In the context of current initiatives around linked data and cloud-based service frameworks, the presentation invites exploration of future directions that library cooperatives might take to significantly improve the visibility and recognition of library collections on the web.

1. 1
Rethinking Library Cooperatives
and Catalogs on and for the Web
Karen Calhoun
PCC Participants Meeting
ALA Midwinter Meeting
26 January 2014, 4:30-6:00 pm
Pennsylvania Convention Center 113C
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2. 2
I don’t know the answers – all I can
do is ask questions

3. 3
Outline
1. What‘s the problem to be solved?
2. In what ways is the problem being addressed?
3. What are some possible future directions for
the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC)?
4. Discussion

4. 4
Background
• Chambers, Sally, ed. 2013. Catalogue 2.0: The
Future of the Library Catalogue. Facet
Publishing (co-published by ALA).
• Partial contents:
▫ Bermès, Emmanuelle. Enabling your catalogue
for the semantic web.
▫ Breeding, Marshall. Next generation discovery.
▫ Calhoun, Karen. Supporting digital scholarship:
bibliographic control, library cooperatives and
open access repositories.
▫ More…

5. 5
A new kind of library
•
Build a vision of a new kind of
library
•
Be more involved with research
and learning materials and
systems
•
Be more engaged with campus
communities
•
Make library
collections, services, and
librarians more visible in
academic communities of
practice
•
Build on and for the web
•
Culture of assessment
Image:
By The Opte Project [CC-BY-2.5 ]
via Wikimedia Commons
Internet_map_1024.jpg
The library in the community
(in virtual space)

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What‘s the problem to be solved? New library
discovery services have helped, but the overall
pattern is holding…
Education Advisory Board. 2011. “Redefining the Academic Library:
Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services”, p. 11.

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What‘s the problem? (more)
• ―Catalogues are part of the ‗deep web‘ and
cannot be indexed by search engines; they are
deemed to be used only by people who already
know they exist. When transferring data from
one catalogue to another, duplication is
necessary; it is not possible to link the content
seamlessly… Catalogues are data silos … they
are not part of the web.‖—Emmanuelle
Bermès, Catalogue 2.0, p. 118

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What‘s the problem? (and more)
―The problem is that access to library collections
is imperfect because we don’t expose our
collections very well on the web.‖
—Ted Fons and Richard Wallis. 2013. ―The Power
of Shared Library Data‖ presented at the ALA
Annual Meeting, June 29.
https://semanticweb.com/tag/ala.

9. 9
Getting more specific …
• What parts of library collections aren‘t exposed
very well on the web?
▫ There are alternatives for getting to the online
journal literature (search engines, Google
Scholar, specific e-research resources)
▫ The contents of open access repositories are
gaining in visibility and impact on the web
▫ What‘s left? (I will come back to this)

10. 10
Discontinuous change and the need
for transformational thinking
• Definition and response
▫ Non-incremental change
that threatens existing
structures because it
drastically alters the way
things are currently done or
have been done for years
(businessdictionary.com)
▫ Displaced service models
and traditional values
don’t/can’t adjust quickly
enough
• Examples
▫ Netflix disrupted video
stores
▫ Google disrupts traditional
information services and
systems
▫ The internet and web have
disrupted newspapers
(Amazon has bought the
Washington Post for
$250M!)
Libraries have entered an era of discontinuous change—a time
when the cumulated assets of the past do not guarantee future success.

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The US cataloging community has
accomplished system-wide change before!
“In 1987 and 1988, the Linked Systems
Project made it possible to ditch the
laborious and costly paper-based
contribution method [for NACO] in
favor of online contribution and
updating of the [national authority] file.”
The Linked Systems Project and NACO,
1987-88 - 1998
What made it work:
The will to cooperate
The means to cooperate
Calhoun, Karen. 1998. “A Bird’s Eye View of Authority Control in Cataloging.”
In Proceedings of the Taxonomic Authority Files Workshop, June 22-23, 1998.
Washington DC: California Academy of Sciences.

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Big assumptions underlying the rest of
this presentation
• The parts of research library collections that aren‘t exposed
well on the web are mainly (1) print-based, monographic
collections and (2) ―hidden‖ collections
• Effective and efficient means for students, scholars and
citizens to discover and gain access to these parts of library
collections have value
• Therefore library catalogs (or their functional equivalents)
SHOULD be carried forward, and …
• Cooperative, collective activity is necessary to refocus and
transform catalogs and cataloging systems
• (Do we really know these things? What is the evidence?)

13. 13
―More change is needed than replacing
MARC with a linked data model.‖
• Start with some fundamental questions:
▫ What is the present and future value of the
legacy, largely print-based collections in the PCC
research libraries?
▫ What about hidden collections (unique content
that is now under-described or not described at
all)?
▫ What are our aspirations for these collections?
And therefore, what should be our strategies
for carrying forward their metadata or
creating new metadata for them?

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Some possible aspirations for these
collections?
• Shared repository that makes
library collections visible and
available to larger audiences
on the web?
• Shared repository for making
now hidden rare/unique library
collections more visible on the
web?
• Source of information for
collective collection
management and future
digitization efforts?
• Better integration with cultural
heritage collections held by
other types of institutions?
• Collective source of metadata
to point to and efficiently reuse
(rather than copy into
duplicative catalogs), thus
reducing library costs?
• What else?

15. 15
Some ways that library (and LAM)
communities are addressing the problem
• Two main categories
▫ Data and data models
▫ Cloud-based service frameworks

16. 16
Data and data models
• RDF-based data models (linked data)
▫ BIBFRAME
▫ Europeana Data Model (EDM)
▫ Other (e.g., CIDOC-Conceptual Reference Model)

17. 17
Data and data models, continued
• ―In order to replace the current records-based
model with one that allows library information
to be reused in other settings and also allows
libraries to make better use of data originating
outside of the library domain, it is necessary
to agree on a common model that reduces
the complexity of that data integration. To
build such a model, librarians … need to
cooperate with potential data consumers from
industry and other cultural heritage
institutions.‖—Lars Svensson
Svensson, Lars. 2013. “Are Current Bibliographic Models Suitable for Integration
with the Web?” Information Standards Quarterly 25 (4): 6.
doi:10.3789/isqv25no4.2013.02.

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Interoperability and incentives for
adopting standards/data models
• Lessons from over 20 years of digital library
work…
• ―If the cost of adopting a standard is high, it
will be adopted only by those organizations
that truly value the functionality provided.
Conversely, when the cost is low, more
organizations will be willing to adopt it, even if
the functionality is limited.‖—Bill Arms
Arms, William Y., Diane Hillmann, Carl Lagoze, Dean Krafft, Richard Marisa, John
Saylor, Carol Terrizzi, and Herbert Van de Sompel. 2002. “A Spectrum of
Interoperability.” D-Lib Magazine 8 (1) (January). doi:10.1045/january2002-arms.

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New cooperative service frameworks
• Moving beyond redundant catalogs (highly
duplicative data silos, not part of the web)
• ―An option is to move from multiple standalone
catalogs to larger shared, cooperative
frameworks at the network level that would
register many libraries‘ holdings and be able to
feed this information to multiple locations on
the web.‖—p. 159

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One example of early experimentation: A German
cloud-based infrastructure for library data (CIB)
Image: With thanks to Dr. Uwe Risch and Mr. Maurits van der Graaf. Dr. Risch is leading
the CIB project. Mr. Van der Graaf is a consultant who is working on a current project with ABES (the French
bibliographic agency for higher education) to investigate emerging cloud-based services that migrate
shared cataloging data and union catalogs to the cloud.

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Status of CIB project
• For more information, see the project proposal and
application to the DFG (German Research
Foundation), the national research funding
organization:
▫ Hessian Library Information System HeBIS, Bavarian
Library Network (BVB), and Cooperative Library Network
Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV). 2013. ―Cloudbasierte
Infrastruktur Für Bibliotheksdaten.‖ Available from:
▫ http://www.hebis.de/de/1ueber_uns/projekte/cib.php
• The project was approved for funding by the DFG and
project work began in September 2013.

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One other example of early
experimentation: LIBRIS XL
• The Swedish national library – moving LIBRIS
shared cataloguing system into a new system
(LIBRIS XL)
• Bibliographic data model based on RDF (selfdeveloped - different from BIBFRAME)
• More information: Malmsten, Martin. 2013.
―Triple Bypass - Open MARC Surgery.‖ Elag
2013. http://elag2013.org/triple-bypass-openmarc-surgery/. (Links to video of conference
presentation)

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Pulling the pieces together: What are some
possible future directions for the PCC?
• Work on a shared project to encode and release
BIBCO libraries‘ catalogs as linked data?
• Explore new directions for the NACO program?
• Scan the landscape for new potential partners
(archives, museums)?
• Mount a cooperative project to expose now hidden
collections at these libraries in the web of data?
• Cooperative work on identifiers for
works, manifestations, institutions, resources
(people, places, concepts…)?

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Looking at the BIBFRAME Roadmap …
• BIBFRAME Roadmap 2014 –
2015: test
implementations, looking at
other models, implementation
including system vendors?
• As the work progresses, would
it make sense to convene a
forum to bring stakeholders
and potential advisors together
to explore new ideas for
collaboration, collective
action, partnerships?

25. 25
Over to you!
Karen Calhoun
ksc34@pitt.edu