Authority Resource

The OLAC folks have put together Authority Tools for Audio-Visual and Music Catalogers: An Annotated List of Useful Resources. Originally compiled by Subcommittee on Authority Tools Cataloging Policy Committee OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. David Procházka, editor: 2001- Looks like I'm going to NACO training at the end of the summer, so I'm keeping my eye out for good resources.

Open Source

OCLC has released SiteSearch as Open Source. It looks like it could be used to place a catalog on the Web, but would not be a good choice for the main library system. Here is their description:

The OCLC SiteSearch toolkit provides a comprehensive solution for managing distributed library information resources in a World Wide Web environment. WebZ™ is java-based Z39.50 client/server component used to create an interface to information resources. Database Builder provides the tools to build local databases in various record formats, that can then be accessed through the WebZ interface.

Open Archives Initiative

Liu, Xiaoming, et.al.. [28]"Federated Searching Interface Techniques for Heterogenous OAI Repositories" [29]Journal of Digital Information 2(4) (May 21, 2002).
(http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i04/Liu/). - The [30]Open Archives Initiative is our latest, best hope for a technology that can knit together access to a variety of dispersed repositories of information. Although the underlying protocol for "crawling" (fetching information from) such repositories is now in place, there remain some thorny issues -- not the least of which is how to handle disparate sets of metadata. In building the [31]ARC Cross Archive Search Service, the authors had to make decisions on how to handle this issue, which they share in this piece. They determined that to federate metadata from disparate sources, no single approach would work well in all cases. One relatively easy method is to use keyword searching, but then any additional functionality offered by well-described metadata is lost. Another approach is to map each set of elements into a common set. Their decisions on how to handle this dilemma (not surprisingly, a hybrid approach), as well as a thorough accounting of the over 1 million records from dozens of archives with which they were working, round out this very informative article. As libraries try to build cross-archive search services, we will need to become very good at dealing with the challenges outlined here, as well as others. This early work should prove helpful. - [32]RT

Current Cites 13(6) (June 2002) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright B) 2002 by the Regents of the University of California All rights reserved.

Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computerized bulletin board/conference systems, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collections at no cost. This message must appear on copied material. All commercial use requires permission from the editor. All product names are trademarks or registered trade marks of their respective holders. Mention of a product in this publication does not necessarily imply endorsement of the product. To subscribe to the Current Cites distribution list, send the message "sub cites [your name]" to [50]listserv@library.berkeley.edu, replacing "[your name]" with your name. To unsubscribe, send the message "unsub cites" to the same address.

Not Cataloging

This is a great idea, the Librarians Book Club. How did I miss this for so long? Here is how they describe their mission:

The Librarian's Book Club is a group to read and discuss books that are about libraries and the library profession. Every two months the Librarian's Book Club will select a new book to discuss. All you need to do is get yourself a copy of the current book and subscribe to the discussion list. Click on the book covers to learn more about the current selection. (Note: Although this book club discussion group is focused towards librarians, we welcome members that are not librarians.)

Thanks to Blake on LISNews for alerting me to this.

GILS & Dublin Core

This is a note I recently received.

"Colleagues,

I am gratified to report the Web Metadata Standard for Minnesota has been approved by the MN Information Policy Council. This Dublin Core-based standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.85) has been in use by many agencies, beginning with the Foundations Project in 1998. The standard is integrated into the new North Star Portal content management templates, and the state search engine is tuned to use the DC elements in results ranking. It is part of the Enterprise Architecture, along with the GIS metadata standard and the recordkeeping metadata standard.

Located at http://bridges.state.mn.us/bestprac/mn_dc_standard.pdf

Eileen Quam
Information Architect
Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources
eileen.quam@dnr.state.mn.us
651.297.2341
651.297.4946 FAX"

Resume Online

I've wanted to post something about myself to satisfy those curious about such things. However, Blogspace does not allow for such Web pages. While reading The Information Professional's Guide to Career Development Online I got the idea of posting my resume at one of the free services. I picked the one at SLA. This seems to be working just fine. There is an "About me" link in the left column. Please let me know if there is any problem. If you are in the job market, the SLA job center would be a good place to visit, if only to post your resume. It's free and easy.

Metadata

An article in D-Lib magazine which may be of interest, Primary Multimedia Objects and 'Educational Metadata' by Paul Shabajee.

"Large multimedia database systems have great potential for educational use. Their assets can often be used to support educational and research activities in a wide variety of educational contexts, supporting learners and educators from many subject areas. This article focuses on what appears to be a fundamental dilemma for the developers of such systems regarding how to tag or index their assets with metadata so as to support discovery of the assets by these educational users."

MARC21

MARC 21 Data Elements in LC Bibliographic and Authority Files gives info on some minor changes.

Resource Description Framework

The jena semantic web toolkit is a java API for manipulating RDF models. Its features include:

statement centric methods for manipulating an RDF model as a set of RDF triples

resource centric methods for manipulating an RDF model as a set of resources with properties

cascading method calls for more convenient programming

built in support for RDF containers - bag, alt and seq

enhanced resources - the application can extend the behaviour of resources

integrated parsers (ARP and David Megginson's RDFFilter)

Markup Languages

The DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language) language is being developed as an extension to XML and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The latest release of the language (DAML+OIL) provides a rich set of constructs with which to create ontologies and to markup information so that it is machine readable and understandable.

Open Source Library System

What was once Open Book seems to have morphed into LearningAccess.

"The LearningAccess ILS is a full-feature Open Source library automation system developed for use by small public and school libraries in the U.S. and the rest of the world. The Institute will make this system available free to libraries that, because of cost, have been unable to achieve the benefits of automation.

Main Components
The LearningAccess ILS consists of three modules: the patron or user module (OPAC), the cataloging module and the circulation module. In future releases it may also include an acquisition module. All modules are Web-interface based and are multi-lingual user capable, with our initial release supporting English, Spanish and French.

The system supports the full MARC21 format for bibliographic, holding, authority and community records. It has an intuitive importing program to add records to its database. The cataloging client includes Z39.50 searching capabilities to allow for copy cataloging against OCLC or other larger union databases. Future releases will also support Z39.50 searches against the database."

Customizable Local WebPAC Pages

The Index to Creating Customizable Local WebPAC Pages by Raleigh Muns. "This program will demonstrate how to easily create and modify local Web pages external to the "official" WebPAC pages, allowing extensive local control over the features of your own, and others, WebPACs."

Text of Presentation, Nashville TN 1998, Innovative Users Group Conference

Quick Guide for Creating Customizable Local WebPAC Pages

Templates for Hacking Your Own

Directory of Hacked PACs (they work if you're on the Internet)

An AWFUL example of a Hacked PAC (Cautionary Tale)

Missouri's Omnipotent Research Online Network (Same techniques)

OPACS On the Web

British Library Public Catalogue accessible from COPAC
Joint Press Release from the British Library and the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL)
The British Library and the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) are delighted to announce that from 17 June 2002 the British Library Public Catalogue (BLPC) will be accessible online, free of charge, from COPAC.

COPAC is an online union catalogue, hosted at MIMAS, which gives free access to the merged catalogues of 22 of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland. Now that the British Library has become a full member of CURL and the BLPC has been added to COPAC, COPAC users will have free online access, via a single search interface, to more than 20 million catalogue records, which they can search simultaneously by title, author or subject.

The National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru have also become full members of CURL and their records will be available via COPAC within the next twelve months. Meanwhile their catalogues can be searched simultaneously with the COPAC database, which also includes the BLPC, using the experimental version COPAC V3.

More details about the content of the BLPC are available.

More information about CURL and MIMAS can be found on their respective web sites.

Information Architecture

In the context of the U.S. Federal Government "Disaster Help" e-Government initiative, I am helping draft a two-page paper: "Agreement on Certain Information Architecture Principles".

Our focus is on the specification of shared interfaces among systems operated by e-Government initiative participants. The current draft calls out five minimum and critical agreements required for interoperability:

(1) Avoid non-standard data syntaxes

(2) Register the semantics of shared data elements

(3) Document service interfaces in a standard way

(4) Implement the standard interface for information discovery

(5) Implement the standard interfaces for geospatial data

There is also a short paragraph noting some requirements applicable to Government participants, such as open and equal public access, permanence of public access, privacy, security, records management, and information management.

Anyone who would like to review the draft or advise on other major principles, please contact me by e-mail to echristi@usgs.gov

(Also, please forward this note to other groups interested in information architecture principles for e-Government.)

Thanks!
Eliot

Wireless Access?

The RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed seems to be working fine. I think many folks have switched from visiting the Web site to getting the items on a news reader. Now the next frontier is wireless. Does anyone (Shifted Librarian, Handheld Librarian) have their content available for use in Palm devices? How can this be done? It should be fairly simple.

Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)

"The Library of Congress' Network Development and MARC Standards Office, with interested experts, has developed the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), which is a bibliographic element set that may be used for a variety of purposes, particularly for library applications. Information about MODS and the schema (version 1.2) is available

As an XML schema it is intended to be able to carry selected data from existing MARC 21 records as well as to enable the creation of original resource description records. It includes a subset of MARC fields and uses language-based tags rather than numeric ones, in some cases regrouping elements from the MARC 21 bibliographic format. The elements inherit MARC semantics, so are more compatible with existing library data than other metadata schemes.

MODS could potentially be used as follows:

as a Z39.50 Next Generation specified format

as an extension schema to METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard)

to represent metadata for harvesting

for original resource description in XML syntax (using MARC semantics)

for representing a simplified MARC record in XML

for metadata in XML that may be packaged with an electronic resource

MODS includes a subset of data from the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data. As an element set that allows for the representation of data already in MARC-based systems, it is intended to allow for the conversion of core fields from a MARC 21 record, while some specific data may be dropped. As an element set for original resource description, it allows for a simple record to be created, in some cases using more general tags than those available in the MARC record. The Library of Congress has developed transformations to move MARC 21 records from 2709 form to MARCXML to MODS, with the software available from the MARCXML Web site.

There has been wide review and input to the development of the schema, which is now available for trial use. It will remain stable for the next six months, during which we invite comments as a result of experimentation.

For questions or comments please email the Office at ndmso@loc.gov

Sally McCallum, Chief
Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA"

This is very much like MARC in XML with name tags rather than numeric.

The British Library Public Catalogue

"The British Library has today launched its new BLPCZ service, which provides Z39.50 compliant access to the British Library Public Catalogue for the first time. The international standard for communications between computers in the library and information sector, Z39.50 allows simultaneous searching of multiple bibliographic resources via the Internet.

The service allows quick and easy access to bibliographic records from the catalogues of the main British Library collections - already available online at http://blpc.bl.uk. In addition to this, the new feature will allow users with suitable retrieval software to download and make use of the Library's bibliographic citations for their own personal research purposes. This should prove of particular use to researchers and students compiling bibliographies for monographs, research reports or theses.

Developed and hosted by MIMAS (Manchester Information and Associated Services) at the University of Manchester, BLPCZ is the latest result of a co-operative alliance between the British Library and CURL (the Consortium of University Research Libraries) which is aimed at providing wider access to the Library's catalogues. "Further details are available.

Open Source OPAC

"Its finally here!

Nearly a year since the last release, we have a new stable release of koha.

The main new features in this version are:

Can search by dewey number

Keyword Searches can be restricted by a dewey number

Can restrict a catalogue search by a class of items

Simple acquisitions module

Deleting borrowers checks their accounts for reserves, current issues, and fines

New catalogue maintenance section

MARC importing from a file, and from z39.50

Main Bugfixes:

Keyword searches are a lot faster

Combined author and title search is now also searching series title

Adding children and institutions works as advertised

There have been numerous little fixes and a lot of code clean up.

The structure of the tarball has changed to a more sensible layout, and the INSTALL document has been rewritten.

There is also now a installer script, as well as a functioning database update script.

All this should mean its the easiest Koha to install or upgrade yet."
Info
Download

MeSH

"In early April, the Health Sciences OCLC Users Group (HSOCLCUG) conducted an anonymous survey on MeSH authority control practices in health sciences libraries. There were 105 respondents to the survey. Here is a summary of our findings.

Half the respondents (overwhelmingly the largest group) do their authority control manually. Half have brought their MeSH authorities up to date sometime in the last two years, but a third never have. About 70 percent have a mixture in their OPACs of pre-1999, post-1999 and NLM distributed MeSH.

A third of the respondents are using post-1999 MeSH practices in their original cataloging, and almost half are applying post-1999 MeSH practices in their OPACs. The number who would prefer that NLM provide records to bibliographic utilities with post-1999 MeSH nearly equals those who prefer NLM to continue its current practice of providing records with distributed MeSH structure. Thus, respondents appear to be divided on the post-1999 MeSH vs. distributed MeSH structure issue.

The survey also reveals that most vendor systems' global modification functionality are not adequate to convert old records in catalogs to agree with either NLM's current practices (post-1999) or NLM's distributed structure (distributed through utilities like OCLC).

Almost 60 percent enrich OCLC records with NLM classification and MeSH on a regular basis. Almost three-fourths would download MeSH authority records from OCLC if available.

Finally, an unexpectedly large number of comments probably indicate that MeSH authority control is a topic of very high interest to respondents.

For the entire survey results, including graphical displays, please refer to this PDF file, using Adobe Acrobat reader or click the survey link on this webpage

We hope you will enjoy examining the survey results and that you will contact the survey coordinators if you are interested in the work that HSOCLCUG is doing. MeSH authorities, OCLC new directions, changes at NLM, and resource sharing/universal MARC Holdings are four areas of special interest to HSOCLCUG.

The survey coordinators:

Dan Kniesner (kniesner@ohsu.edu) and Judith Dzierba (Judith_L_Dzierba@rush.edu)."

Wireless Web Browsers & the OPAC

Another OPAC I've not seen, but sounds interesting. If you catch it at SLA or ALA let me know how it looks. The III AirPAC is designed for mobile phone, wireless PDA and other mobile devices.

"Patrons can interact with the Millennium system from anywhere accessible by wireless networks, allowing a user to place a hold from a classroom, check due dates and renew items during a long commute, or search the catalog while running errands to find the closest library branch where a desired title is held."

Does the Handheld Librarian know about this one?

Vacation

I'll be on vacation for the next week and a half. Posts will be very intermittent, if they occur at all. I will be checking my e-mail a few times and if I see anything screaming to be posted I'll get up. Otherwise, I'll be back on June 24.

Cataloging in Other Languages

The other day I mentioned the problem of identifying just what the language is on some materials. Ukrainian and Russian or the Scandinavian languages can appear very similar to someone who does not speak them. Owen Massey brought language guessers to my attention. For example, the Content Analysis Language Identifier has the ability to distinguish between 47 different languages. It uses UNICODE so it can take most character sets. Thanks Owen for the tip.

Preservation Metadata

OCLC AND RLG WORKING GROUP RELEASES REPORT ON 'METADATA FRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT PRESERVATION OF DIGITAL OBJECTS'

DUBLIN, Ohio, June 11, 2002--The Working Group on Preservation Metadata, an initiative jointly sponsored by OCLC and RLG, has released 'A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects,' a new report available on the OCLC Web site.

The report is a comprehensive guide to preservation metadata that is applicable to a broad range of digital preservation activities. Preservation metadata is the information infrastructure necessary to support processes associated with the long-term retention of digital resources, and is an essential component of most digital preservation systems.

The report represents the consensus of leading experts and practitioners comprising the working group, and is intended for use by organizations and institutions managing, or planning to manage, the long-term retention of digital resources.

The working group based its work on preservation metadata element sets developed by several leading institutions and organizations in the digital preservation community, as well as the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model. OAIS is a conceptual framework that articulates the primary functional components of a digital archive and establishes concepts and terminology for describing and comparing architectures and data models.

The report follows on the working group's earlier white paper, 'Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art,' which defined and discussed the concept of preservation metadata, reviewed current thinking and practice in the use of preservation metadata, and identified starting points for consensus-building activity in this area. The white paper is also available on the OCLC Web site.

"The working group's report illustrates the value of cooperatively resolving the challenges of digital preservation," said Brian Lavoie, research scientist in the OCLC Office of Research. "The most effective solutions for the long-term retention of digital resources are likely to emerge from collaboration within the digital preservation community, pooling the expertise of researchers and practitioners from a variety of institutional and geographical backgrounds. Taken together, these consensus-building efforts will establish the necessary infrastructure, in the form of standards and best practices, to support digital preservation activity."

"For institutions creating and preserving digital objects, this new OCLC/RLG report is a good resource for both preservation metadata and its relationship to the OAIS reference model," said Robin Dale, RLG program officer. "It broadens the digital preservation toolset we've been building, which includes such aids as the RLG/OCLC report on the attributes of trusted digital repositories and RLG's OAIS practitioners' Web page."

"The work of the OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata has been an extremely important effort as libraries and related cultural institutions begin to tackle issues concerning digital preservation," said Rebecca S. Guenther, senior networking and standards specialist, Library of Congress, and working group member. "The working group document takes the OAIS information model closer to the goal of actually implementing archival information systems that document preservation requirements and processes and is particularly relevant to the needs of libraries. This document is an important contribution to the development of preservation metadata standards in information technology, an area where much additional work is needed."

The Working Group on Preservation Metadata is part of a cooperative effort between OCLC and RLG to support consensus-building activity in the development of key infrastructure for digital preservation.

Dewey in Spanish

A Spanish language version of Dewey to the 1000 level is available. This would be a good guide to have available where some of the patrons are Spanish speaking. I'd not want to use it for classification. The Spanish in Our Libraries (SOL) site has some other valuable resources for libraries serving a Hispanic population.

Open Archives Initiative

my.OAI is a full-featured search interface to a selected list of metadata databases. They have recently made some inprovements

The following changes/improvements were made:

Added a recommender system which suggest other documents perhaps worth looking at based on prior search and retrieval patterns of other users.

Changed the way in which databases are selected, now they are displayed as a list rather than databases with checkboxes, this is to accommodate their growing numbers.

Added the ability to run a meta-search, displaying the total number of results per database before displaying the search results, the user can then pick which database(s) they want to see results for.

Added the ability to group the search results by database, the user can then pick which database(s) they want to see results for.

Added documents viewed to the search history, now you can see both your previous searches and all the document you viewed in reverse chronological order.

Thanks to FOS for bringing this to my attention.

FRBR & the OPAC

Here an announcement of an OPAC that displays records in FRBR format. I've not seen it. If anyone does see it at ALA or SLA I'd be interested in hearing comments.

"VTLS Inc. Announces FRBR Implementation
VIRTUA ILS NOW SUPPORTS FRBR
ALA JUNE 2002

Blacksburg, VA -- Virtua ILS – Integrated Library Systems newest release is currently the only commercially available ILS system in the marketplace to support the IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). The FRBR model is the latest development in cataloging practice. It is designed to serve as a conceptual framework for systems that share and use bibliographic data, nationally or internationally. The concept was developed by IFLA with participation from National Libraries like Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada.

Present cataloging practices do not support "linked hierarchic metadata records" making it difficult to catalog certain types of materials. The FRBR model is designed to address this difficulty. The basic FRBR record consists of three entities - work, expression and manifestation. In addition, item records (holding records) can be attached to the manifestation. For example, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony represents a work. It can be independently cataloged. The performance of the symphony by, say, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra represents an "expression" of the work. A CD by Columbia records containing the particular performance represents a "manifestation" of the work. Two copies of the CD in the library represent two "items" of this manifestation.

Using the FRBR model, librarians do not have to re-catalog the entire work again for different performances or for different manifestations of the same performance. Instead, FRBR allows the new performance to be cataloged separately and linked to a previously cataloged "work". This hierarchical parent child relationship in metadata records is the key feature of FRBR. The example above was from music; however the hierarchic relationship can exist in other material types like printed materials with different editions or language versions.

In implementing FRBR, VTLS has created an environment in which records in the FRBR model and records in the traditional cataloging model can co-exist in the same database. Such an implementation allows libraries to ease into the use of the FRBR model without requiring massive record conversions. It is clear that not every metadata record lends itself to FRBR. For example, many records do not have alternative expressions or manifestations. For this reason, Virtua ILS supports classic cataloging of metadata records along with FRBR records in the same database. The software is "FRBR aware" and automatically changes display formats depending on the type of record (FRBR or regular).

With a click of a button, the Virtua software converts a regular record to three records of the FRBR model and attaches all items to the manifestation record. This process can also be performed in a batch mode.

Refinements on the FRBR implementation continue as we receive valuable input from interested parties.

For more information on FRBR please see:
IFLA web site
VTLS web site"

Cataloging in Languages Other than English

The Glossary of Bibliographic Information by Language can be a real help when dealing with materials in a language you are not fluent in. It provides translations for common terms used in publishing in Danish, Dutch, French German, Italian Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish Swedish and Turkish. Now the trick is finding out just what the language is. I recently cataloged a map in Czech, Coratian, Polish and Hungarian. It took a good bit of time figuring out that Coratian was one of the languages.

Thesauri and Web Logs

On the High Context 'blog this short article shows how a controlled vocabulary could benefit resource discovery in Web logs. Thanks to the Shifted Librarian for pointing this out.

Catalogablog

This Web log can be posted to by more than one person. If there is someone else out there interested in cataloging who would like to contribute just let me know and I can authorize you to post as well.

Not Cataloging

"Six Science Publishers Create New Web Font Set:
The STIX Project (http://www.stixfonts.org)

Melville, NY, June 10, 2002 - After years of planning, a group of scientific publishers today formally announced the Scientific and Technical Information Exchange (STIX) font creation project and the launch of the STIX web site. The STIX publishers aim to develop a comprehensive set of fonts for mathematics and other special characters used in Scientific, Technical, and Medical publishing. The web site provides information for potential users within the scientific and publishing communities, and a special area for software developers who may want to incorporate support for the STIX Fonts into their products.

Six publishers - the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the American Physical Society (APS), Elsevier Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) -- came together to design, fund and manage the STIX project. They have awarded the font development contract to a respected font development company, which has begun the process of designing and delivering nearly eight thousand characters/glyphs. The design submissions of the various character sets are currently being evaluated by a Technical Review Committee consisting of representatives of the six participating publishers.

There is currently a clear need for a new font set for mathematical and other scientific symbols, especially in the area of on-screen display in electronic publishing. Today, scientists must assemble scientific symbols and special characters from a variety of fonts, many of which may vary in character style, positioning, or size. The resulting documents typically have an unsatisfactory, jumbled appearance. Even more importantly, when posted to a web site, these documents may not be properly rendered unless the viewers of the document have all of the same specialized fonts available on the computer workstations they are using. This new set of fonts, known as the STIX Fonts, will solve both of these problems, serving the scientific and engineering community in the process from manuscript creation all the way through to final publication, both in electronic and print formats. It will unify support for all special symbols and alphabets into a single, comprehensive font set.

The STIX fonts will be made available, under royalty-free license, to anyone, including publishers, software developers, scientists, students and the general public. Target for completion of the project is the Fall of 2003.

By making the fonts freely available, the STIX project hopes to encourage the development of applications that make use of these fonts. In particular the STIX project will create a TEX implementation that TEX users can install and configure with minimal effort. TEX is a computer language designed for typesetting, with particular application to mathematics and other technical material.

The STIX mission will be fully realized when:

Fully hinted PostScript Type 1 and OpenType font sets have been created.

All characters/glyphs have been incorporated into Unicode representation or comparable representation and browsers include program logic to fully utilize the STIX font set in the electronic representation of scholarly scientific documents.

For more information visit the STIX Fonts web site

For the STIX Fonts project:
T.C. Ingoldsby (Chairman)
American Institute of Physics
2 Huntington Quadrangle, Suite 1NO1
Melville, NY 11747-4502
Phone: +1 516 576 2265
Fax: +1 516 576 2327
Email: tingoldsby@aip.org"

CONSER Task Group on FRBR and Continuing Resources

"The FRBR provides great hope for the long-standing problem of multiple versions, an issue particularly problematic for serials and other continuing resources. Thus, it is extremely important that the complexities and requirements of continuing resources be fully incorporated into any solutions that are developed based on FRBR. With that in mind, a CONSER task force is being established to provide ongoing comment and analysis on the uses of FRBR for continuing resources.

Charge

Consider the entities, attributes and relationships as described in the FRBR and their application to serials and other continuing resources.

Provide serial examples for the paper "Displays for Multiple Versions from MARC 21 and FRBR"

Evaluate reports of the JSC Format Variation Working Group and provide feedback relating to continuing resources

Monitor activities regarding the use of FRBR and provide reports, analysis, feedback, as deemed appropriate."

Conferences

SLA and ALA are both about to happen. I'll miss SLA, some very good and interesting people and great parties. PAM (Physics Astronomy Math) folks are a wonderful group. Maybe next year. I just couldn't find the time. Coming up I have some vacation time. Then there is NACO training, the Summer Institute for Distance Learning Librarians, the LITA Forum here in Houston and just maybe OLAC. Enjoy the big conventions. Maybe I'll get to see some of you at the smaller ones.

MARC21 Codes

Additions to the MARC Code Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions

Network Development and MARC Standards Office Library of Congress
---------------------------------------------------
The following 12 codes have been recently approved for use in MARC 21 records. They include 2 category code source codes, 3 classification scheme source codes, and 6 subject source codes, and 1 name source code. These new codes have been added to the online "MARC Codes Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions" but should not be used in exchange records until after July 30, 2002. This 60-day waiting period is required to provide MARC 21 implementers with time to include newly defined codes in any validation tables they may apply to the MARC fields where these codes are used.
---------------------------------------------------
MARC Category Code Source Codes
Changes:

agricola - AGRICOLA subject category codes (subfield $2 in Bibliographic field 072) [use after 07-30-2002]

fiaf - Classification scheme for literature on film and television (subfield $2 in Bibliographic field 072) [use after 07-30-2002]
---------------------------------------------------
MARC Classification Scheme Sources
Changes:

agricola - AGRICOLA subject category codes (subfield $2 in Bibliographic field 084 and Bibliographic/Holdings field 852)[use after 07-30-2002]

agrissc - AGRIS: subject category codes (subfield $2 in Bibliographic field 084 and Bibliographic/Holdings field 852)[use after 07-30-2002]

fiaf - Classification scheme for literature on film and television (subfield $2 in Bibliographic field 084 and Bibliographic/Holdings field 852)[use after 07-30-2002]
---------------------------------------------------
MARC Term, Name, Title Sources
Changes:

albt - Arbetslivsbibliotekets tesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

eclas - ECLAS thesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

ncjt - National criminal justice thesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

nznb - New Zealand national bibliography (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information fields 600-651, 655-658 subfield $2 in Authorities fields 700-751 and subfield $f in field 040) [use after 07-30-2002]

prvt - Patent- och registreringsverket tesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

sfit - Svenska filminstitutets tesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

sot - Schools online thesaurus (subfield $2 in Bibliographic and Community Information records in fields 600-651) [use after 07-30-2002]

NISO Standards for Comment

These are some of the NISO standards that are currently available for comment.

ANSI/NISO/ISO 12083 - 1995 Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup
Abstract: In complete conformance with ISO 8879 (SGML - Standard Generalized Markup Language), 12083 provides a toolkit for developing customized SGML applications. Four Document Type Definitions are specified for books, serials, articles, and mathematics. Instructions for the preparation of text for the near automatic conversion to grade-2 braille and for publication in large-print and computer voice editions are included.

ANSI/NISO Z39.14 - 1997 Guidelines for Abstracts
Abstract: This standard helps authors and editors prepare useful abstracts by describing the components of an abstract and the appropriate styles and formats. Numerous examples illustrate the instructions presented in the standard and clarify how to handle special cases.

ANSI/NISO Z39.23 - 1997 Standard Technical Report Number Format and Creation
Abstract: Defines a unique numbering system that improves access to the wealth of scientific and technical reports issued by the government and private organizations. The STRN is an alphanumeric code with a maximum length of 34; for international application an optional country code can be added. The standard explains how and where the code should be assigned and used. A central authority to coordinate and monitor assignments of the code is designated.

ANSI/NISO Z39.26 - 1997 Micropublishing Product Information
Abstract: Content guidelines are given for advertising materials used to describe micropublications intended for long-term retention and use. Vendor Note: This standard details the information which publishers should incorporate in advertising materials for micropublications so users will have a full description of the product. This revision now includes a section on guarantees and the publisher's policy on replacement of defective portions of the micropublication.

ANSI/NISO Z39.32 - 1996 Information on Microfiche Headers
Equivalent international standard: ISO 5123
Abstract: Defines the specific eye-legible information that should appear on the limited space available on microfiche so the fiche can be correctly identified and properly filed.The standard describes where to place the data, the order of the information, and a recommended type size and contrast to maximize readability. Many examples show how to use the standard.

ANSI/NISO Z39.41 - 1998 Printed Information on Spines
Abstract: Describes how information is best presented on the spines of books or the containers that contain an information product, such as a CD-ROM, a microform, a disk, videotape or an audiotape. Explains what information to include and how to arrange it for maximum clarity. Using this standard will help your users identify your product and use it!

ANSI/NISO Z39.48 - 1992(R1997) Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives
Equivalent international standard: ISO 9706
Abstract: Publishers and paper manufacturers, take note! This standard sets the basic criteria for coated and uncoated papers that will last several hundred years under normal use. It covers ph value, tear resistance, alkaline reserve and lignin threshold. Recycled papers will meet the criteria specified. This revision to the original 1984 standard is based on testing conducted by the Institute of Paper Science and Technology and contributions from paper makers, publishers, printers, and the preservation community.

MARC21 & XML

Library of Congress announces standard MARCXML schema

The Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office announces completion of a schema for MARC 21 records in an XML structure for use in communicating MARC 21 records. This schema was developed in collaboration with OCLC and RLG and reviewed by the National Library of Canada and the National Library of Medicine (NLM), after a survey of schemas in use in various projects. Many schemas have taken the "slim" approach but all vary slightly. This schema will be maintained by the Library of Congress as will software that enables lossless conversion to and from MARC 21 records in the ISO 2709 structure. As illustrated in the introductory information on the web site, the Library of Congress will develop and provide, downloadable from the MARCXML web site, tools for various transformations and for record validations. A single schema serves all the five MARC 21 formats.

By collaboratively developing a communications schema, the Library of Congress encourages the standardization of MARC 21 exchange records in the XML environment, recognizing that MARC 21 records inside systems will continue to use different record configurations, tailored to the characteristics of the system. Provision of the tools for transformations to and from other metadata approaches, such as Dublin Core and the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), will help to standardize derivative metadata records also. (MODS is a new schema for a bibliographic element set that is a subset of MARC expressed in XML with language-based rather than numeric tags.) The tools take the mappings between MARC and other metadata sets, that have been maintained on the MARC web site, to an operational level.

One project interested in a standard, lossless MARCXML schema is the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) which found it necessary to draft a schema in the absence of an official one. The Library of Congress worked with the OAI to provide a transformation from the original oai_marc schema to this one so the Initiative can take advantage of a schema that is maintained by the MARC 21 maintenance agency and in broad use. The transformation is available from the MARCXML web site.

With the slim approach, schema-driven validation is only possible at the highest structural level. The Network Development and MARC Standards Office will therefore maintain downloadable tag, subfield, and value validation software on the web site that will enable users to build validation programs for their needs. Use of these standard validations represent another attempt to assure standardization of records to support effective record interchange.

The Library has maintained two SGML DTDs (for Bibliographic-type and Authority-type records) since 1996, which take a different approach to the data elements in MARC - an approach that enables validation of data through the DTD itself but requires a very large DTD and DTD maintenance. The Bibliographic-type DTD was converted to an XML DTD in 2000. These DTDs have been effectively used by some agencies (including the Library of Congress), primarily for internal processes, therefore transformations between them and the new slim MARCXML schema are being provided. Maintenance techniques and/or possible revision of the XML DTDs are under consideration.

For questions or comments please email the Office at ndmso@loc.gov.

Cataloging in the Real World

This in press article provides some interesting reading. Please, abide by his request to access the paper in off hours, he has already received a warning from his ISP.

I have some questions on why some of these non-standard practices exist. Why don't the institutions using their own subject headings submit them to SACO? Or at least place them in a 653 field? Why would anyone buy a system that could not access the full MARC record? My system is an inexpensive one for the PC. It is far from perfect, in display there are problems, but I can at least create and edit the full record. Authority records or editing authority records would solve some of the problems. Do some systems not use MARC authority records, or are they too hard to acquire so institutions just don't bother?

"The following message is regarding an article that has been submitted for publication to Library Resources and Technical Services. I would ask that anyone who is a potential reviewer for LRTS read no further.

As you know back in February I posted a message asking for your local practices that break cataloging standards, broadly defined as AACR2, classification systems, encoding standards, etc. The response was overwhelming, 94 original responses came back and I couldn't have been happier.

You'll all be glad to know that I have submitted a draft of an article discussing the results of this survey to Library Resources and Technical Services for publication. The current title is "Breaking the Law: a survey of non-standard cataloging practices."

This research could not have been done without the support and input from Autocat, and I wanted to thank you all. A static working draft of the article is available on my website.

WARNING: Please don't all go visit the site at once, because my ISP only allows a limited amount of data transfer per hour. If you do want to read the article, please bookmark the address above, and visit either in a few days or during an evening hour. I would hate to have you get frustrated by not being able to access the article, and not take the time to read it.

Thank you.

Eric S. Riley Graduate Student (for one more week!)
Information School University of Washington, Seattle"

Metadata

Another metadata scheme for the visual arts community is the Visual Resources Association, VRA Core Categories, now in version 3. "The VRA Core Categories, Version 3.0 consist of a single element set that can be applied as many times as necessary to create records to describe works of visual culture as well as the images that document them."

MARC Geographic Codes

TECHNICAL NOTICE
Addition to the MARC Country and Geographic Area Code Lists for Aruba, Bonaire and East Timor
Network Development and MARC Standards Office

As the result of East Timor's gaining its independence from Indonesia in May 2002, new country and geographic area codes are being defined for use in MARC records.

The new codes for East Timor are:
em (Country code)
a-em (Geographic area code)

The Netherlands Antilles is an internally self-governing and integral part of the Netherlands. It consists of the islands of Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Saint Eustatius and the southern half of the island of Saint Martin. Aruba was part of the Netherlands Antilles until it seceded in 1986 to become a separate, autonomous member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Therefore, a new geographic area code is being defined for Aruba. Moreover, because all of the separate islands of the Netherlands Antilles have their geographic area codes, a geographic area code is being defined for Bonaire for use in MARC records.

The new code for Aruba is:
nwaw (Geographic area code)

The new code for Bonaire is:
nwbn (Geographic area code)

Subscribers can anticipate receiving MARC records reflecting these changes in all distribution services not earlier than September 3, 2002. Questions regarding the country and geographic area codes should be directed to:

Cataloging Policy and Support Office
Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540-4305
(202) 707-4380
INTERNET: cpso@loc.gov
June 3, 2002

Professional Reading

I'm currently reading Cataloging the Web : metadata, AACR and MARC21. It is a collection of papers based on the ALCTS Institutes. The meetings were very informative, I'm hoping for the same from the book.

Spirit Writing

A while back on LiveJournal there was a thread about mediums who publish books under the names of the dead. The correct AACR rule is cited. However, there are some other considerations raised that merit thought.

Shameless Plug

My wife, Cora, has a contra dance band, Permanent Wave. The band's CD is available for purchase at Contracopia and you can check out a few tracks at MP3.

Taxonomy

Another controlled vocabulary, the EDUCAUSE Taxonomy.

"The EDUCAUSE Taxonomy, a hierarchical subject listing of over 450 terms, helps you more easily explore topics and find specific documents in the association’s extensive collection of online information resources. The EDUCAUSE taxonomy is applied to all information resources library documents, EDUCAUSE publications, Effective Practices and Solutions, and EDUCAUSE conference sessions."

RSS

A couple of nice articles on RSS found through LLRX. RSS For Non-Techie Librarians by Steven M. Cohen (of Library Stuff) lives up to what title promises. He has some screen shots and a bibliography.

Personal RSS Aggregators by Jon Udell describes many of the programs to use with RSS feeds.

If you have a site providing an RSS feed you can provide a link tag to alert news readers that there is an RSS feed. This effort is being led by Mark Pilgrim.

Not Cataloging Related

Doc on Demand is a nice tool for any Palm user, it converts a Web page into the format they use.

"The purpose of this mysterious device is the conversion of text files (be they pasted from your clipboard or Stripped by this very engine from the URL you provide) from their ASCII state into a .pdb file which can be read on your palm-top computer (e.g. a Palm Pilot, Visor, one of those crazy PDA-cellphone thingies, a Psion, a Jornada, etc., etc., ad infinitum.) By the glory and miracle of science, the letters of your text doc are whisked through the motivator, into the grinder and then ejected from the vaporisor to the Vagrant's Library where the finished product is stored for download and use."

Thanks to Matthew Eberle at Library Techlog for pointing this out to me.

Cataloging Instruction

Course 5 of the Alternative Basic Library Education (ABLE) at the Idaho State Library is "Introduction to Technical Services and Cataloging" by Catherine Poppino.

"The course is designed for members of the library community who do not have formal library training. It will help you understand the basic processes of technical services and cataloging."

MARC21

Discussion Paper 2002-DP08 "Dealing with FRBR Expressions in MARC 21" is available for review by the MARC 21 community.

It will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta.

A draft agenda for that meeting is available

Metadata

Another metadata scheme developed by the museum community is the Object ID. This has a unique purpose, preventing trade in stolen art objects. The FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol promote it.

"Object ID is an international standard for describing cultural objects. It has been developed through the collaboration of the museum community, police and customs agencies, the art trade, insurance industry, and valuers of art and antiques.

The Object ID project was initiated by the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1993 and the standard was launched in 1997. It is being promoted by major law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol; museum, cultural heritage, art trade and art appraisal organisations; and insurance companies.

Having established the descriptive standard, the Object ID project now helps to combat art theft by encouraging use of the standard and by bringing together organisations around the world that can encourage its implementation."

Classification

A classification scheme used by the graphic community is ICONCLASS.

"ICONCLASS is a subject specific international classification system for iconographic research and the documentation of images. It was developed by Henri van de Waal (1910-1972), Professor of Art History at the University of Leiden, and completed by his staff. ICONCLASS is a collection of ready-made definitions of objects, persons, events, situations and abstract ideas that can be the subject of an image. ICONCLASS organizes iconography into 10 'main divisions' in which the definitions are ordered hierarchically."

Not Cataloging Related

The latest American Libraries has a section on staff development, "The Care and Feeding of Speakers and the Spoken-To". The 1st article gives some tips to speakers. These I've seen countless times before, but they do bear repeating since people still ignore them. The other piece, "A View from the Podium" by Janet Swan Hill is something I've not seen before and information we can use. Volunteers, who change every few years, arrange many of our conferences and meetings. How to treat the invited speaker is something not taught in our MLS program and it is rare to find new officer guidelines. Here they are. This is a piece that should be copied and placed in every officer packet in all of our organizations.

About this Blog

Blogger and Bloget, the service which provides an e-mail of the postings do not seem to be communicating. This is a known issue, at least for Bloglet. Maybe this is a good time to switch to the RSS feed.

Maintaining the Catalog

Checking the links is the catalog has become (or should become) a regular task for us. Our small collection, about 22,000 titles, has almost 1000 links located in 856 fields. Thanks to Tom Tyler that task is a bit more automated. He has also created a few tools specific to Innopac.

"MarcXGen extracts URLs from MARC 21 bibliographic records and generates HTML code to create a single web page of hyperlinks that can be used with third party Link Checking software such as LinkBot and Xenu's Link Sleuth. With Version 2, MarcXGen also creates separate files of delimited data that may be used to build a relational database environment that may simplify some maintenance tasks associated with bad or problem URLs in library database records."

OCLC

"Life without Passport" is certain to become a familiar phrase over the next 18 months. OCLC is developing a new interface for cataloging and metadata services based on browser and Windows technology. A replacement for Passport and other standalone cataloging applications, the first release of the interface is scheduled July 2002, with additional releases throughout 2002 into 2003. Passport for Cataloging support will end December 31, 2002. The product itself will cease operation one year later.

A document entitled Guide to Migration that explains current plans is located on the OCLC Web sits.

Dublin Core

I received this request for help. I've made some minor spelling corrections.

"I am a student from the University of Salzburg, Austria and I developed coins and banknotes templates under DC for my PHD thesis. Libraries, archives or a coin dealer could use any of these templates which are launched with the cooperation with the REGNET Project. (REGNET-Projet under the search engine google.de) Dr. Koch from Graz www.cscaustria.at launched it.

I am the person who created the templates for the coin note short CN-Collector.

If you are interested in that program please contact me and then you could start to try these out. My goal for the PHD is to get a database, where all the people can create the on catalog online. Right now I write a handbook for the templates to get good entries.

Thank you
Alexander H.T. Schultheis
E-Mail: ahtschultheis@hotmail.com"

Break

Monday is a holiday and I'm taking off Tuesday, making this a long weekend. South Padre here we come. So there will be no more posts until Wednesday. I'm not taking a laptop or PDA. No technical reading. Just a break from thinking. Hope y'all can do the same.

Metadata

A few recent articles by Roy Tennant in Library Journal provide a good introduction metadata.

Digital Libraries- Metadata As If Libraries Depended on It

Digital Libraries- The Importance of Being Granular

Digital Libraries- The Consequences of Cataloging

I like his definition "cataloging by those paid better than librarians."

GILS

Just received this notice about the Government Information Locator Service:

Through the efforts of several people, we now have a draft Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file for the GILS search service, available for review.

This draft only defines GILS search using "HTTP Get", following the extended ZURL. The search response message follows the definition given. (BTW, these definitions align with the ZX client from Dave Vieglais.)

Future discussions of GILS as a Web Service will be conducted mostly on the GILS Version 3 Discussion List. Subscribe to the GILS V3 list.

Z39.50

A new version of YAZ has been released, May 22. Here is the notice:

"The current version of YAZ includes experimental support for the industry standard ZOOM API for Z39.50. This API vastly simplifies the process of writing new clients using YAZ, and it reduces your dependency on any single toolkit. Future versions of YAZ may include support for other emerging IR protocols through the same interface."

Art Metadata

Another resource from the Getty Institute is the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA). This is the description from the introduction:

"The Categories describe the content of art databases by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about objects and images. They identify vocabulary resources and descriptive practices that will make information residing in diverse systems both more compatible and more accessible. They also provide a framework to which existing art information systems can be mapped and upon which new systems can be developed."

I've had the pleasure of hearing Murtha Baca speak at the ALCTS Metadata and AACR2 Institute. If you get the opportunity to hear her talk about what the Getty is doing, it is well worth the time.

MARC21

The following additional proposals are available for review by the MARC 21 community. They will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta. A draft agenda for that meeting is available.

The following papers are now available:

Proposal No. 2002-12: Coding for Publication Pattern at the First Level of Enumeration in MARC 21 Holdings Records

Proposal No. 2002-13: Changes for Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) Subject Headings Changes in Field 008 in the MARC 21 Holdings Format

Proposal No. 2002-14: Proposal No. 2002-14: Changes for UKMARC Format Alignment

Proposal No. 2002-15: Defining field 065 (Other Classification Number) in the MARC 21 Authority Format

Metadata

"The MD3 (Metadata3) Project takes a different approach to metadata - instead of having to create and implement new systems to handle new types of metadata, why not make new types of metadata work with our current systems?" The plan consists of transforming metadata from one format, say RDF, into another, such as MARC. The other component involves peer to peer (P2P) sharing of the records. Something like the Docster proposal.

Semantic Web

Two items today from a 'blog I recently found, usr/lib/info! This looks like an interesting site. Not much available yet, however.

The Semantic Web and Libraries by Art is "a column I am working on for InsideOLITA and would welcome any and all feedback."

Resource Description Framework

OCLC, as part of the Dublin Core project, has made available an open source toolkit for RDF, the EOR toolkit.

"The EOR toolkit is a collection of extensible Java classes and services which serve as a code base, demonstrating by example functions and services common to RDF applications, i.e., metadata capture, search engines, etc.. The current release provides services designed to validate RDF, build and search RDF triple stores (HTTP and Java API) and render RDF data using XSLT."

The latest issue of Information Technologies & Libraries (2002), v. 21, no. 1 pp. 27-31 has an article on the toolkit. "The EOR Toolkit: An Open Source Solution for RDF Metadata" by Harry R. Wagner.

Library Catalogs

Another open source library catalog. PhpMyLibrary version 1.0.4b has been released. It consists of Webpac, Record import, Cataloging and Holdings modules. It takes MARC records.

"The new version has been released. The file can be downloaded PhpMyLibrary-1.0.4b here! This is a version that have a Holdings and Cataloging Modules Added. The recent module only consisted of WebPAC module and Record Import module, now you can make your own catalog entry, put an accession to it, and you're done. Your new book or material are ready for browsing online."

Spelling

Here is another listing of misspelled words found in our catalogs, Common Spelling Mistakes. Not sure how it was compiled or the relationship to the list by Terry Ballard, Typographical Errors in Library Databases. Thanks to David Schuster for pointing this one out to me.

Controlled Vocabularies

The Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) has a standards database. If considering curriculum-enhanced MARC it could be a useful tool.

Curriculum-Enhanced MARC

At the Friday meeting curriculum-enhanced MARC was discussed. A good overview of the standard is available at NWOET.

It requires field 520 Summary, 521 Target Audience Note and 658 Index Term, Curriculum Objective.

Cataloging

Seen on a button from OCLC "Cataloging is a public service."

Geographic Cutters

From the latest WAML News & Notes:

"California regional and city geographic cutter numbers (G4362 and G4364) have been updated by Traci Penrod of the Earth Sciences and Map Library and the University of California, Berkeley. These lists are on the web:
Region Cutters
City Cutters"

Postings to Catalogablog

Later today I'm off to Dallas to meet with the Cataloging Focus Group. So there will be no postings again until Monday. These meetings are a real treat. I'm the only cataloger here at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. There is no one else about to talk shop with. Autocat, OLAC and this blog lessen the feeling of isolation but nothing can replace getting together, in person, with colleagues and talking cataloging. There are times I envy those who work at university and large public libraries. You can chat over lunch about issues and concerns of the profession. I'll be back Monday.

D-Lib Magazine

The latest issue of the always interesting D-Lib Magazine is now available.

The articles include:

A Metadata Registry for the Semantic Web
Rachel Heery, UKOLN, and Harry Wagner, OCLC / Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Meta-Design of a Community Digital Library
Michael Wright and Mary Marlino, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research; and Tamara Sumner, University of Colorado at Boulder

Levels of Service for Digital Repositories
William G. LeFurgy, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights: A Digital Library Context
Robert Sullivan, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Keywords

The Extractor is "software for automatically summarizing text, developed by the Interactive Information Group. Extractor takes a text file as input and generates a list of key words and a list of key sentences as output." What you get is a list of keywords. I tried it on Catalogablog. It gave fair results. It did list "comments" and "links" as important. Those words appear at the end of each item so they appear to have some importance. This could be useful if someone had to apply keywords to lots of Web pages or e-mails. It does show that it is not time for catalogers to be replaced if quality is desired.

Genre Headings

On Despising Genres by Ursula K. LeGuin offers some food for thought concerning the use of genre headings and sections in libraries and bookstores. Do we separate the "good" from the "popular" fiction? Do we use it as a finding tool, as we should or as a rating system. Is the Ox Bow Incident in literature but the others in Westerns? Do we add a 655 to the latter but not the former? LeGuin is one of my favorite authors, so it was a pleasure to find this. Thanks to Rory at Library Juice for bring this to my attention.

Text Encoding Initiative

The TEI Consortium has released The XML Version of the TEI Guidelines This is from the introduction:

The primary goal of this revision has been to make available a new and corrected version of the TEI Guidelines which:

is expressed in XML and conforms to a TEI-conformant XML DTD;
generates a set of DTD fragments that can be combined together to form either SGML or XML document type definitions;
corrects blatant errors, typographical mishaps, and other egregious editorial oversights;
can be processed and maintained using readily available XML tools instead of the special-purpose ad hoc software originally used for TEI P3.

A second major design goal of this revision has been to ensure that the DTD fragments generated would not break existing documents: in other words, that any document conforming to the original TEI P3 SGML DTD would also conform to the new XML version of it. Although full backwards compatibility cannot be guaranteed, we believe our implementation is consistent with that goal.

RSS

I've created an RSS feed for this blog at: http://www.voidstar.com/rssify.php?url=http://www.catalogablog.blogspot.com/

Metadata

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia by Cory Doctorow is worth a read and consideration. Grand visions of the Symantec Web where everything is easily found and accessed are shown to be a pipe dream. There are a few problems with implementing this scheme -- People Lie, People are Lazy, People are Stupid -- are the first few. A fun read as well as worth considering.

Metadata

Some interesting interfaces to controlled vocabulary schemes including LCSH which might help our users navigate our catalogs are being developed at the Metadata Research Program, School of Information Management and Systems, University of California Berkeley. I spotted this on the Library Techlog by Matthew Eberle

LC Classification

This was recently received from LC. "The Classification Web order form and end-user license agreement are now posted.

To expedite your order, please read all of the explanatory information carefully and fill out the order form as completely as possible. If the information that accompanies the order form as well as the product information is not sufficient to answer your questions, email your inquiries to cdsinfo@loc.gov.

We appreciate your ongoing interest in Class Web and look forward to having it ready for access on June 1, 2002.

Cheryl C. Cook
Cataloging Distribution Service"

MARC21

The following proposal is available for review by the MARC 21 community. They will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta. A draft agenda for that meeting is available.

Proposal no. 2002-11: Repertoire Expansion in the Universal Character Set for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.

Dewey Classification

Keeping up with the changes in Dewey Classification is easy because of a couple of services they provide.

The Library of Congress Subject Headings/DDC page is a "list of LC subject headings is selected from recent Weekly Lists accompanied by candidate DDC numbers from Edition 21. The purpose of the list is to provide classifier assistance for topics of recent interest not mentioned explicitly in Edition 21. The DDC numbers listed are not exhaustive, and the schedules and tables should be consulted before applying a number from this list."

The New and Changed Entries page provides PDF and Word versions of those entries. I have set a TrackEngine on the LCSH/DDC page to get the page e-mailed to me whenever it changes.

I've added the ability to make comments to the postings. Let me know if it is not working for you.

MARC21

The following proposals and discussion paper are available for review by the MARC 21 community. They will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta. A draft agenda for that meeting is available.

The following papers are now available:

Discussion Paper No. 2002-6R: Changes in Field 008 in the MARC 21 Holdings Format

Proposal No. 2002-10: Defining URI Subfields in Field 506 (Restrictions on Access Note) and Field 540 (Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Note) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format

Proposal No. 2001-10R: Definition of Additional Codes in Field 007/10 (Type of Material) for Sound Recordings in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Holdings Formats

Other papers will be posted next week.

Profession

What is the future of the profession of cataloging? This lunch I read the article "Knowledge Access Management at Lied Library: Cataloging and Web Site Reengineering" by Brad Eden and Kenneth J. Bierman Library Hi Tech Vol. 20. no. 1. (2002) pp. 90-103. It concludes with visions for the cataloging department. Scanning and digitizing, shifting the focus to e-resources, an e-text center, finding grants, continuing education and collaboration with other technology departments on and off campus. I'm not sure all of these belong in the Knowledge Access Management department, which their cataloging department has morphed into. Surely, there is a place for metadata or cataloging in scanning and e-texts but I'm not sure we should be creating the content or even keying the data.

Resource Description Framework

The RDF Primer is an introduction to this possibly important standard.

"The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the World Wide Web. It is particularly intended for representing metadata about Web resources, such as the title, author, and modification date of a Web page, the copyright and syndication information about a Web document, the availability schedule for some shared resource, or the description of a Web user's preferences for information delivery. RDF provides a common framework for expressing this information in such a way that it can be exchanged between applications without loss of meaning. Since it is a common framework, application designers can leverage the availability of common RDF parsers and processing tools. Exchanging information between different applications means that the information may be made available to applications other than those for which it was originally created. This Primer is designed to provide the reader the basic fundamentals required to effectively use RDF in their particular applications."--abstract.

Standard Address Number (SAN)

Here is a standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.43 - 1993(R2001) Standard Address Number (SAN) for the Publishing Industry which has been around quite some time. Is anyone using it? Does it make life easier for anyone? Is number this on your letterhead? Just curious.

Summaries or Abstracts

I notice the 10th Biennial OLAC Conference is having a session on creating annotations. That is something I feel is long overdue. There has been little guidance on just how to construct a good abstract for field 520. There is a NISO standard ANSI/NISO Z39.14 - 1997 Guidelines for Abstracts but that is not a good fit. There is a very good article by Sheila S. Intner "Writing Summary Notes for Films and Videos" Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Vol. 9(2) 1988. That is now 15 years old. It is about time we made the effort to learn how to construct more useful summary notes. Thanks to the OLAC folks for having this session.

Another Controlled Vocabulary

The NASA Thesaurus is available in PDF format online. This is a huge document, over 1200 pages, so do not try this with a dial up connection. The whole print document is available including the introductory text.

Recently on AUTOCAT someone asked the question "what to read in the area of subject headings and classification?" I do believe that the introduction of several thesaurus and subject heading lists would be a valuable part of that reading list. They provide concrete examples of how and why the list was constructed. The AAT and DDC have perhaps the best introductions but the others give the reader some contrast and renforcement of principles.

Schedule G

The fourth edition (1976) of Class G (Geography. Maps. Anthropology. Recreation) included a section entitled Special Instructions and Tables of Subdivisions for Atlases and Maps, which included detailed information on how to construct call numbers and apply the various tables of subdivisions that are used with subclass G when classifying cartographic materials. These instructions were not included in the 2001 edition of Class G, but have now been updated and are available.

The pages are formatted to be trimmed down and tipped into the schedule book.

Genre Terms

I mentioned the classification scheme for recorded sound, ANSCR. The Library of Congress has a short list of genre terms to use with sound recordings of radio programs, the Radio Form/Genre Terms Guide. None have to do with music. The list is fairly short. If used it would seem necessary to use it in conjunction with another source for terminology.

Controlled Vocabulary

There are plenty of subject, name, genre and form controlled vocabulary lists available. Most commonly used in libraries are the name and subject lists from the Library of Congress. Another source is the Getty lists. Besides being useful in themselves, they are an excellent source of terms for the SACO and NACO programs.

The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a structured vocabulary of around 125,000 terms, scope notes, and other information for describing fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture.

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) is a structured vocabulary of around 1,000,000 geographic names, including vernacular and historical names, coordinates, and place types, and focusing on places important for the study of art and architecture.

The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a structured vocabulary containing around 220,000 names and biographical information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.

Classification

My local public library uses the Alpha-Numeric System for Classification of Recordings (ANSCR). It is showing its age, some of the categories are too small and others too large for a popular music collection in a good-sized public library. Still, it has provided access to these materials for quite some time and should be included in any listing of classification schemes.

Cataloging Skills

Recently on AUTOCAT, there has been discussion about the skills needed by a cataloger. Here is my 2 cents. Catalogers are concerned with national and international standards. We have MARC21, AACR, the ISBDs, Z39.50 and so on. We like standards, interoperability, and sharing. However, our reference staff and users come from our local community. They may call a water fountain a bubbler or a submarine sandwich a hero, grinder, po'boy or whatever. They have no sense of standards, just usage. To create a catalog for our users we must be aware of local usage. We can see only the forest and not the trees, while our users and the reference staff who deal with them see only the trees.

Both reference and tech services would benefit from seeing things from the different perspective. It would be ideal if catalogers could sit on the reference desk for four hours a week. Reference staff could work on MARC records for their four hours, adding genre/form headings would be useful and not too much of a stretch. Then catalogers could go back and create some of those cross references in the authority file, add annotations using language of the patron's, create headings for characters that would benefit their local users. The reference folks could see that we are not just making it up to have job security.

Genre and Form Headings

I've just finished reading the article "Genre and Form Lists for Moving image and Materials: A Comparison" by Martha M. Yee in The Audiovisual Cataloging Current. It is well worth a read and thoughtful consideration. The two lists compared are the Moving Image Genre-Form Guide and LCSH. It makes too many points, about the construction and uses of genre and form headings, to summarize. She ends by endorsing LCSH with reservations, and a list of recommendations for the improvement of LCSH.

If anyone understands Blogger and wants to give me some guidance with the technical side that would be nice. I cannot seem to get items to display in the places I want them. For instance, I'd like to see the extreme-dm icon at the bottom of the page and the subscription form higher. Even a pointer to a quick guide would be nice. I have paid the $12.00 so you should soon not be subjected to the ad at the top.

MeSH

I mentioned how much I liked the idea of free download of the GSAFD MARC records. It turns out the Medical Subject Headings have been available for quite some time for free download. They are available in MARC, XML and ASCII. OCLC still does not provide access to the MESH authority records.

The staff of Ehrman Medical Library, NYU School of Medicine have developed a product m[n]m. This PERL program provides a way to update the locally needed records from the entire file provided from the download.

Digital Libraries

The conference "NetLab and friends - Tribute and outlook after 10 years of digital library development" took place 10-12 April 2002 with 140 participants from 23 countries. The programme included 18 speakers and comprised of five sessions: Visions, future issues and current development, Interoperability and integration of heterogeneous sources, Semantic web and knowledge organisation, Nordic libraries and their digital library solutions and Tension between visions and reality.

The presentations from the conference are now available.

Some of the talks include:
Community, Consensus, and the Trajectory of Progress: Reflections on the Dublin Core experience and what it tells us about the future.
RDF Query by example.
LDAP based repositories for Metadata and Ontologies.
Semantic problems of thesaurus mapping.

MARC Tool

The latest issue of Information Technology & Libraries has the article "MARC It Your Way: MARC.pm" by Anne Highsmith ... [et al.], abstract available. MARC.pm is an Open Source tool for tasks with MARC records. It is very adaptable, and the article gives some examples. Chuck Bearden, one of the developers, was one of my classmates in the MLS program at the University of North Texas.

Sandy Berman

The talk Sandy Berman gave to the students at the University of Washington is available as a QuickTime streaming video. Can't say anything about the content since my machine does not seem able to handle that format. It is in 3 parts, each about 30 min.

Authority Records

This from the latest LC Cataloging Newsline:

For some time now, LC's Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) has been processing and distributing to subscribers, including the bibliographic utilities, name authority records derived from the National Library of Canada that contain 7XX fields. NACO members will soon begin seeing 7XX "linking references" in name authority records originating from other institutions. These linking references are AACR2 authoritative forms of name used in national bibliographies or for other special purposes by national libraries/bibliographic entities.

Interim instructions, pending the release of revised documentation, are available at the PCC Web site at URL http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/7xx.html [May 2002]

This is excellent news, one step closer to a patron friendly authority access system. Where each institution or even each user can select the form of names they desire to use. Currently only the Library of Canada has input. Soon the Library of South Africa will as well.

Classification

Still on the classification topic. There has been some discussion on a list of what classification schemes are used in Europe. As I remember Dewey and the Universial Decimal Classification (UDC) are the most common. The Bliss Classification is used in some UK libraries. Any others?

General Material Designations

I've just heard that there is discussion about eliminating the GMD. Here are some the specific questions being asked:

1. GMD helps patrons find, separate, collocate, and select records for print and non-print materials. Since non-print materials are often the minority in collections, is the GMD the best way to alert users of the catalog?
2. How are GMD's best applied when describing reproductions and multiple resources such as digital sound recording?
3. Professional report inconsistencies of how to use GMD particularly for non-print materials- so will rules oriented towards print materials help?
4. When should a GMD be in a record (e.g. even if there is no intrinsic relation to a transcribed title), how specific should it be?
5. Materials are described via the GMD, should they be relegated to subject classification?
6. Is SMD an alterative for GMD?
7. GMD is perceived as an example of broad issues in the rules. Thus, should GMD be addressed at all through cataloging rules?

If you have an opinion on this let the members of CC:DA know.

Serial Subscriptions

"Recently, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization and DLF, the Digital Library Federation announced the undertaking of a two month study to evaluate the current use and potential of standards to facilitate the exchange of serials subscription information for both print and electronic resources. NISO would like to know more about how libraries gather, use and share subscription information.

A questionnaire for libraries has been placed on the NISO web site. Because NISO supports the development of standards for the information community based on consensus among constitiuents, we are grateful for the interest of libraries who benefit so much from these standards.

Please take some time to visit the NISO web site and fill out the survey which can be found at: http://www.niso.org/survey/serials.cfm. The survey will close on May 30. A final report on this study, including recommendations, will be on the NISO website in late June."--from an e-mail received 4/26/02

Electronic Resources

One of my pet peeves is how useless Area 3 (field 256 in MARC) is for computer files. Our AACR options are to use the terms: Electronic data or Electronic program(s) or a combination of the two. That does not give our users much information. They already know it is an electronic resource from the GMD. This only adds the fact it is a program or data. The list from ISBD(ER) is much more descriptive and informative. This list lets the user know if it is a map, journal, image, font, sound, CAD program or whatever. Something a user can understand and base a decision on. I'd be happy with either doing away with Area 3 or adopting the useful terms from IFLA.