2007 JSC meeting
• Next steps

I'm going to focus on the new organization and the next steps for RDA.

New organization of RDA

• The new organization of RDA is the result of JSC's stronger grasp of what it is they are trying to accomplish.
• Old organization did not fit with: the RDA objectives and principles, how they see metadata, and how they understand the FRBR/FRAD model .

RDA will be implemented within a context of the encoding, storage, and exchange of data. RDA needs to support 3 possible implementation scenarios:

• Scenario #3 is the current cataloging environment. A flat record structure with all entities described in a single, composite record.
• Scenario #2 is a single bibliographic record linked to authority records.
• Scenario #1 is separate descriptions of each entity linked by identifiers to show relationships.

Scenario #1 represents the future. Every entity will have a unique identifier. Access points and authority control may be less important in scenario #1. This was part of the reason to change the organizational structure of RDA. The old organization was tied to scenario #2.

RDA and FRBR/FRAD

RDA's new organization now has an explicit connection to FRBR and FRAD. (By the way, everyone at Midwinter who brought this up thought it was a good change.) All FRBR entities are covered. There are placeholders in the structure for the FRBR group 3 entities (concept, object, event, place) to be developed in the future. The structure of the RDA outline now has 2 main parts: attributes of the FRBR entities and relationships among the entities.

The essential handout

We were given a 6 page handout that mapped out the new RDA organization, the FRBR user tasks and entities, and the 3 implementation scenarios. I'm sure this will be posted on the RDA website soon.

Next steps

• The JSC has what seems a herculean task to complete the work of RDA before its first release.
• A complete draft is scheduled for July 2008.
• A new RDA online prototype may be available to try later this year.
• JSC is discussing with MARBI both MARC 21 implementation and developing alternatives to MARC
• RDA's first release is scheduled for early 2009 with implementation following in late 2009.

By the way, Marjorie Bloss, RDA Project Manager, opened this session, but I unfortunately missed her update. I've only scratched the surface on the content of this forum. John Attig is to be commended for doing a great job unpacking an awful lot of complex information. I expect there will be a lot more to report on RDA in the coming year.

Having a great time at ALA Midwinter

Just a quick update. I'm having a great time at the ALA Midwinter Conference. I got to meet and have conversations with 2 of my cataloging/metadata heroes: Diane Hillmann and Janet Swan Hill. Today I'm off to an OCLC forum sponsored by ALCTS, Moving Library Services to the Network Level. Stay tuned. RDA/FRBR and the LC working group report have been hot topics at this conference. I will try to share some of my notes and observations soon.

ALA Midwinter and "delayed blogging" of cataloging programs

While I wasn't able to attend the first day of the ALA Midwinter Conference, I'll be there for the rest of it. However, I won't be able to blog any of the programs until Tuesday or Wednesday. It's what I'm calling "delayed blogging." So, stay tuned for updates on the future of cataloging and metadata bubbling up from the conference meetings and forums!