Crisis or Opportunity? Cataloging, Catalogers, RDA, and Change

It’s All About Perspective …
 “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I
mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you
could not do before.” – RahmEmanuel

 The crisis can be personal, professional, national (or all of
the above), but the strategy for moving forward is similar

Five Colleges Seminar 5/1/09 2

Part 1: Whither Cataloging?
 Libraries are no longer the first place people come for
information
 The Internet has changed the way people (including us)
behave when seeking information
 Our former “granularity consensus” is coming apart

 To compete effectively for user attention, we must:
 Join the larger world of information, where our users are
 Learn how the competition attracts users, draws them
in, and takes good advantage of their interest in participating
 Find a better balance between protecting privacy and
capturing usage behavior


And Why Must We Do This?
 The comfortable certainties we know are coming
undone, whether we’re ready or not

 We have much experience and insight to offer the larger
information world (but not everything we’ve learned is
relevant)

 We are collectively about the size of the Queen
Mary, unable to turn on a dime—this change will take
time, and each of us has a role to play

 Resistance is futile—we are not in charge of this new
world, and our options are two: adapt or retire

The Map of Change
Charting Our Course


What We Must Leave Behind
 A view of metadata based on catalog cards

 Library software that can’t sort search results better than
“random” or “alphabetic”

 Search interfaces even Librarians hate (and we know the
data)

 Clunky static HTML pages that don’t attract our user’s
interest, or guide them well

 One silo for books, others for journal
articles, images, digitized books, etc. (explain that to a
user!)

Starting to Move Forward
 A Starting Point: The Working Group on the Future of
Bibliographic Control (Library of Congress)
 “On the Record”—final report, January 2008
http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/
 A good, comprehensive overview of our new world and what
we need to do
 Recommendations for LC, OCLC, ALA, library educators and
all of us
 Extensively discussed at the Library of Congress and within
the profession at large


“The Web is our platform”
 1.2.4.2 All: Explore tools and techniques for sharing
bibliographic data at the network level using both
centralized and non-centralized techniques (e.g., OAI-
PMH).

 3.1.2.1 All: Express library standards in machine-readable
and machine-actionable formats, in particular those
developed for use on the Web.

 3.1.2.2 All: Provide access to standards through registries
or Web sites so that the standards can be used by any and
all Web applications.


A New Look at Library Systems
 4.1.1.1 All: Encourage and support development of
systems capable of relating evaluative data, such as
reviews and ratings, to bibliographic records.

 4.1.1.2 All: Encourage the enhancement of library systems
to provide the capability to link to appropriate user-added
data available via the Internet
(e.g., Amazon.com, LibraryThing, Wikipedia). At the same
time, explore opportunities for developing mutually
beneficial partnerships with commercial entities that
would stand to benefit from these arrangements.


Enriching Library Data
 4.1.2.1 All: Develop library systems that can accept
user input and other non-library data without
interfering with the integrity of library-created data.
 4.1.2.2 All: Investigate methods of categorizing
creators of added data in order to enable informed
use of user-contributed data without violating the
privacy obligations of libraries.
 4.1.2.3 All: Develop methods to guide user tagging
through techniques that suggest entry vocabulary
(e.g., term completion, tag clouds).

Exploring Our New World
Avoiding the Traps of Wrongovia


Taking a Look Around
 What’s this Semantic Web thingy all about, and why do we
care?

 Is RDA really going to happen?
 Is it that different from AACR2?
 Why can’t we use RDA with MARC?

 How will RDA implementation affect cataloging?

 How can we best prepare for all this?


Standards Upgrade!
Type of Standard Old Standard New Standard(s)?

Bibliographic Model None FRBR, FRBRoo
Metadata Content AACR2 RDA
Metadata Structure MARC21 RDVocab
Bibliographic
Name Authority MARC21 Authority FRAD
Subject Authority MARC21 Authority FRASAR, SKOS
Encoding MARC21 XML, XML/RDF


Acronymia, We Are Here
 RDA: Resource Description and Access

 RDF: Resource Description Framework (a W3C standard)

 FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records
 FRBRoo: Object Oriented FRBR (harmonized with CIDOC CRM)

 FRAD: Functional Requirements for Authority Data

 FRASAR: Functional Requirements for Subject Authority
Records

 SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organisation System (a W3C
standard)

The RDA You’ve Heard About …
 4th quarter calendar 2008 – Full draft of RDA available for
constituency review (ending in early February 2009)
 http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rdafulldraft.html

 2nd quarter calendar 2009 – RDA content is finalized We are here
 3rd quarter calendar 2009 – RDA is released

 3rd and 4th quarters calendar 2009, possibly into 1st quarter calendar
2010 – Testing by national libraries

 1st and 2nd quarters calendar 2010 – Analysis and evaluation of
testing by national libraries

 3rd-4th quarters calendar 2010 – RDA implementation ?

What You Might Not Have Heard
 JSC has gradually backed away from their original stance
that RDA could be expressed easily in MARC21
 Full integration of FRBR entities into RDA has made that
problematic

 RDA has been developed explicitly to take advantage of
the Semantic Web (although there are still residues of past
practice)

 Well supported rumors indicate that LC is considering
discontinuing update of MARC21 sometime in 2010


Under the RDA Hood
 RDA is a FRBR-based approach to structuring
bibliographic data

 It’s contains more explicitly machine-friendly linkages
(preferably with URIs)

 There’s more emphasis on relationships and roles …

 … and less emphasis on cataloger-created notes and text
strings (particularly for identification)

 Also, there’s less transcription (important in an
increasingly digital world)


JSC Scenarios
 Scenario 1: separate records for all FRBR entities with
linked identifiers

 Scenario 2: composite bibliographic records (with
authority records representing each entity)

 Scenario 3: one flat record, with all Group 1 entities on a
single record
 This is the only scenario that MARC can handle
 Not really a viable option, and as far as I know, no one is
explicitly planning for it


The Rest of the Story
 RDA elements, roles and vocabularies have been provisionally
registered
 The vocabularies and the text will be tied together in the RDA
online tool (and in freely available RDA XML schemas)

 Some efforts have begun to consider how MARC21 data can be
parsed into FRBR entities and RDA
 eXtensible Catalog Project moving strongly in this direction
 Unfortunately, we don’t know what OCLC is planning

 Discussions about long term maintenance of both RDA and the
vocabularies have yet to occur
 The push is already on for a multi-language RDA Vocabulary


RDA & FRBR: Registered!
 RDA Elements:
 http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html

 RDA Roles:
 http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/4.html

 RDA Vocabulary: Base Material
 http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/35.html

 FRBR Relationships (Sandbox version)
 http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/
90.html


RDA Elements Listing

334!

New Jersey Library Association 4/29/09 21

RDA Elements Listing

Base material

334!


Detail: Base Material


Detail: Base Material

URI


RDA Roles Listing


RDA Roles Listing

Author


Detail: RDA Role Author


RDA WEMI Relationships


Detail: RDA WEMI Relationship


RDA Base Material Vocabulary


RDA Base Material Vocabulary

Skin


RDA Base Material: Skin

No definition?


Who’s Doing This?
 DCMI/RDA Task Group
 See: http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/
 Set up during the April 2007 London meeting between JSC
and DCMI
 Gordon Dunsire and Diane Hillmann, co-chairs
 Karen Coyle & Alistair Miles, consultants

 IFLA Classification and Indexing Section
 Gordon Dunsire, Centre for Digital Library
Research, University of Strathclyde, will be registering FRBR
entities and relationships
 Possible inclusion of ISBDs, FRAD, etc., in future

How Soon Will All This Happen?
 The bad news: This isn’t like 1981, when there was a “start
date” and we knew exactly when to change gears

 More bad news: This transition is likely to be a pretty
messy one, and last longer than we would like

 One unknown is OCLC’s role—at present they seem to be
focused on consolidating control over library data and
promoting WorldCat Local

 The good news: library vendors are starting to wake up
and smell the coffee!


What Are the Challenges?
 Coordination with JSC (or it’s successor, given the need to
move beyond “Anglo-American”) on long-term
maintenance planning
 Need for lightweight process, where change is not a multi-
year marathon

 Continuing development towards a more Semantic web-
friendly RDA (less reliance on transcription, for instance)

 Tool development (at all levels, including ILS vendors)


Yet More Challenges
 Application profiles that express more than one notion of
“Work” and more than one communitypoint of view
 JSC still seeing the process through the lens of a text
cataloger
 Their “core elements” make most sense for traditional
books, serials, and other text-based objects

 Moving the MARC legacy data into RDA
 OCLC’s silence is worrisome, makes planning difficult

 Multi-lingual and specialized extensions
 Non-Anglo-American communities eager to participate


Multi-lingualDublin Core
 The DCMI Registry approach:
 Translations of labels, definitions and comments within
separate versions of the entire vocabulary
 URIs stay the same, as do relationships
 Responsibility for updating translations rests with translation
“owner”

 Disadvantages
 Translations tend to become outdated over time without
sophisticated notification services to flag new areas needing
attention
 Communication with translation “owners” is managed
loosely by a committee—support needs still unknown


Multi-lingual RDA
 The NSDL Registry approach:
 Translations of labels, definitions and comments reside
within the save vocabulary, with separate language
attributes
 URIs stay the same, as do relationships
 Responsibility for updating translations rests with translation
“owner”—who is enabled as a maintainer in the main
vocabulary

 Disadvantages
 Unsure how extensively this strategy will “scale”
 Requires a “web of trust” and organizational commitment


Part 2: Whither Catalogers
What Happens When The Revolution Comes?


Focus on Catalogers
 What do we anticipate will be different about our changed
working environment?

 How will workflow change?

 How will the data look?

 What will the library vendor systems do with it?

 How will we integrate user data? What kinds of user data?

 What do we need to know to operate in this new
environment?


Approaching Change
 Catalogers will need to separate what they know about
information based on their current systems from what is
more general in nature
 Much of the knowledge is portable, but needs updating
 The new environment is not as well organized (yet), so much
learning will need to be self-directed

 Catalogers’ role may become closer to that of Metadata
Librarian
 Managing data at a more abstract level (notas creators)
 Understanding the goals of changes anticipated and new
requirements will be essential


Walking through a
concrete example …
From the Cataloger Scenarios


A Cataloger Scenario
Jane Cataloger is assigned to work on a gift collection. Her first
selection is a Latvian translation of Kurt Vonnegut's quot;Bluebeard: a
novel.quot; She searches the library database for the original
work, and finds:

*Author: Kurt Vonnegut
*Title of the work: Bluebeard: a novel
*Form of work: Novel
*Original language of the work: English


Translated to RDA/XML:
<frbrWork
ID=quot;rda.basic/01”>
<rdarole:author>Kurt Vonnegut</rdarole:author>
<titleOfTheWork>Bluebeard: a novel</titleOfTheWork>
<formOfWork>Novel</formOfWork><originalLanguageOfTheWork>English
<originalLanguageOfTheWork>
</frbrWork>

Upgraded to RDA/XML with Links:

<frbrWork
<rdarole:author>http://lcnaf.info/79062641</rdarole:author>
<titleOfTheWork>Bluebeard: a novel</titleOfTheWork>
<formOfWork>http://RDVocab.info/genre/1008</formOfWork><originalLang
uageOfTheWork>http://marclang.info/eng </>
</frbrWork>


with links to the following expression information:

*Language of expression: English
*Content type: Text

and one manifestation:

*Statement designating edition: 1st trade edition
*Place of publication: New York
*Publisher’s name: Delacorte Press
*Date of publication: 1987
*Extent of text: 300 pages
*Identifier for the manifestation: [ISBN]0385295901



<frbrExpression
<contentType>Text</contentType><languageOfExpression>English<langua
geOfExpression>
</frbrExpression>


<frbrExpression
<formOfWork>http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType/1020</><lang
uageOfExpression>http://marclang.info/eng </>
</frbrExpression>


Translated to RDA/XML (with links below):
<frbrManifestation
<statementDesignatingEdition>1st Trade
Edition</><placeOfPublication>New York<placeOfPublication>
<publishersName>Delacorte Press</publishersName>
<dateOfPublication>1987</dateOfPublication>
<extentOfText>300 pages</extentOfText>
<identifierForTheManifestation>[ISBN]0385295901</>
</frbrManifestation>

<frbrManifestatiion
<statementDesignatingEdition>1st Trade
Edition</><placeOfPublication>http://www.getty.edu/tgn/7007567</>
<publishersName>http://onixpub.info/2039987</>
<identifierForTheManifestation>urn:ISBN:0385295901</>


FRBR Group 1

Work

Exp: eng

Man: eng


Jane begins her description by linking to the existing Work entity. She
then creates an expression description:

*Content type: text
*Language of expression: Latvian
*Translator:Grigulis, Arvīds
She creates an authority record for the translator since none yet
existed. She continues by creating a fuller description for the new
manifestation, linking to the authority record for the Latvian publisher
(what luck, it already existed!).

*Title: [in Latvian]
*Place of publication: Riga
*Publisher’s name: Liesma
*Date of publication: 1997
*Extent of Text: 315 pages

<frbrExpression
<contentType>text</contentType><languageOfExpression>Latvian<langua
geOfExpression>
<rdarole:translator>Grigulis, Arvīds</rdarole:translator>
</frbrExpression>


<frbrExpression
<formOfWork>http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType/1020</><lang
uageOfExpression>http://marclang.info/lav</>
<rdarole:translator>http://lcnaf.info/83219993
</frbrExpression>


Translated to RDA/XML (with links below):
<frbrManifestation
<title>[in Latvian]</>
<placeOfPublication>Riga<placeOfPublication>
<publishersName>Liesma</publishersName>

<frbrManifestatiion
<placeOfPublication>http://www.getty.edu/tgn/7006484</>
<publishersName>http://onixpub.info/6770094</>


FRBR Group 1

Work

Exp: eng Exp: lav

Man: eng Man: lav


FRBR Group 2
FRBR Group 1

Work Author Translator

Publisher
Exp: eng Exp: lav

Man: eng Man: lav


FRBR Group 2
FRBR Group 1

Work Author
Translator

Exp: eng Exp: lav Publisher

FRBR Group 3 Concepts
Man: eng Man: lav Objects
Subjects Events
Places


FRBR Group 2
FRBR Group 1

Work Author
Translator


Subjects Events
Places

Content Relationship
Vocabularies Vocabularies

Other Information
Media
In the “Cloud”
Vocabularies


Examining the Genetics
 RDA’s model is primarily FRBR and FRAD, but also takes
some of its DNA from Dublin Core

 DC’s Abstract Model de-composes traditional metadata
“records” and re-composes them with additional levels
above and below what we’ve traditionally thought of as
our “atomic level”

 The DCAM also talks about “statements” in ways that help
connect RDA to the Semantic Web


A Dublin Core View of the World

DCMI Abstract Model: http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/


Anatomy of a Statement

Property Value

Place of Production: New York

Value
String


Anatomy of a Statement

Property Value

Place of Production: http://www.getty.edu/tgn/7007567

Related
Description


A Related Description


Description Sets a Key Concept!


Description Set=
“A set of one or more descriptions, each of
which describes a single resource.”*

*DCAM Definition


FRBR Group 2
FRBR Group 1

Work Author
Translator


Subjects Events
Places

Content Relationship
Vocabularies Vocabularies

Other Information
Media
In the “Cloud”
Vocabularies


New Tools, New
Knowledge
Getting There From Here


What’s This Semantic Web?
 RDF: Resource Description Framework
 Statements about Web resources in the form of subject-
predicate-object expressions, called triples
 E.g. “This presentation” –“has creator” –“Diane Hillmann”

 RDF Schema
 Vocabulary description language of RDF

 SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organisation System
 Expresses the basic structure and content of concept schemes
such as thesauri and other types of controlled vocabularies
 An RDF application

 OWL (Web Ontology Language)
 Explicitly represents the meaning of terms in vocabularies and
the relationships between them

Semantic Web Building Blocks
 Each component of an RDF statement (triple) is a
“resource”
 RDF is about making machine-processable
statements, requiring
 A machine-processable language for representing RDF
statements
 Extensible Markup Language (XML)
 A system of machine-processable identifiers for resources
(subjects, predicates, objects)
 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
 For full machine-processing potential, an RDF statement is a set
of three URIs


Things Requiring Identification
 Object “This presentation”
 e.g. its electronic location (URL)

 Predicate “has creator”
 e.g. http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator

 Object “Diane Hillmann”
 e.g. URI of entry in Library of Congress Name Authority File
(real soon now?)
 NAF: nr2001015786

 Declaring vocabularies/values in SKOS and OWL provides
URIs—essential for the Semantic Web


What Happened to XML?
 Nothing: XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is most likely
how library systems will evolve after MARC
 It makes sense to use XML to exchange data between
libraries, and some external services
 But RDF is gaining ground, and libraries will need to be able
to accommodate it, and understand it

 An XML record is essentially an aggregation of property =
value statements about the same resource
 RDF triples can also be aggregated using XML, but this isn’t
necessarily the best way to realize the potential of RDF


User Participation
Bringing Users (and Usage) Into the Circle


User Data “R” Us
 Sources of ‘active’ user data
 Tagging, etc.
 Review and rating systems
 Courseware systems

 Sources of ‘passive’ user data
 Logs of user activity
 Circulation or download data

 “Making data work harder …” –Lorcan Dempsey
 Collaborative filtering
 Data mining

Active User Data
 User tagging and description
 Ex.: The LC Flickr Project
 Ex.: LibraryThing

 Review and rating systems
 Ex.: Penn Tags
 Ex.: Amazon

 Courseware Systems
 Making connections so that courseware can reuse catalog
information; catalogs can know what has been used in
courses, when, and who assigned it


LC-Flickr Project
Library of Congress and Flickr--“In a very elegant way, Flickr
solves the authority conundrum of exposing collections
content to social process. No need to worry if some
comments or tags are misleading, arbitrary or incorrect -
it’s not happening on your site, but in a space where
people know and expect a wide variety of contributions.
On the other hand, LC selectively reaps the benefit of
these contributions.”

(http://hangingtogether.org/?p=401)


Link to NYTimes article


“This is a book that deserves to be compared with
Milton's Areopagatica. Like Milton 350 years
earlier, Lessig makes an emotional and passionate, yet
calm and well reasoned argument against the system
that aims to limit creative freedom. A very important
read.”
nuwanda | Sep 10, 2008 |


LibraryThing Most Reviewed Books


What is PennTags?
“PennTagsis a social bookmarking tool for
locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources.
Members of the Penn Community can collect and maintain
URLs, links to journal articles, and records in Franklin, our online
catalog and VCat, our online video catalog. Once these resources
are compiled, you can organize them by assigning tags (free-text
keywords) and/or by grouping them into projects, according to
your specific preferences. PennTags can also be used
collaboratively, because it acts as a repository of the varied
interests and academic pursuits of the Penn community, and can
help you find topics and users related to your own favorite online
resources.

PennTags was developed by librarians at the University of
Pennsylvania. “

Passive User Data
 Logs of user activity
 Usually locally maintained and analyzed
 Services like Google Analytics can provide important
aggregate information

 Circulation or download data
 Tricky in library settings, where user privacy an important
value
 Anonymized data can be stored and used for relevance
ranking


Hard Working Data
 Collaborative filtering
 Wikipedia: “ … the process of filtering for information or
patterns using techniques involving collaboration among
multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc.”
 Ex.: Amazon (people who bought “X” also bought “Y”)

 Data mining
 Wikipedia: “ … statistical and logical analysis of large sets of
transaction data, looking for patterns that can aid decision
making.”
 Ex.: LibraryThing Zeitgeist


User Data Issues
 Privacy
 Being able to use information about a contributing user
without violating personal privacy
 Complicated by differences in generational ideas about what
privacy is

 Authority (who said?)
 Librarians have traditionally valued “objectivity,” but there’s
no evidence that users see this as a value

 Management
 Keeping spammers out
 Filtering language and malicious intent

Sharing User Contributions
 Note how LibraryThing pulls Amazon descriptions
 Amazon has an API that allows other services to use its data
 Positioning Amazon data in other sites drives users back to
Amazon

 As libraries move more of their unique data to the
Web, they need to be aware of the marketing value of
sharing data and allowing other services to combine it in
new ways

 To do this, libraries will need to be able to package the
data in ways hat others can capture it
 Ex.: XC Project is planning to share Courseware information

Preparing Ourselves
Figuring Out What We Need To Know


Learning Strategies
 Group Learning
 Seminars (like this one!)
 Conference presentations
 Local study groups

 Self-directed learning
 Tutorials
 Blogs

 Keeping up with the discussion--You need a plan!


Self-directed Learning
 Web tutorials:
 http://www.w3schools.com/

 Blogs
 Get a Bloglines account (free)
 Start with a few, and expand:
 Lorcan Dempsey (http://orweblog.oclc.org/)
 Karen Coyle (http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/)
 The FRBR Blog (http://www.frbr.org/)
 Catalogablog (http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/)
 Cataloging Futures (http://www.catalogingfutures.com/)
 Metadata Matters (http://managemetadata.org/blog/)

Mailing lists
 Evaluate your current reading habits
 Are you spending too much time on lists that focus on
MARC and AACR2 problem solving?
 Do you hear too much whining about change?

 Migrate to some of the lists discussing newer ideas
 web4lib@webjunction.org
 metadatalibrarians@lists.monarchos.com
 RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA
 DC-RDA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

 Ask questions! Network!


Thanks & Acknowledgements
 Thanks for your attention!

 Slides and ideas from Karen Coyle, Gordon Dunsire, and
too many others to count!

 Contact for Diane:
 Email: metadata.maven@gmail.com
 Website: http://managemetadata.com/


Crisis or Opportunity? Cataloging, Catalogers, RDA, and Change

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