The Emerging Cataloging Future, RDA, DCMI and the Semantic Web

The future of cataloging is taking shape, and the shape of things to come is being influenced by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and the Semantic Web Community. What are the implications of the inclusion of these new “players” in the RDA process? What will be the effect on cataloging and the work of catalogers? Are catalogers ready to participate fully in this emerging new world? Presented by the MLA Technical Services Section.

Speaker: Diane L. Hillmann, Research Librarian, Cornell University Library

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative DCMI

Semantic Web Community

RDA: Resource Description and Access


I’d like to begin by saying that a lot of this is fairly new to me. Though I have read about some of this terminology, I have never applied it. What is exciting however, like several of the talks at the pre-conference is doing old things in new ways in a less proprietary manner with more local control. The world of bibliographic control I think has become stale and I think we have to try to get away from that awful word “control” and move to more cooperative approaches. My work as a cataloger, which I do pretty much full time is not always useful and transferable to my work at the reference desk. That could be because I don’t spend a lot of time on the reference desk or I have a terrible memory for LC subject headings or maybe it’s because the old catalog is stale. Well, I look forward to new things that may or may not happen before I retire from the library field. (these are the bloggers words)

Now to the talk. “I still think in MARC,” comments Diane. She goes on to say that time has moved on and that we are in the midst of exciting ferment with opportunities to manage change. The

Diane began cranking away at software developers 3 years ago She says she was a complainer but now is focused on building the technical infrastructure that RDA didn’t have.

What RDA is and isn’t. It isn’t linear. What is its starting point? It is in the last stages of development. Final full draft due in August and will be “published” in early 2009. Last summer DCMI folks joined with Semantic Web Community to move ahead with these semantics.

DCMI is in partnership with RDA to develop vocabularies.

Where are we going? RDA will be used to support the creation of FRBR based records and will be available to support catalogers and applications. Specialized communities will be building application profiles.

The journey is a series of maps. Envisioning new descriptive structures, supporting libraries and other communities of practice and “building in” support for future development and extension.

RDA is the successor to AACR2. RDVocabularies is the tool.

RDA development began with AACR3. AACR3 then was reorganized as RDA (FRBR). Invisible still RDA became explicitly FRBR/FRAR and no longer tied explicitly to MARC

The new RDA is a FRBR based approach to structuring bibliographic data, more explicitly machine-friendly linkages (preferably with URIs, Uniform Resource Identifiers), with a greater emphasis on relationship and roles, less reliance on cataloger created notes and text strings (particularly for identification)

Diane demonstrated a rather lengthy example of creating a RDA record with the DCMI approach. It will be posted elsewhere on the MLA Conference Website at a later date.

LC hopefully will be using vocabularies developed by DCMI. Rather than being managed centrally by one entity, management of vocabularies will be parsed out to entities (institutions, databases) that can better manage the information.

Is FRBR (around since 1998) the only model here? DCMI abstract model is a Dublin Core view of the world. URI relates out to other descriptions. Cataloging is moving to more related descriptions – i.e. a view of geo-referenced data. Traditionally catalogers transcribed information. The descriptors will reference the sources of information, i.e. Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. It is importance that we work together to maintain databases and not create a lot of local data. Everybody will be taking responsibility and central database will be more forgiving.

ILSs have not been developing software for these models. They are waiting for this to be published. This will be open source and available without copyright.

Don’t we already do vocabularies? Our traditional vocabularies use text strings as identifiers. Numbers are used only for internal or intra-community transactions. Semantic Web uses vocabularies much more rigorously. NSTL is a vocabulary registry – www.metadataregistry.org Try out our sandbox – make up a vocabulary, play and see what other people have done.

Paper will be on the MLA conference website

Check out these application profiles:
SWAP
Collections Application Profile

The implications are an end to the closed library community, a different approach to standards and a library community that is more engaged with the web and not just talking to each other (other libraries are librarians)

Doris Madsen, Springfield City Library

The Emerging Cataloging Future: RDA, DCMI, and the Semantic Web - Diane L. Hillmann

Diane Hillmann, Research Librarian at Cornell University and former project manager and Metadata Specialist for the National Science Digital Library Project presented an intense overview of RDA and FRBR, or at least it was for me, so forgive me for "dumbing down" this presentation, to summarize for those who are just beginning to learn about these changes in descriptive cataloging.

Hillman gave a brief history of the development of the emerging technical infrastructure which will carry library information from one stage to another, in other words from AACR2 to RDA and FRBR. She mentioned that the final full draft of RDA (Resource Description and Access) will be distributed in a Beta version soon, since it is difficult to review as text.

Hillmann mentioned that this transition is still in the planning stages, that the youngest librarians in the audience will gray during this process, and that there is no prototype to view. She mentioned that to start on this journey, it is essential to "give up an enormous backpack of past practices" but "bring the legacy of cataloging forward".

The FRBR model, the terms, and the approach are all incorporated into RDA. The new system emphasizes the relationships between a work, its manifestation, its expressions, then links to items owned, people who have some relation to the work, etc. The new system will have more machine-friendly linkages by managing text strings and URIs. Catalogers need to envision new descriptive structures, using software.

To learn more, I'm suggesting a visit to a few websites:

http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF

http://www.catalogingfutures.com/catalogingfutures/2008/05/index.htm

http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf


During Hillman's talk, she received a question from the audience:
"Since few of us are now doing original cataloging, but relying on cataloging sources, are those who provide us with cataloging, for example OCLC going to adopt this and when?"

Hillmann didn't know whether this is going to be adopted by large vendors, although she knew a few were exploring. There are many questions that need to be answered.

A graphic shown by Hillmann illustrated that text strings would be replaced by placing URIs in the typical MARC fields. These URIs, which would be maintained on the net by some authority would connect ideas to ideas.

A brief example:

Author leads to a link
Work Title leads to a text string of the Title
Form of work leads to a link
Original language leads to a link of that work in that language

The links are not URLs, they are URIs. URIs are persistent. These are established by the scholarly community, committed to establishing more permanent authoritative thesauri. The library community is working with other agencies to establish these.

There are those, including Hillmann who have and are working to establish some standards. See
http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/list.html which illustrates the methods for registering concepts (entities and attributes).

Hillmann said several times that all of this is theoretical. There is no concrete example of this.
Hillmann felt that integrated library system (ILS) vendors are for the most part taking a "wait and see" attitude. She mentioned that Innovative, OCLC, and a few other vendors are taking some steps.

For the most part, it seems that the library community is also taking a "wait and see" attitude, since there is a shrinking population of the profession directly dedicated to original cataloging. However, Hillmann presented this as a change in the infrastructure of catalogs. Such an important development should get your serious attention in the next months when the final RDA is unveiled, and in the coming years as we see the implementation. Stay tuned. Thanks Diane for starting us on the journey!