ALA Midwinter, Next Generation Bibliographic Control: What Is the Brave New World?

As of this posting, no slides have been made available on the ALA wiki for this session. This may change in the near future.

ExLibris sponsored the program. It was fortunate I arrived early, as the topic was timely and there were not nearly enough tables, chairs or cookies for the room. And as everyone knows, cookies move all thorny and/or challenging conversations along. Reactions may even be delayed as mouths are busy chewing rather than reacting.

The program consisted of three speakers (Diane Hillman, Corey Harper and Kathryn Harnish).
Diane Hillman started off asking the audience a series of questions. How we build value in our data? How do we engage users with the data? And what about open data? She then moved into a list of things we (librarians and library staff) should leave behind. The list included:

• Metadata on catalog cards (i.e. our current methods of recording which are based on earlier models)
• Search interfaces hated by "even librarians"
• Static HTML pages
• Notion of one silo for everything and library software that does not truly sort results.

From there, the presentation moved into standards alphabet soup (RDA, FRBR, FRAD, FRASAR). I had not heard of it before, but FRASAR stands for Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records. Another term I had not heard before was SKOS. SKOS stands for Simple Knowledge Organization Standard and was developed by the WC3.

Ms. Hillman ended urging that we need more flexible metadata management tools, less reliance on human beings and more of a reliance on machines to manage the ever increasing pools of data. Finally, we need more user participation. How can we accommodate multiple user points of view? What do our users receive from us in return? At this point, I am afraid the answer is not much yet.

The next speaker was Corey Harper of NYU. His emphasis was that we need to be working on more metadata in an open environment and creating new services around this metadata. I have often tripped over the word semantic. Mr. Harper defined semantic as just another term of linked data. Examples of linked data include the URIs, http and everything that can be found by a machine. A plea was made for a name authority structure on the Web. I wholeheartedly agree with that!

From there the discussion moved to various projects involving linked data. The National Library of Sweden has been involved with creating linking relationships with their Libris catalog using RDF/XML data. The presentation ended with the call for open library data which allows both formal and informal development. Experimental services require both.

The session ended with Kathryn Harnish of ExLibris talking about the development of URD(superscript 2) (Unified Resource Discovery Delivery), URM (Unified Resource Management) and the need to decouple inventory and metadata in terms of systems.  Ms. Harnish then described some of the vendor's early efforts towards this end.

Comments

[Char]

Thanks for pointing out some of the new alphabet soup. I hadn't heard of a couple of those. I'll also admit to stumbling over 'semantic web'. How nice to have it translated so simply!

Ms. Hillman's question says it all: How do we engage users with the data? We cannot force the OPAC down their throats and we shouldn't expect them to use multiple interfaces to get what they want. The OPAC is not their first stop but we need to be able to bring them in through the back door and open library data -- something commercial vendors need to embrace -- will bring value to us all.