This paper will chronicle how the UNM Libraries' Cataloging and Discovery Services Department is journeying, though specific examples, from a print-centric library cataloging operation to one that could take on large AV metadata projects. By increasing its knowledge base of standards and technologies and improving its flexibility, UNM Cataloging and Discovery Services is creating the ability to deploy new, rapidly adaptive workfiows.
This article aims to indicate the lessons learnt from the digitization initiative by the Lithuanian National Bibliographic Agency – the Centre of Bibliography and Book Science at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania – and other memory institutions (the Lithuanian Art Museum and the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuanian), which provide authoritative bibliographic descriptions for the national collection. It describes experience in the development, application and updating of formats and standards used for recording bibliographic information and cultural content, provision of access to it, establishment of the Integrated Virtual Library Information System and the integrated portal of the cultural heritage www.epaveldas.lt. The report specifies the Lithuanian national bibliographic agency’s efforts on updating the legislation to reflect partnership among memory institutions, creation of a methodology for such partnership as well as encouraging the compilation of the national bibliography
This paper gives an account of the experiment to develop an FRBR repository for the European Library, being carried out in the framework of the TELPlus Project. Following a brief review of the existing FRBR experiments, a number of issues for the FRBR implementation in bibliographic databases was identified that provided a foundation for the development in the TELPlus Project. The system design, the results achieved so far, as well as the final deliverables and results expected, are explained.
The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model is beginning to gain recognition. This paper presents FRBR including possibilities and limitations of current standards and practices in terms of expressing the FRBR model. It is claimed that national bibliographies should benefit the most from FRBR, as they contain large quantities of high quality bibliographic data on many works with multiple versions. The paper is in part based on the results of frbrisation of the Slovenian national bibliography and of two other bibliographic databases.
The Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records (FRSAR) Working Group was formed in 2005 as the third IFLA working group of the FRBR family to address subject authority data issues and to investigate the direct and indirect uses of subject authority data by a wide range of users. This paper introduces the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD), the model developed by the FRSAR Working Group, and discusses it in the context of other related conceptual models defined in the specifications during recent years, including the British Standard BS8723-5: Structured vocabularies for information retrieval – Guide Part 5: Exchange formats and protocols for interoperability, W3C's SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference, and OWL Web Ontology Language Reference. These models enable the consideration of the functions of subject authority data and concept schemes at a higher level that is independent of any implementation, system, or specific context, while allowing us to focus on the semantics, structures, and interoperability of subject authority data.
The aim of this paper is to present an overview of subject indexing in Italy, illustrating the progress made in recent years in creating effective tools for subject access that comply with international principles and standards and that are capable of dealing with the exponential growth and availability of information resources on the web, and meeting the information needs of a new generation of users. Great attention is being paid today to classification and subject indexing languages based, as far as is possible, on shareable standards, and that allow interoperability and mappings. The “new challenge for libraries and standards” is to create future systems which have no boundaries or language limits, and are capable of working with heterogeneous resources. 1
The paper highlights some aspects of the UDC management policy for 2007 and onwards. Following an overview of the long history of modernization of the classification, which started in the 1960s and has influenced the scheme's revision and development since 1990, major changes and policies from the recent history of the UDC revision are summarized. The perspective of the new editorial team, established in 2007, is presented. The new policy focuses on the improved organization and efficiency of editorial work and of UDC products.
This paper provides a brief overview of the evolving descriptive metadata landscape, one phenomenon of which can be characterized as “cross-community” metadata as manifested in records that are the result of a combination of carefully considered data value and data content standards. he online catalog of the Morgan Library & Museum provides a real-life illustration of how diverse data content standards and vocabulary tools can be integrated within the classic data structure/technical interchange format of MARC21 to better describe unique, museum-type objects, and to provide better end-user access and understanding. The Morgan experience also shows the value of developing a collaborative model for metadata creation that combines the subject expertise of curators and scholars with the cataloging expertise and knowledge of standards possessed by librarians.
Academic libraries in Sub Saharan Africa have difficulties in providing access to their collections and the huge amount of information available to their users because of technological challenges. In an effort to provide access to better academic library collections, Western and Eastern African university libraries are automating their library systems and services to make their collections available in anline catalogues with external support. This paper looks at the collaborative initiatives of academic libraries and international corporations in automating their libraries, their expectations, successes and challenges. The paper also shares the experiences of a young university's journey through library automation.
Although user tagging of library resources shows substantial promise as a means of improving the quality of users’ access to those resources, several important questions about the level and nature of the warrant for basing retrieval tools on user tagging are yet to receive full consideration by library practitioners and researchers. Among these is the simple evaluative question: What, specifically, are the factors that determine whether or not user-tagging services will be successful? If success is to be defined in terms of the effectiveness with which systems perform the particular functions expected of them (rather than simply in terms of popularity), an understanding is needed both of the multifunctional nature of tagging tools, and of the complex nature of users’ mental models of that multifunctionality. In this paper, a conceptual framework is developed for the evaluation of systems that integrate user tagging with more traditional methods of library resource description. Tagging and user tagging
Presented at the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC): 73rd IFLA General Conference and Council, 19 August 2007. Division IV. URL: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla73/index.htm
The UNIMARC manual defines a standard for the formal representation of bibliographic information. For that purpose the UNIMARC manual contains different types of information: structural rules stating that records are composed of a leader, a set of control fields and a set of data fields, with certain syntactic characteristics; content rules, defining required fields and acceptable values for various components of the record; and, finally, examples, explanatory notes, and cross references to other points of the manual. Much of this information must find its way into computer systems where it will be used to validate records, produce indexes, adequately format records for display and, in some cases, provide human-readable help. Providing the UNIMARC manual in XML greatly simplifies the full implementation of the format in computer systems. Our goal was to produce a formal representation of the UNIMARC format so that the standard could be incorporated in software systems in a transparent way. The outcome is an XML representation of the UNIMARC manual, which can be processed automatically by applications that need to enforce the format rules, provide help information or vocabularies. We developed a scheme for the UNIMARC manual and a set of software tools that demonstrate its usage.
The paper provides an overview of subject gateway development in Australia and takes a closer look at three subject gateways coordinated by the University of Queensland: AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; AVEL Sustainability Knowledge Network, an engineering and sustainable development gateway; and WebLaw, a gateway for legal professionals. The challenges facing subject gateways are examined, including interoperability, coordination and most significantly, sustainability. The paper concludes with the overarching questions being considered by gateway coordinators such as the place of subject gateways and their future given trends in the evolution of the web.
The UDC is attractive to different stakeholders across the information sector because of its wide- spread application, large vocabulary and availability in an electronic format. Modern information retrieval systems have the need but also the capacity to support flexible and interactive retrieval systems. The role of classification in such systems is to serve as an underlying knowledge structure that provides systematic subject organisation and thus complements the search using natural language terms. There are, however, specific requirements that must be satisfied in order to make efficient use of classification and these are not well known outside the library domain and are poorly implemented in library systems. This is especially the case for synthetic classifications, such as UDC, because its elements are meant to be manipulated by the system to fulfill different functions (a flexible systematic display, browsing or search purposes). This report summarizes the most important functionalities of the UDC that need to be taken into account during the implementation process. Important issues about the relation between the UDC schedules in electronic form - UDC Master Reference File and a classification tool (an authority file) that may be built on it, are highlighted. A better understanding of the UDC system's functionality may improve or facilitate its implementation and lower the costs of system maintenance which may be relevant for both prospective users and legacy systems.
Based around the Feasibility Study into a National Union Catalogue for the UK (UKNUC) and input into the investigation of the future of union catalogues in Denmark, this paper suggests some of the 'background' issues that need consideration in the design of delivery systems. It is not intended to address the full range of issues in modern document delivery systems and does not, for example, discuss implementation of the ISO-ILL (International Standardization Organization-Interlibrary Loan) standard. Rather, it emphasises that care should be taken to ensure that software design does not override a consideration of user needs. Results are presented from the UKNUC survey of user requirements, comparisons between physical and virtual union catalogue architectures are made and the recently published report of the UK Research Support Libraries Group is cited as it impacts on these topics.
This paper discusses the first major implementation of two significant new cataloguing models: IFLA's FRBR (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and event modeling (INDECS and Harmony). The paper refers brieflu to the decision making processes leading to the adoption of these models, and outlines the implementation process, the benefits of the implementation, the practical and conceptual difficulties encountered in this implementation, and some observations on the future of these models in the library and information worlds. IFLA's Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records was published in 1998, and was widely accepted as providing a sound conceptual model for a new generation of bibliographic records which record and present the publishing history of information resources. The 2000 LC (Library of Congress) Cataloguing conference included a number of papers on the requirement to add 'event models' into cataloguing. FRBR and Event Modelling are powerful tools for presenting bibliographic and other information in a richly contextual environment. Implementing the models presents significant challenges but is achievable, cost effective, offers many benefits to practitioners and should be considered by a range of information providers.
The paper discusses issues in the interoperability of indexes to metadata records in distributed information retrieval networks, based on the findings of the CAIRNS and SCONE projects. The Co-operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland and Scottish Collections Network Extension projects have evolved into embryonic services which fit together to provide user-driven collection identification and selection mechanisms and the ability to cross-search related metadata for item discovery and access. The CAIRNS Cataloguing Issues Working Group identified a number offactors affecting cross-searching of metadata indexes for authors, titles, subjects and control numbers, induding local cataloguing policies, content standards, and index structures. The SCONE project has identified issues in subject indexing at the collection level, in particular the relationship between collections with specific subject content and general collectionsfor which Conspectus-type subject strength mappings are appropriate. The paper discusses these findings in a cross-domain context.
The subject-based interoperability issues covered in this paper arise from two projects, now called HILT Phase I and HILT phase II. HILT Phase I (previously referred to only as the HILT Project) reported in November 2001. It was funded jointly by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and lasted just over a year. JISC funding for HILT Phase II is expected to be confirmed in April 2002. Phase II will last for 12 months, and will utilise the work of HILT Phase I, and the skills and experience of the team that carried it out, to build on the crosscommunity consensus achieved in HILT Phase I by creating a pilot terminologies mapping service or route map with a specific focus on current concerns in the developing Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), including - but not necessarily limited to - Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) focused subject terminologies for collection level description in the JISC's planned Information Environment (IE). The user evaluation and cost benefit analysis of various levels of service will also be features of the project.
The article examines the efforts for incorporating non-Roman scripts, notably Arabic, in MARC bibliographic and authority records. Arabic name authority records have been handwritten using Arabic script and filed manually in book or card catalogs since the time that it was considered important to preserve this information. After the adoption of typewriters as tools in library cataloging departments, those who only had Latin script typewriters were forced into using transliteration schemes, a practice that has been criticized for compromising uniformity and accessibility.(Houissa) Later, typewriters fitted with Arabic character keys allowed authority cards to be typed in Arabic. There were also attempts to encode both Latin and Arabic scripts on cards—or in book catalogs, as the first dual-script name authorities; something that was encouraged by the catalog cards distributed between 1902 and 1997 by the Library of Congress.
