Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control Second Public Hearing

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Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic
ControlSecond Public Hearing
Jennifer Bowen University of
Rochester jbowen_at_library.rochester.edu Chicago,
IL May 9, 2007
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My perspectives

• International descriptive cataloging standards
  development (RDA)
• Defining/developing a next generation catalog
• Cataloging manager at a smaller ARL institution

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My topics

• Current structures and standards vis-à-vis RDA
  development
• Future of controlled data
• New requirements for bibliographic data
• Whats needed for future standards development

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Current structures and standards vis-à-vis RDA
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RDA development structure
RDA Project Manager
RDA Editor
JSC Secretary
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What can RDA accomplish?

• More flexible, up-to-date standard to replace
  AACR2
• Create a useful tool for catalogers
• Easier to train new catalogers
• Facilitate cataloging digital resources in a
  library environment
• Promote international adoption of a common
  standard

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What has hampered RDA development?

• Too much hype!
• Need for backwards compatibility
• Tight funding and timeline
• Success of standard tied to success of the
  commercial product
• Consultation process needed improvement

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Consulting other communities

• Which communities to consul?
• What do we gain?
• Ensuring successful consultations

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Which communities to consult?

• Those with similar missions to our own
• Archives, museums
• Others whose metadata we want to share
• Publishing, metadata communities
• Communities that can assist us

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What do we gain?

• Metadata interoperability
• Envision technology trends and opportunities
• Improve standards development process
• Help us undertake user research

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Ensuring successful consultations

• Must be at the appropriate level
• Often will need to be on-going, not one-time
  events
• Need organizational structures and funding to
  maintain relationships
• Allow for serendipity (this needs funding too!)

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Recommendations for RDA

• Move forward with first release in 2009
• Aggressively pursue development of RDA
  application profile, related efforts
• Restructure JSC work to focus on consultation,
  not document editing

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Future of controlled data
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Controlled data whats needed

• Need identifiers!
• Evaluate potential based on well-designed systems
  
• Provide better tools for catalogers
• Facilitate faceted browsing

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New requirements for bibliographic data
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Creating richer interfaces

• Web services to enrichment data
• Metadata to support faceted browsing
• FRBR-informed navigation
• Relator information
• Controlled access points

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Testing environments

• Encourage experimentation and research
• Opportunities to develop new system
  functionalities
• User research and usability testing
• Support open-source community
• Feed lessons learned into standards development

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Sharing metadata

• Between repositories, similar discovery
  environments
• Share local augmentation, results of
  experimentation
• Distinguish standard from local metadata, but
  share both
• Within other discovery environments
• Components to connect systems

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Whats needed for future standards development?
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What is our vision?

• Users have a positive experience locating library
  resources
• Users are led to library resources from wherever
  they happen to be online
• Library solutions are seen as useful in the
  broader world

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A positive vision for bibliographic control

• Catalogers/metadata professionals
• Have effective tools, can focus on intellectual
  work
• Participate in designing how systems use metadata
• Contribute widely to improving shared metadata
• Are confident that systems will use their work
  effectively

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Whats needed right now?

• Positive, decisive future action
• Clearly redefine roles and responsibilities
• Explain, justify trade-offs
• Articulate a positive vision for the future of
  bibliographic control