When deciding on how to describe cultural heritage resources in common exchange formats (e. g. MARC 21, RDF or XML), publishing organisations need to align their content standards with wide-spread, broadly adopted data standards in order to make information exchange as effective as possible. This presentation from the IFLA Committee on Standards session in Cape Town on August 19, 2015 (2015-08-19) makes that case. There is also an accompanying paper in the IFLA library at http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/1194

1. Our Standards vs. Their Standards:
Development and Re-Use of Non-
Library Standards in the Cultural
Heritage Domain
Lars G. Svensson
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2. 2
Information exchange in libraries has gone a
long way during the last 50 years
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PhotobyBeatriceMurch(CCBY-SA):http://flickr.com/photos/blmurch/465623933/

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Libraries increasingly exchange information
with organisations that are not libraries (or
at least they should!)
Search
engine
Library
Re-
searcher
Archive,
museum
FotovonDocSearls(CCBY):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/5500714140/

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But how do we do that in an interoperable
way?
ILS
MARC only
beyond this
point

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By using common data standards!
ISO
Open Geospatial (OGC)
W3C
IEEE
IETF

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What we want to share is knowledge, but the
best we can do is to share data
Knowledge
DataData
Information Information
Knowledge
Sender Receiver

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That data, however, should be as machine-
interpretable as possible
PhotobyKIUIStaff(CCBY):http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiui/3693823005/
Library
data
Other
data
Some
data

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1) 123 < 123.456 < 124
2) 123 < 123,456 < 124
Example 1: Floating point numbers

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1) 123 < 123.456 < 124
2) 123 < 123,456 < 124
float f = Float.valueOf( “123,456” );
(Gives you a NumberFormatException)
Example 1: Floating point numbers

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$c — Confidence value
Describes the confidence of the agency using the process/activity
identified in subfield $a to generate the linked field. The subfield
contains a floating point value between 0 and 1. Either a comma
or a point may be used as a decimal marker. 0 means no
confidence and and [sic!] 1 means full confidence.
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd883.html)
At some places, MARC 21 isn’t quite clear
about this...

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The most important date format is ISO 8601
– 20150819
– 2015-08-19
– 2015-08-19T07:30:00+02:00
and its derivatives, e. g. EDTF
– ~2015 (approximately 2015)
– 201u (one of the years 2010-2019, but we don’t know which)
Example 2: (Birth-)Dates in Authority Data

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MARC 21:
– 100 $d 1240 or 41-ca. 1316 (for people)
– 046 $f [1240,1241] $g ~1316 $2 EDTF (for machines)
UNIMARC
– 200 $f 1240 or 41-ca. 1316 (for people)
– 640 $f #1240____? $i #1316____? (for machines)
In MARC, dates are expressed differently at
different places

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Example 3: Geographic coordinates

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Library formats support bounding boxes and
polygons
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Cape_in_South_Africa.svg

15. Type Examples
Point POINT (30 10)
LineString LINESTRING (30 10, 10 30, 40 40)
Polygon
POLYGON ((30 10, 40 40, 20 40, 10 20, 30 10))
POLYGON (
(35 10, 45 45, 15 40, 10 20, 35 10),
(20 30, 35 35, 30 20, 20 30))
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A very important non-library format for
coordinates is WKT (well-known text)
Exampletakenfromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text

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Record the points in the polygon as long/lat and “list coordinate
pairs in clockwise order, starting with the most
south-eastern vertex of the polygon. [...] The first and last
coordinate pairs are the same. [...] If an area or areas within a
given polygon are excluded, list the coordinate pairs for any
excluded area in counterclockwise order.“ (RDA §7.4.3.3)
The upcoming content standard RDA has
instructions for coordinates too, but different
ones…

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“Record dates in terms of the calendar preferred by the agency
creating the data” and to “record a date associated with a person
by giving the year.” An option used by PCC, BL and D-A-CH is to
“add the month or month and day in the form [year] [month]
[day] or [year] [month]. Record the month in a language and
script preferred by the agency creating the data.” (RDA §9.3.1.3)
Dates in RDA are not really aligned with
ISO 8601, either
17

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So what we really need, is a system that
mediates between the cataloguing code and
the exchange format(s)
18
13 ነሐሴ 2007
Décade I
Doudi,
Fructidor an
CCXXIII
2015-08-19
Dateconversionthroughhttp://www.funaba.org/cc
‫רביעי‬ ,4‫לּול‬ֱ‫א‬
5775

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And we must ensure that we export data
using well-known, widely adopted standards
My dad’s
standard is
better than
your dad’s!
Picture provided by e r j k p r u n c z y k (CC BY-SA): https://www.flickr.com/photos/24842486@N07/6162798898/ Picture by Pascal (CC BY): https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/12144956203/
Who cares
about your
standard,
anyway?

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Common standards for future data exchange
http://www.gedankenkonsum.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/the-future.jpg