The LC report on the future bibliographic format (aka replacement for MARC) is out. The report is short and has few specifics, other than the selection of RDF as the underlying data format. A significant part of the report lists requirements; these, too, are general in nature and may not be comprehensive.
What needs to be done before we go much further is to begin to state our specific goals and the criteria we will use to determine if we have met those goals. Some goals we will discover in the course of developing the new environment, so this should be considered a growing list. I think it is important that every goal have measurements associated with it, to the extent possible. It makes no sense to make changes if we cannot know what those changes have achieved. Here are some examples of the kinds of things I am thinking of in terms of goals; these may not be the actual goals of the project, they are just illustrations that I have invented.
COSTS
- goal: it should be less expensive to create the bibliographic data during the cataloging process
measurement: using time studies, compare cataloging in MARC and in the new format
- goal: it should be less expensive to maintain the format
measurement: compare the total time required for a typical MARBI proposal to the time required for the new format
- goal: it should be less expensive for vendors to make required changes or additions
measurement: compare the number of programmer hours needed to make a change in the MARC environment and the new environment
COLLABORATION
- goal: collaboration on data creation with a wider group of communities
measurement: count the number of non-library communities that we are sharing data with before and after
- goal: greater participation of small libraries in shared data
measurement: count number of libraries that were sharing before and after the change
- goal: make library data available for use by other information communities
measurement: count use of library data in non-library web environments before and after
INNOVATION
- goal: library technology staff should be able to implement "apps" for their libraries faster and easier than they can today.
measurement: either number of apps created, or a time measure to implement (this one may be hard to compare)
- goal: library systems vendors can develop new services more quickly and more cheaply than before
measurement: number of changes made in the course of a year, or number of staff dedicated to those changes. Another measurement would be what libraries are charged and how many libraries make the change within some stated time frame
As you can tell from this list, most of the measurements require system implementation, not just the development of a new format. But the new format cannot be an end in itself; the goal has to be the implementation of systems and services using that format. The first MARC format that was developed was tested in the LC workflow to see if it met the needs of the Library. This required the creation of a system (called the "MARC Pilot Project") and a test period of one year. The testing that took place for RDA is probably comparable and could serve as a model. Some of the measurements will not be available before full implementation, such as the inclusion of more small libraries. Continued measurement will be needed.
So, now, what are the goals that YOU especially care about?
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Relativ index
Most of us, when we hear "Dewey Decimal Classification" (DDC) think about the numbers that go onto the backs of books that then tell us where the book can be found on the library's shelves. The subject classification and its decimal notation was only part of Dewey's invention, however. The other part was the "Relativ Index." The Relativ Index was the entry vocabulary for the classification scheme. It was to be consulted by library users as the way to find topics in the library.
In the schedules these classes are listed as:
You can see that the index is not just a repeat of the names of the points in the classification but is a kind of subject thesaurus on its own. It doesn't just point to the classification number but it gives some context ("fertilizers" "botany") to help the user decide which class number to select.
What I find odd today in libraries (mainly public libraries) is that we do not have an entry vocabulary for the Dewey classification. Libraries in the U.S. use the Library of Congress Subject Headings even when their classification scheme is Dewey. While LC subject headings will lead you to a catalog entry that has a classification number, they aren't an index to that classification scheme.
There are more oddities, actually.
One oddity is that we never explain these classification numbers to the users. Yes, I can go from the catalog to the shelf and find books that are near the one I am seeking, but in a small public library I can encounter a number of different topics on a single shelf; and in a large academic library I can wander whole aisles without seeing a change in the initial class number and have no idea if I have exhausted my topic area on the shelf as decimal points three places out change. Yet there is nothing either at the shelf nor anywhere else in the library to tell me what those numbers mean except usually at a very macro level. What I have before me are book spines and class numbers, and since I don't know what the class numbers mean I have to rely on the spine titles. So if I browse a shelf and see:
364.106 D26f The first family
364.106 En36h Havana nocturne
364.106 En36i The Westies
364.106 En36p Paddy whacked
... it may not be clear to me what topic I am looking at. At the very least I would like to be able to type "364.106" into an app on my phone and get a display something like:
300 Social sciences
360 Social problems & social services
364 Criminology
364.106....
(That example is truncated because the divisions to the right of the decimal point are not available to me. Presumably the display would take me down to .106, which would then have something to do with gangs and/or organized crime and/or mafia, but I'm just guessing at that.)
Even better, I'd like to point my phone camera at a book spine and get a similar read-out. Yes, I know that's not going to be simple.
Another oddity is that we put multiple subject headings on a bibliographic record, but only one classification number, reducing the role of classification to simply the ordering of books on the shelves. This means that there are subject headings on the records that would logically lead to class numbers other than the one that has been given.
Using my crime books as an example, the subject headings are clearly more diverse than the single classification code:
Mafia -- United States -- History
Mafia -- United States -- Biography
Criminals -- United States -- Biography
Organized crime -- United States -- Case studies
Lansky, Meyer, 1902-
Luciano, Lucky, 1897-1962
Mafia -- Cuba -- Havana
Cuba -- History -- 1933-1959
Havana (Cuba) -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Westies (Gang) -- History
Gangs -- New York (State) -- New York -- History
Irish American criminals -- New York (State) -- New York -- History
Hell's Kitchen (New York, N.Y.)
Organized crime -- United States -- History
Irish American criminals -- United States -- History
Gangsters -- United States -- History
This won't be a surprise to my readers, but this dual system is full of "gotchas" for users. If I look up "Irish American criminals" in the subject headings I retrieve some items in 364.106, some in the 920 area (biographies, but many users won't know that), and some in fiction (under the author's last name). It's not that there isn't a rhyme or reason, but there is nothing to explain the differences between these items to the library user that would justify going to three entirely different places in the library to explore this topic. My guess is that the system seems quite arbitrary.
Things are a bit better in libraries that use Library of Congress Classification (LCC) along with LCSH, since the two seem to be developed with some coordination. In his essay "The Peloponneasian War and the Future of Reference" Thomas Mann, of the Library of Congress, explains how LCSH and LCC work together:
Compact notation is essential for the ordering of books on the shelf. But it seems truly odd that we order the books on the shelf but do not tell users what the order means. This can be seen as providing a delightful serendipity, but I presume that we could provide serendipity with less intellectual effort than has been dedicated to DDC and LCC, which are both enormously detailed and growing more so each year in an attempt to encompass the complexity of the published world. How much richer would the user's library experience be if she understood the relationship between the items on the shelf? Does it make sense to create detailed and complex relationships that then are not understood or used? What would a shelf system look like that was meaningful to library users? in a small library? in a large library? And, finally, can we use computing power to overcome to limitations that brought us to the situation we are in today in terms of organized subject access?
* Before someone explains to me that the first subject heading determines the class number... you know that, I know that, but millions of library users have no idea what the order of the subject headings means. Besides, library catalog users often don't see the full record with all of the subject headings. Even in the LC catalog subject headings are not included in the default display. We can't blame the users if they don't know what we don't help them know.
"The Index givs similar or sinonimus words, and the same words in different connections, any any intelijent person wil surely get the ryt number. A reader wishing to know sumthing of the tarif looks under T, and, at a glance, finds 337 as its number. This gyds him to shelvs, to all books and pamflets, to shelf catalog, to clast subject catalog on cards, to clast record of loans, and, in short, in simple numeric order, thruout the whole library to anything bearing on his subject." (Dewey, Edition 11, p. 10) (Yes, that is how he spelled things.)The most recent version of DDC that I own is from 1922, so this example is an entry in the Relativ Index of Edition 11 under "Leaves:"
Leaves fertilizers 631.872
shapes of botany 581.4
In the schedules these classes are listed as:
631.872 : "Vegetable manures, Leaves" (coming right after "Vegetable manures, Muck").
581.4 : "Morfology comparativ anatomy"
You can see that the index is not just a repeat of the names of the points in the classification but is a kind of subject thesaurus on its own. It doesn't just point to the classification number but it gives some context ("fertilizers" "botany") to help the user decide which class number to select.
What I find odd today in libraries (mainly public libraries) is that we do not have an entry vocabulary for the Dewey classification. Libraries in the U.S. use the Library of Congress Subject Headings even when their classification scheme is Dewey. While LC subject headings will lead you to a catalog entry that has a classification number, they aren't an index to that classification scheme.
There are more oddities, actually.
One oddity is that we never explain these classification numbers to the users. Yes, I can go from the catalog to the shelf and find books that are near the one I am seeking, but in a small public library I can encounter a number of different topics on a single shelf; and in a large academic library I can wander whole aisles without seeing a change in the initial class number and have no idea if I have exhausted my topic area on the shelf as decimal points three places out change. Yet there is nothing either at the shelf nor anywhere else in the library to tell me what those numbers mean except usually at a very macro level. What I have before me are book spines and class numbers, and since I don't know what the class numbers mean I have to rely on the spine titles. So if I browse a shelf and see:
364.106 D26f The first family
364.106 En36h Havana nocturne
364.106 En36i The Westies
364.106 En36p Paddy whacked
... it may not be clear to me what topic I am looking at. At the very least I would like to be able to type "364.106" into an app on my phone and get a display something like:
300 Social sciences
360 Social problems & social services
364 Criminology
364.106....
(That example is truncated because the divisions to the right of the decimal point are not available to me. Presumably the display would take me down to .106, which would then have something to do with gangs and/or organized crime and/or mafia, but I'm just guessing at that.)
Even better, I'd like to point my phone camera at a book spine and get a similar read-out. Yes, I know that's not going to be simple.
Another oddity is that we put multiple subject headings on a bibliographic record, but only one classification number, reducing the role of classification to simply the ordering of books on the shelves. This means that there are subject headings on the records that would logically lead to class numbers other than the one that has been given.
Using my crime books as an example, the subject headings are clearly more diverse than the single classification code:
Mafia -- United States -- History
Mafia -- United States -- Biography
Criminals -- United States -- Biography
Organized crime -- United States -- Case studies
Lansky, Meyer, 1902-
Luciano, Lucky, 1897-1962
Mafia -- Cuba -- Havana
Cuba -- History -- 1933-1959
Havana (Cuba) -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Westies (Gang) -- History
Gangs -- New York (State) -- New York -- History
Irish American criminals -- New York (State) -- New York -- History
Hell's Kitchen (New York, N.Y.)
Organized crime -- United States -- History
Irish American criminals -- United States -- History
Gangsters -- United States -- History
This won't be a surprise to my readers, but this dual system is full of "gotchas" for users. If I look up "Irish American criminals" in the subject headings I retrieve some items in 364.106, some in the 920 area (biographies, but many users won't know that), and some in fiction (under the author's last name). It's not that there isn't a rhyme or reason, but there is nothing to explain the differences between these items to the library user that would justify going to three entirely different places in the library to explore this topic. My guess is that the system seems quite arbitrary.
Things are a bit better in libraries that use Library of Congress Classification (LCC) along with LCSH, since the two seem to be developed with some coordination. In his essay "The Peloponneasian War and the Future of Reference" Thomas Mann, of the Library of Congress, explains how LCSH and LCC work together:
"In order to find which areas of the bookstacks to browse, however, researchers need the subject headings in the library catalog to serve as the index to the class scheme. But the linkage between a subject heading and a classification number is usually dependent on the precoordination of multiple facets within the same string. For example, notice the specific linkages of the following precoordinated strings:This is the correlation that will appear in the LCSH documentation, but this is not what the user sees in the catalog. A search in LC's catalog for Greece-History-19th century brings up books with a variety of classification numbers, the first four being:
Greece–History–Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.: DF229-DF230
Greece–History–19th century: DF803
Greece–History–Acarnanian Revolt, 1836: DF823.6
Greece–History–Civil War, 1944-1949: DF849.5"
DF803 .H45Again, the user is directed to different shelf locations from what seems to be a single subject heading, with no explanation of what these different locations mean.* It's got to be terribly confusing.
DF725 .A14
DF951.T45
DK508.95.O33
Compact notation is essential for the ordering of books on the shelf. But it seems truly odd that we order the books on the shelf but do not tell users what the order means. This can be seen as providing a delightful serendipity, but I presume that we could provide serendipity with less intellectual effort than has been dedicated to DDC and LCC, which are both enormously detailed and growing more so each year in an attempt to encompass the complexity of the published world. How much richer would the user's library experience be if she understood the relationship between the items on the shelf? Does it make sense to create detailed and complex relationships that then are not understood or used? What would a shelf system look like that was meaningful to library users? in a small library? in a large library? And, finally, can we use computing power to overcome to limitations that brought us to the situation we are in today in terms of organized subject access?
* Before someone explains to me that the first subject heading determines the class number... you know that, I know that, but millions of library users have no idea what the order of the subject headings means. Besides, library catalog users often don't see the full record with all of the subject headings. Even in the LC catalog subject headings are not included in the default display. We can't blame the users if they don't know what we don't help them know.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Organizing knowledge
At the LITA forum on Saturday I stated that classification and knowledge organization seem to have fallen off the library profession's radar. (LITA2011 keynote.) We have spent considerable amounts of time and money on making modifications to our cataloging rules (four times in about fifty years), but the discussion of how we organize information for our users has waned. I can illustrate what is at least my impression of this through some searches done against Google Books using its nGram service.
"Library classification" peaks around 1960, and drops off rapidly. (The chart ends at 2000.)
The decimal classifications, most likely both Dewey and Universal, rise steadily up until the mid-1960's then begin a steep decline.
Keyword searching comes along slowly in the 1960's and 70's then takes off from 1980 to 2000. Today, as we know, it's basically the only kind of information retrieval being discussed.
Knowledge organization also has a steady rise through the 1970's and 80's, and seems to reach a peak that continues up to recent times.
This is hardly a scientific study, but it illustrates what my gut was telling me, which was that keyword searching has essentially replaced any kind of classed access. That does make me wonder what is being discussed under the rubric of "knowledge organization." Keyword indexing, per se, does not do any organization of knowledge; there are no classes or categories, no broader concepts or narrower concepts, no direction toward similar topics. It also has no facets, at least none based on the topic of the resource, only on its descriptive properties (date of publication, format, domain).
Keyword searching is not organized knowledge. Any topical organization takes place after retrieval by the searcher, who must look through the retrievals and select those that are relevant. This in part explains why Wikipedia is the perfect complement to keyword searches: Wikipedia is organized knowledge. A keyword search can pull up a Wikipedia page that will provide context, disambiguation, and pointers to related topics. I find increasingly that I begin my searches in Wikipedia when my searches are topical, leaving Google to function as my "internet phone book" when I need to find a specific person, company, product or document.
It makes sense for us to ask now: is there any reason (other than shelf placement) to continue library classification practices? Keep your eyes on this space for more about that.
Added note: Richard Urban offers this nGram view comparing all of the library classification phrases with the term "Ontologies":
As @repoRat tweeted: Karen Coyle makes air whoosh out of my lungs. bit.ly/nArBBh Perhaps classification to be replaced by relationship metadata? That's a distinct possibility, and we'd better get cracking on that! Many "ontologies" out there today are simple term lists, and few of them seem to have relationships that you can follow productively. What really excites me is the possibility of relationships that we haven't explored in the past, both between concepts and between resources; all of the "based on" "responds to" "often appear together" -- and lots more that my brain isn't sharp enough to even imagine.
"Library classification" peaks around 1960, and drops off rapidly. (The chart ends at 2000.)
 |
| Library classification |
 |
| Faceted classification |
Faceted classification has a meteoric rise around the 1960's, but falls abruptly from 1970 to 1980. The rise possibly corresponds closely to the activities of the Classification Research Group, based in the UK, whose big interest was in faceted classification.
 | |||
| Decimal Classification |
 | |
| Keyword searching |
This is hardly a scientific study, but it illustrates what my gut was telling me, which was that keyword searching has essentially replaced any kind of classed access. That does make me wonder what is being discussed under the rubric of "knowledge organization." Keyword indexing, per se, does not do any organization of knowledge; there are no classes or categories, no broader concepts or narrower concepts, no direction toward similar topics. It also has no facets, at least none based on the topic of the resource, only on its descriptive properties (date of publication, format, domain).
Keyword searching is not organized knowledge. Any topical organization takes place after retrieval by the searcher, who must look through the retrievals and select those that are relevant. This in part explains why Wikipedia is the perfect complement to keyword searches: Wikipedia is organized knowledge. A keyword search can pull up a Wikipedia page that will provide context, disambiguation, and pointers to related topics. I find increasingly that I begin my searches in Wikipedia when my searches are topical, leaving Google to function as my "internet phone book" when I need to find a specific person, company, product or document.
It makes sense for us to ask now: is there any reason (other than shelf placement) to continue library classification practices? Keep your eyes on this space for more about that.
Added note: Richard Urban offers this nGram view comparing all of the library classification phrases with the term "Ontologies":
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Europe's national libraries support Open Data licensing
"Meeting at the Royal Library of Denmark, the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), has voted overwhelmingly to support the open licensing of their data. CENL represents Europe’s 46 national libraries, and are responsible for the massive collection of publications that represent the accumulated knowledge of Europe.
What does that mean in practice?
It means that the datasets describing all the millions of books and texts ever published in Europe – the title, author, date, imprint, place of publication and so on, which exists in the vast library catalogues of Europe – will become increasingly accessible for anybody to re-use for whatever purpose they want."
From an announcement by the Conference of European National Libraries.
What does that mean in practice?
It means that the datasets describing all the millions of books and texts ever published in Europe – the title, author, date, imprint, place of publication and so on, which exists in the vast library catalogues of Europe – will become increasingly accessible for anybody to re-use for whatever purpose they want."
From an announcement by the Conference of European National Libraries.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Meaning in MARC: Indicators
I have been doing a study of the semantics of MARC data on the futurelib wiki. An article on what I learned about the fixed fields (00X) and the number and code fields (0XX) appeared in the code4lib journal, issue 14, earlier this year. My next task was to tackle the variable fields in the MARC range 1XX-8XX.
This is a huge task, so I started by taking a look at the MARC indicators in this tag range, and have expanded this to a short study of the role that indicators play in MARC. I have to say that it is amazing how much one can stretch the MARC format with one or two single-character data elements.
Indicators have a large number of effects on the content of the MARC fields they modify. Here is the categorization that I have come up with, although I'm sure that other breakdowns are equally plausible.
I. Indicators that do not change the meaning of the field
There are indicators that have a function, but it does not change the meaning of the data in the field or subfields.
Many indicators serve as a way to expand the meaning of a field without requiring the definition of a new tag.
Given the complexity of the indicators there isn't a single answer to how this information should be interpreted in a semantic analysis of MARC. I am inclined to consider the display constants and tracing indicators in section I to not have meaning that needs to be addressed. These are parts of the MARC record that served the production of card sets but that should today be functions of system customization. I would argue that some of these have local value but are possibly not appropriate for record sharing.
The non-filing indicators are a solution to a problem that is evident in so many bibliographic applications. When I sort by title in Zotero or Mendeley, a large portion of the entries are sorted under "The." The world needs a solution here, but I'm not sure what it is going to be. One possibility is to create two versions of a title: one for display, with the initial article, and one for sorting, without. Systems could do the first pass at this, as they often to today with taking author names and inverting them into "familyname, forenames" order. Of course, humans would have to have the ability to make corrections where the system got it wrong.
The indicators that identify the source of a controlled vocabulary could logically be transformed into a separate data element for each vocabulary (e.g. "LCSH," "MeSH"). However, the number of different vocabularies is, while not infinite, very large and growing (as evidenced by the practice in MARC to delegate the source to a separate subfield that carries codes from a controlled list of sources), so producing a separate data element for each vocabulary is unwieldy, to say the least. At some future date, when controlled vocabularies "self-identify" using URIs this may be less of a problem. For now, however, it seems that we will need to have multi-part data elements for controlled vocabularies that include the source with the vocabulary terms.
The indicators that further sub-type a field, like the 520 Summary field, can be fairly easily given their own data element since they have their own meaning. Ideally there would be a "type/sub-type" relationship where appropriate.
And Some Problems
There are a number of areas that are problematic when it comes to the indicator values. In many cases, the MARC standard does not make clear if the indicator modifies all subfields in the field, or only a select few. In some instances we can reason this out: the non-filing indicators only refer to the left-most characters of the field, so they can only refer to the $a (which is mandatory in each of those fields). On the other hand, for the values in the subject area (6XX) of the record, the source indicator relates to all of the subject subfields in the field. I assume, however, that in all cases the control subfields $3-$8 perform functions that are unrelated to the indicator values. I do not know at this point if there are fields in which the indicators function on some other subset of the subfields between $a and $z. That's something I still need to study.
I also see a practical problem in making use of the indicator values in any kind of mapping from MARC to just about anything else. In 60% of MARC tags either one or both indicator positions is undefined. Undefined indicators are represented in the MARC record with blanks. Unfortunately there are also defined indicators that have a meaning assigned to the character "blank." There is nothing in the record itself to differentiate blank indicator values from undefined indicators. Any transformation from MARC to another format has to have knowledge about every tag and its indicators in order to do anything with these elements. This is another example of the complexity of MARC for data processing, and yet another reason why a new format could make our lives easier.
More on the Wiki
For anyone else who obsesses on these kinds of things there is more detail on all of this on the futurelib wiki. I welcome comments here, and on the wiki. If you wish to comment on the wiki, however, I need to add your login to the site (as an anti-spam measure). I will undoubtedly continue my own obsessive behavior related to this task, but I really would welcome collaboration if anyone is so inclined. I don't think that there is a single "right answer" to the questions I am asking, but am working on the principle that some practical decisions in this area can help us as we work on a future bibliographic carrier.
This is a huge task, so I started by taking a look at the MARC indicators in this tag range, and have expanded this to a short study of the role that indicators play in MARC. I have to say that it is amazing how much one can stretch the MARC format with one or two single-character data elements.
Indicators have a large number of effects on the content of the MARC fields they modify. Here is the categorization that I have come up with, although I'm sure that other breakdowns are equally plausible.
I. Indicators that do not change the meaning of the field
There are indicators that have a function, but it does not change the meaning of the data in the field or subfields.
- Display constants: some, but not all, display constants merely echo the meaning of the tag, e.g. 775 Other Edition Entry, Second Indicator
Display constant controller
# - Other edition available
8 - No display constant generated - Trace/Do not trace: I consider these indicators to be carry-overs from card production.
- Non-filing indicators: similar to indicators that control displays, these indicators make it possible to sort (was filing) titles properly, ignoring the initial articles ("The ", "A ", etc.).
- Existence in X collection: there are indicators in the 0XX range that let you know if the item exists in the collection of a national library.
Many indicators serve as a way to expand the meaning of a field without requiring the definition of a new tag.
- Identification of the source or agency: a single field like a 650 topical subject field can have content from an unlimited list of controlled vocabularies because the indicator (or the indicator plus the $2 subfield) provides the identity of the controlled vocabulary.
- Multiple types in a field: some fields can have data of different types, controlled by the indicator. For example, the 246 (Varying form of title) has nine different possible values, like Cover title or Spine title, controlled by a single indicator value.
- Pseudo-display controllers: the same indicator type that carries display constants that merely echo the meaning of the field also has a number of instances where the display constant actually indicates a different meaning for the field. One example is the 520 (Summary, etc.) field with display constants for "subject," "review," "abstract," and others.
Given the complexity of the indicators there isn't a single answer to how this information should be interpreted in a semantic analysis of MARC. I am inclined to consider the display constants and tracing indicators in section I to not have meaning that needs to be addressed. These are parts of the MARC record that served the production of card sets but that should today be functions of system customization. I would argue that some of these have local value but are possibly not appropriate for record sharing.
The non-filing indicators are a solution to a problem that is evident in so many bibliographic applications. When I sort by title in Zotero or Mendeley, a large portion of the entries are sorted under "The." The world needs a solution here, but I'm not sure what it is going to be. One possibility is to create two versions of a title: one for display, with the initial article, and one for sorting, without. Systems could do the first pass at this, as they often to today with taking author names and inverting them into "familyname, forenames" order. Of course, humans would have to have the ability to make corrections where the system got it wrong.
The indicators that identify the source of a controlled vocabulary could logically be transformed into a separate data element for each vocabulary (e.g. "LCSH," "MeSH"). However, the number of different vocabularies is, while not infinite, very large and growing (as evidenced by the practice in MARC to delegate the source to a separate subfield that carries codes from a controlled list of sources), so producing a separate data element for each vocabulary is unwieldy, to say the least. At some future date, when controlled vocabularies "self-identify" using URIs this may be less of a problem. For now, however, it seems that we will need to have multi-part data elements for controlled vocabularies that include the source with the vocabulary terms.
The indicators that further sub-type a field, like the 520 Summary field, can be fairly easily given their own data element since they have their own meaning. Ideally there would be a "type/sub-type" relationship where appropriate.
And Some Problems
There are a number of areas that are problematic when it comes to the indicator values. In many cases, the MARC standard does not make clear if the indicator modifies all subfields in the field, or only a select few. In some instances we can reason this out: the non-filing indicators only refer to the left-most characters of the field, so they can only refer to the $a (which is mandatory in each of those fields). On the other hand, for the values in the subject area (6XX) of the record, the source indicator relates to all of the subject subfields in the field. I assume, however, that in all cases the control subfields $3-$8 perform functions that are unrelated to the indicator values. I do not know at this point if there are fields in which the indicators function on some other subset of the subfields between $a and $z. That's something I still need to study.
I also see a practical problem in making use of the indicator values in any kind of mapping from MARC to just about anything else. In 60% of MARC tags either one or both indicator positions is undefined. Undefined indicators are represented in the MARC record with blanks. Unfortunately there are also defined indicators that have a meaning assigned to the character "blank." There is nothing in the record itself to differentiate blank indicator values from undefined indicators. Any transformation from MARC to another format has to have knowledge about every tag and its indicators in order to do anything with these elements. This is another example of the complexity of MARC for data processing, and yet another reason why a new format could make our lives easier.
More on the Wiki
For anyone else who obsesses on these kinds of things there is more detail on all of this on the futurelib wiki. I welcome comments here, and on the wiki. If you wish to comment on the wiki, however, I need to add your login to the site (as an anti-spam measure). I will undoubtedly continue my own obsessive behavior related to this task, but I really would welcome collaboration if anyone is so inclined. I don't think that there is a single "right answer" to the questions I am asking, but am working on the principle that some practical decisions in this area can help us as we work on a future bibliographic carrier.
Friday, September 16, 2011
European Thoughts on RDA
Some European libraries are asking the question: "Should we adopt RDA as our cataloging code?" The discussion is happening through the European RDA Interest Group (EURIG). Members of EURIG are preparing reports on what they see as the possibilities that RDA could become a truly international cataloging code. With the increased sharing of just about everything between Europe's countries -- currency, labor force, media, etc. -- the vision of Europe's libraries as a cooperating unit seems to be a no-brainer.
There are interesting comments in the presentations available from the EURIG meeting. For example:
Spain has done comparisons with current cataloging and some testing using MARC21. They conclude: "Our decision will probably depend on the flexibility to get the different lists, vocabularies, specific rules... that we need." In other words, it all depends on being able to customize RDA to local practice.
Germany sees RDA as having the potential to be an international set of rules for data sharing (much like ISBD today), with national profiles for internal use. Germany has starting translating the RDA vocabulary terms in the Open Metadata Registry, but notes that translation of the text must be negotiated with the co-publishers of RDA, that is the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and CILIP.
The most detail, though, comes from a report by the French libraries. (The French are totally winning my heart as a smart and outspoken people. Their response to the Google Books Settlement was wonderful.) This report brings up some key issues about RDA from outside the JSC.
First, it is said in this report, and also in some of the EURIG presentations from their meeting, that it is RDA's implementation of FRBR that makes it a candidate for an international cataloging code. FRBR is seen as the model that will allow library metadata to have a presence on the Web, and many in the library profession see getting a library presence on the Web as an essential element of being part of the modern information environment. One irony of this, though, is that Italy already has a cataloging code based on FRBR, REICAT, but that has gotten little attention. (A large segment of it is available in English if you are curious about their approach. )
The French interest in FRBR is specifically about Scenario 1 as defined in RDA; a model with defined entities and links between them. An implementation of Scenario 2, which links authority records to bibliographic records, would be a mere replication of what already exists in France's catalogs. In other words, they have already progressed to level 2 while U.S. libraries are still stuck in level 3, the flat data model.
Although the French libraries see an advantage to using RDA, they also have some fairly severe criticisms. Key ones are:
* There is a strong adherence to ISO and IFLA standards outside of the U.S. I don't know why we in the U.S. feel less need to pay attention to those international standards bodies, but it does separate us from the greater library community.
(Thanks to John Hostage of Harvard for pointing out the recent EURIG activity on the RDA-L list.)
There are interesting comments in the presentations available from the EURIG meeting. For example:
Spain has done comparisons with current cataloging and some testing using MARC21. They conclude: "Our decision will probably depend on the flexibility to get the different lists, vocabularies, specific rules... that we need." In other words, it all depends on being able to customize RDA to local practice.
Germany sees RDA as having the potential to be an international set of rules for data sharing (much like ISBD today), with national profiles for internal use. Germany has starting translating the RDA vocabulary terms in the Open Metadata Registry, but notes that translation of the text must be negotiated with the co-publishers of RDA, that is the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and CILIP.
The most detail, though, comes from a report by the French libraries. (The French are totally winning my heart as a smart and outspoken people. Their response to the Google Books Settlement was wonderful.) This report brings up some key issues about RDA from outside the JSC.
First, it is said in this report, and also in some of the EURIG presentations from their meeting, that it is RDA's implementation of FRBR that makes it a candidate for an international cataloging code. FRBR is seen as the model that will allow library metadata to have a presence on the Web, and many in the library profession see getting a library presence on the Web as an essential element of being part of the modern information environment. One irony of this, though, is that Italy already has a cataloging code based on FRBR, REICAT, but that has gotten little attention. (A large segment of it is available in English if you are curious about their approach. )
The French interest in FRBR is specifically about Scenario 1 as defined in RDA; a model with defined entities and links between them. An implementation of Scenario 2, which links authority records to bibliographic records, would be a mere replication of what already exists in France's catalogs. In other words, they have already progressed to level 2 while U.S. libraries are still stuck in level 3, the flat data model.
Although the French libraries see an advantage to using RDA, they also have some fairly severe criticisms. Key ones are:
- it ignores ISO standards, and does not follow IFLA standards, such as Names of person, or Anonymous classics*
- it is a follow-on to, and makes concessions to, AACR(1 and 2), which is not used by the French libraries
- it proposes one particular interpretation of FRBR, not allowing for others, and defines each element as being exclusively for use with a single FRBR entity
* There is a strong adherence to ISO and IFLA standards outside of the U.S. I don't know why we in the U.S. feel less need to pay attention to those international standards bodies, but it does separate us from the greater library community.
(Thanks to John Hostage of Harvard for pointing out the recent EURIG activity on the RDA-L list.)
Due diligence do-over
In what I see as both a brave and an appropriate move, the University of Michigan admitted publicly that the Authors Guild had found some serious flaws in its process for identifying orphan works. The statement reaffirms the need to identify orphan works, and promises to revise its procedures.
"Having learned from our mistakes—we are, after all, an educational institution—we have already begun an examination of our procedures to identify the gaps that allowed volumes that are evidently not orphan works to be added to the list. Once we create a more robust, transparent, and fully documented process, we will proceed with the work, because we remain as certain as ever that our proposed uses of orphan works are lawful and important to the future of scholarship and the libraries that support it."Among other things, what I find interesting in all this is that no one seems to be wondering why our copyright registration process is so broken that sometimes even the rights holders themselves don't know that they are the rights holders. It really shouldn't be this hard to find out if a work is covered by copyright. Larry Lessig covered this in his book "Free Culture," which is available online. The basic process of identifying copyrights is broken, and the burden is being placed on those who wish to make use of works. This is a clear anti-progress, pro-market bias in our copyright system.
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