Cataloging Futures

RDA to be published June 2010

Just posted to the RDA-L list:

RDA: Resource Description and Access will be published in June 2010. While we regret this delay in release of RDA, the transition from publication of AACR2 as a printed manual to release of RDA as a web based toolkit is a complex process with many interdependencies.

The updated text of RDA incorporates recommendations from constituencies and other stakeholders approved at the JSC meeting earlier this year. The revised text has been successfully loaded into the RDA database. The product is currently undergoing thorough quality review and testing in preparation for release.

We recognize that customers and prospective users of RDA need reliable and timely information for planning and budgeting. We are confident that this revised deadline is a realistic target for publication of RDA.

Pricing and purchasing information will be introduced at the time of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, 15-18 January 2010.

Mary Ghikas, Chair Committee of Principals
Alan Danskin, Chair Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA
Don Chatham, Chair Co-publishers

Library of Congress Metadata for Digital Content Group

Interesting metadata work going on at LC. Here's a good overview of the The Metadata for Digital Content group.

Consistent and rich metadata are needed in order to improve search of the Library’s collections and provide web services that users have come to expect.

The MDC group members include catalogers, programmers and digital project managers, and represent different service units of the Library concerned with digital content. All are united by the common need for more effective descriptive metadata, which is of increasing importance for the burgeoning amounts of new digital material added to the Library’s website every day. In studying the question of "what are users looking for, and can they find it?," the group determined that the overall quality of the online bibliographic records plays a big part in success or failure. So, how can the records be structured to help users discover relevant resources when they search? [emphasis added]

Jane Mandelbaum, manager in the Library’s Information Technology directorate and a founder of the group, said the group is focusing on "how we build standardized metadata that works across the spectrum of digital objects."

The group has made considerable progress through the creation of a master list of standardized metadata elements used to map existing digital collection records to a single XML metadata scheme. The XML metadata uses the Metadata Object Description Schema.

h/t ResourceShelf

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: [email protected]
• 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.

Shawne Miksa's new article on RDA

There's a new article by Shawne Miska: Resource Description and Access (RDA) and New Research Potentials [pdf]. 

Found in: the June/July 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology [pdf] on pages 47-51.

New article: Cataloguing rules!: the road to RDA

F. Tim Knight, who blogs over at The Bib Blog, just wrote a great article on RDA. Cataloguing Rules!: The Road to RDA looks at the development of RDA and addresses the issue of why we need a new code to replace AACR2.

Via The Bib Blog

Future of MARC - maybe it really doesn't matter?

In Who needs MARC? Lukas Koster argues that the MARC format isn't really that crucial. 

The thing is: it really does not matter how you store bibliographic metadata in your database, as long as you can present and exchange the data in any format requested, be it MARC or Dublin Core or anything else.