Collections, catalogue, clumps, and common information environments

1
Collections, catalogue, clumps, and common
information environments

• Gordon Dunsire
• Presented at the Cataloguing Indexing Group
  Annual Conference 2004

2
Overview

• What is a collection?
• What is collection-level description?
• Why is it important?
• Information environments
• Development of Scottish Collections Network
• Library collections and items

3
What is a collection?

• Any aggregation of individual items (objects,
  resources)
• CD Focus briefing paper 1
• Size is not a factor 1 item is possible
• Varying degrees of permanence
• Physical juxtaposition not necessary collections
  can be distributed across multiple locations
• Cross-domain
• Libraries, museums, art galleries, archives,
  digital
• Definition is too vague to be practicable
• Limit to useful collections
• Useful defined in terms of Functional
  granularity

4
Functional granularity

• useful or necessary for the purposes of
  resources discovery or collection management
  Heaney
• As deemed by the institution
• Might include user groups as well as owners and
  administrators
• Exclude
• Dynamic collections (results of retrieval)
• Single persons (unless significant)

5
What is CLD?

• Metadata at the level of aggregation

Title William Speirs Bruce Collection
Description Collection of material on
oceanography and Arctic and Antarctic
exploration, bequeathed by Dr. William Speirs
Bruce, Polar explorer and oceanographer
(1867-1921). Location Edinburgh University
Library. Main Library Collectors William S.
(William Speirs) Bruce (1867-1921) Collecting
Closed Subjects Antarctica--Discovery and
exploration Part of Edinburgh University
Library. Department of Special Collections
printed books collections
6
Why is CLD important? (1)

• Ideally, all metadata/retrieval is at the level
  of the work (item-level description)
• But in the Real world
• Online ILD metadata not available
• Legacy Institutional policies
• Wide variation in ILD structure and content
  standards
• Between domains within domains
• Within single institutions!

7
Why is CLD important? (2)

• CLD offers broader coverage
• More stuff can be found
• Cheaper to implement
• High recall, low precision
• Some metadata cannot be accommodated in ILD
  without extensive duplication
• E.g. Collection title, Collector, Owner,
  Location, etc.

8
Why is CLD important? (3)

• Collaborative management
• Collaborative acquisition policies
• Preservation and storage
• Priorities for digitisation, wider access, etc.
• Landscaping in distributed digital information
  environments
• Portals
• Broad overview, then more precise discovery

9
Landscaping
Search term or Profile parameter e.g. name,
subject, education level, accessibility
Retrieve relevant CLDs to create broad "map" of
concentrations of resources peaks of
significance "lodes" for further exploration
CLDs link to digital collections, and online
(analytic) finding aids
Local ILDs for resource discovery cross-searching
possible with Z39.50/OAI
10
Common Information Environment

• the set of network or online services that
  support publishing and use of information and
  learning resources (JISC IE)
• Extension to all sectors and domains, and
  non-digital media
• IE functional model for resource discovery has 4
  stages

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JISC IE Functional Model

• 1 Enter
• Initial landscape presentation of collections
  services for local service or user profile
• 2 Survey
• Modify set of collections services
• 3 Discover
• Item-level searching using distributed (z39.50)
  or physical (OAI harvested FTP) union catalogue
• 4 Detail
• Further information about items

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IE for Scotland (A)
Entry
Initial landscape Scottish Cultural Portal
SCONE
Survey
Collection descriptions service SCONE
Landscaper
Collection-level descriptions
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IE for Scotland (B)
Discover
Distributed union catalogue CAIRNS
Harvested union catalogue HaIRST
Union catalogue COPAC
Detail
Item metadata
Item metadata
Item metadata
Item metadata
14
Development of SCONE (1)

• Scottish Collections Network
• Based on entity-relationship model of Michael
  Heaney
• Also covers analytic finding aids catalogues,
  archival descriptions, indexes
• Basis of RSLP schema (simplified model)

15
Development of SCONE (2)

• Cross-domain
• Libraries SLIC SLIR
• Museums SMC database
• Archives SCAN directory
• gt 4500 CLDs
• Originally RSLP project latterly developed as
  part of the COPAC/Clumps interoperability project
  (CC-interop)

16
SCONE output

• Developed in CC-interop
• Output of SCONE CLDs in various formats
• RSLP
• Dublin Core CD
• JISE IE Services Registry
• Text HTML table
• Also MARC21
• In collaboration with the National Library of
  Scotland

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CLD in MARC21
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CLD vs ILD (1)

• Names
• Much wider range than item-level description
• Owners, administrators in addition to creators,
  subjects, to be included in name authority files
• Greater volatility with owners, collectors
• But locations tend to be fixed
• Collections dont circulate

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CLD vs ILD (2)

• Subjects
• Collections on specific subjects
• General collections subject strengths
• Hierarchies (analytics)
• Multi-level granularity
• Sub-collections (6 levels in SCONE)
• Polyhierarchy one physical super-collection, but
  many virtual
• Metadata aggregations

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ILDCLD?

• What is an item?
• Serial gt Issue gt Article
• Book gt Word !?
• Digital blur
• Web page gtGraphic picture text
• Re-usability
• E-text gt Keyword
• Granularity of access/retrieval
• Maybe its been collections all along

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Links

• Me
• g.dunsire_at_strath.ac.uk
• SCONE service
• http//scone.strath.ac.uk/service/index.cfm
• About SCONE for more information
• CDLR (other projects)
• http//cdlr.strath.ac.uk
• JISC Information Environment
• http//www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?nameabout_info_en
  v