Presentation by Heather Sherman and Jenny May on the BDS Academic Library Licence

1. BDS – Your metadata partner
Meeting the aims of Plan M and
streamlining metadata workflows with
the BDS Academic Library Licence
Heather Sherman
DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC LIBRARY OPERATIONS
Bibliographic Data Services
heather.sherman@bdslive.com
METADATA SERVICES COORDINATOR
Imperial College, London
j.may@imperial.ac.uk
Jenny May

2. BDS – Your metadata partner
Who are BDS?
• Bibliographic Data Services Ltd
• Established in 1995
• Privately owned by original co-founders Lesley Whyte and Eric Green
• Employ over 60 staff
• Based in Dumfries, South-West Scotland
• Proud to be a Real Living Wage employer
• Provider of records to academic libraries, and for the BL CIP
programme, for over 25 years

3. BDS – Your metadata partner
https://www.crichton.co.uk/

4. BDS – Your metadata partner
Background
Converging factors
• NAG Quality of Shelf-Ready Metadata report
• Jisc Remodeling the UK Data Marketplace report
• RLUK Strategy 2022-2025
• Importance of sustainable procurement
• Plan M for metadata

5. BDS – Your metadata partner
Impact of poor metadata
Quality
• 2020 NAG Quality of Shelf Ready metadata report
o 25% dissatisfied with the quality of supplied shelf-ready records
o 88% perform quality control on shelf-ready records from suppliers
o 96% correct errors
Users
• Analysis from a UK HEI, responsible for 15% of Helpdesk enquiries
• Contributes to poor user experience
• Prevents users finding resources
• Can cause resources to be underutilised

6. BDS – Your metadata partner
Jisc Remodeling the UK Data Marketplace
Quality of metadata
• Libraries spend considerable amounts of money on acquiring metadata, too frequently it is not fit for
purpose.
• Librarians spend a great deal of effort correcting bibliographic metadata that they have purchased.
Metadata infrastructure
• Many channels through which metadata is made available, and none is viewed as entirely fit for
purpose.
• The landscape is messy, metadata flows from player to player, often being stripped of prior
intellectual input

7. BDS – Your metadata partner
RLUK Strategy, 2022-2025
Collective Collections
RLUK will work with its members to facilitate collaboration around:
• Discovery - Promoting efficient and effective data flows to ensure that resources are discoverable to
readers.
What this means
RLUK will:
• Continue to work with Jisc and other partners on Plan M, to enhance bibliographic metadata,
streamline cataloguing processes and improve discoverability. Investigate the most appropriate
rights environment for metadata to encourage open sharing.
• Work to ensure vibrant markets and sustainable community solutions for creating and managing
collective collections.

8. BDS – Your metadata partner
Plan M
Objectives
1. Establish a fair and sustainable ‘pay to share’ bibliographic data ecosystem
2. A data supply chain that delivers ‘fit-for-purpose’ records as early as possible
3. Streamline workflows for libraries and suppliers
4. Reduce duplication of effort across the community
5. Cut down the number of places from which libraries source their records
6. An infrastructure that allows easy acquisition & re-sharing of quality records
7. The metadata associated with ‘routine acquisition’ is regarded as a solved issue

9. BDS – Your metadata partner
What is the ALL?
• Completely new service offering radical change
• Created in close consultation with stock suppliers, system suppliers, publishers and SUPC
• Designed to meet the specific requirements and buying patterns of UK and Irish academic libraries
• No need to dedicate staff time to sourcing, creating or quality-checking records
• Frees up expert staff to work on
o DEI initiatives
o Special Collections
o Research Data Management
o Reading Lists
• Supports direct delivery

10. BDS – Your metadata partner
What is the ALL?
• Jisc banded, annual subscription for the creation, curation, supply and sharing of metadata
• For normal library purposes
• To add your library holdings to a union catalogue
• Made available to other libraries via z39.50 / API
• Licence permits sharing and reuse of records, and contribution to agreed library sector database &
knowledgebases
o Alma Community Zone
o Base
o OCLC WorldCat
o Jisc NBK Compare, Jisc NBK Discover

11. BDS – Your metadata partner
Coverage
Orders
• English language print, ebook or open access titles published after 1st January 2010
• Published anywhere, not just the UK
• Older, or non-English language titles where BDS already hold a full record
Existing holdings and donations
• Access to the BDS database of book in hand and CIP records for upgrading
o Existing holdings
o Donations
o Unpurchased PDA / EBA titles …

12. BDS – Your metadata partner
ALL Overview
• Detailed specifications created with SUPC and NAG
• Records meet SUPC essential / essential when applicable metadata requirements
• eBook records meet NISO Metadata Recommended Practice
• Publishers provide access to frontlist / backlist print, e-books & open access titles
o Over 730,000 titles in the BDS Digital Repository
• All records created by expert cataloguers
• BDS hold a single record per title
• Dedicated Helpdesk

13. BDS – Your metadata partner
Standards
BDS metadata adheres to all current international cataloguing and classification standards.
✓ RDA
✓ UTF8 / MARC21
✓ NACO authority control for contributors
✓ Classification
• Dewey Decimal
• Library of Congress
• NLM
✓ Subject Headings
• Library of Congress
• MESH
✓ BIC and Thema
✓ Genre headings for fiction

14. BDS – Your metadata partner
Linked data
Solid foundation for implementing linked data
• High quality book in hand records with consistent and correct MARC encoding
• Extensive use of controlled vocabularies and standard authorities
• Records include ISNIs and FAST (from late 2022)
Services to make the transition to linked data easier
• Investigating options for adding ISNIs retrospectively
• Planning cross-walk services between ISNI and NACO, ORCID and more
BDS is an ISNI Registration Agency
• Assign ISNIs to authors, contributors, researchers, publishers …

15. BDS – Your metadata partner
BDS Record creation process
• Feeds from 15000+
publishers
• ONIX mapped to
MARC
• Thema added
Trade
• DDC, LCC
• Subject headings
• NACO
• Standardise
CIP • Transcribe
• Subject review
• Check
Confirmed

16. BDS – Your metadata partner
Upgrading from Trade to CIP
• Feeds from
15000+
publishers
• ONIX mapped
to MARC
• Thema added
Trade
• DDC, LCC
• Subject
headings
• NACO
• Standardise
CIP

17. BDS – Your metadata partner
Upgrading from CIP to Confirmed
• DDC, LCC
• Subject
headings
• NACO
• Standardise
CIP
• Transcribe
• Subject review
• Check

18. BDS – Your metadata partner
Process for ALL records
ISBNs sent
• Library sends
daily
spreadsheet of
orders and
invoices
Supply existing
• Existing MARC
records sent
back
immediately
Catalogue
misses
• Records
needing
upgrading sent
to Cataloguing
Complete
• MARC file of
remaining
records within 2
working days

19. BDS – Your metadata partner
Process for ALL records
ISBNs
sent
Supply
available
Catalogue
misses
Complete

20. BDS – Your metadata partner
Automated workflow
• Vendor and format neutral
• Request & delivery of high-quality customised records for orders / invoices
• No staff intervention
• Works with or without shelf ready

21. BDS – Your metadata partner
Alma automated workflow
Purchase order is
created and sent to
supplier
Daily report sends
order and invoice
details to BDS including
unique id
BDS process the report
and provide book in
hand MARC records*
Import profile fetches
the records and
matches to resources
in using unique id
*Notification of hits, misses and out of scope ISBNs sent to library, and vendor neutral records sent to
participating stock suppliers

22. BDS – Your metadata partner
Sustainability
ALL helps libraries reduce their carbon footprint
• Centralising cataloguing activities rather than dispersing across many institutions
• Creating a record once, then reusing
• Using digital surrogates for book in hand records
• Efficiently creating metadata
“Productivity levels were benchmarked against three leading
Institutions in the production of English-language metadata.
In each case BDS was found to be significantly more productive.”
BDO LLP

23. BDS – Your metadata partner
Handover to Jenny May
Your metadata partner