Yee's Cataloging Rules

Martha M. Yee has updated her suggested cataloging rules and RDF model.

This is still a work in progress, so I would love to hear more suggestions for improvement from anyone who can afford the time to look it all over. James Weinheimer is helping me work on a wiki site for the cataloging rules, so keep your eye on this space (smile)...

CONSER/BIBCO ALA At-Large Meeting Summary

The CONSER/BIBCO ALA At-Large Meeting Summary is now available. Topics discussed include:

• CONSER standard record
• Title presentation on e-resource web sites
• PCC Series discussion paper
• Integrating resource cataloging manual issues

Omeka Now Public

Omeka 0.9.0 is now available to the public.

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source.

Here is the news release.

The Omeka team has worked very hard over the past few months to bring you the public beta, Omeka version 0.9.0, which is now available for everyone to download.

Here’s what you get bundled in your installation:

• Basic themes that are easy to adapt with simple CSS changes
  
• Exhibit building with 12 basic page layouts
  
• Tagging for items and exhibits
  
• RSS feed for new items
  
• COins plug-in making all Omeka content readable by Zotero (zotero.org);

Find additional functionality by downloading plug-ins :

• Bilingual plug-in for adding language fields to item metadata
  
• Contribution plug-in for collecting items from visitors
  
• Dropbox plug-in for batch adding items
  
• Geo-location plug-in for displaying items on a map
  
• Sitenotes plug-in for administrators to leave instructions for users
  
• Tag Suggest plug-in for suggesting tags based upon their frequency in the item text areas

Lots of metadata there, COinS, tags, and RSS.

Work Begins on the RDA Vocabularies

The DCMI/RDA Task Group was formed in April of 2007, when members of the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA, Dublin Core and the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group met in London. At that meeting, two tasks relating to RDA vocabularies were identified:

1. definition of an RDA Element Vocabulary
   
2. disclosure on the public web of RDA Value Vocabularies using RDF/RDFS/SKOS technologies

The RDA Vocabularies Project proposes to surface these underlying bibliographic elements in the form of Semantic Web vocabularies, thereby making them reusable in Semantic Web applications and citable with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). This will be based on RDF (Resource Description Framework), a generic grammar for expressing data for use not just by humans, but also in automated processes of data integration and "intelligent" reasoning.

The work will be lead by the DCMI/RDA Task Group chairs: Gordon Dunsire of the University of Strathclyde and Diane Hillmann of Cornell University (with support from Tom Baker of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative). Other participants working closely with the project are:

• Karen Coyle (independent consultant well known in the library world)
  
• Alistair Miles (editor for the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and member of the W3C SWDWG)
  
• Mikael Nilsson (researcher in the Knowledge Management Research Group, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and co-chair of the DCMI Architecture Forum)

Partial funding for the effort has been secured, and sources of additional funding are still being sought. Potential funders should contact Diane Hillmann at dih1@cornell.edu for further information.

Public information on the progress of the project is available on the DCMI/RDA Task Group wiki. Continuing discussion on the work of the Task Group will take place on the public mailing list maintained by the task group and available for open subscription. Feedback, comment and experimentation with the products that the group will be presenting is both welcome and essential to the success of the work.

MARC and RDF

Semantic MARC, MARC21 and the Semantic Web by Rob Styles, Danny Ayers, and Nadeem Shabir is available as a preprint.

The MARC standard for exchanging bibliographic data has been in use for several decades and is used by major libraries worldwide. This paper discusses the possibilities of representing the most prevalent form of MARC, MARC21, as RDF for the Semantic Web, and aims to understand the tradeoffs, if any, resulting from transforming the data. Critically our approach goes beyond a simple transliteration of the MARC21 record syntax to develop rich semantic descriptions of the varied things which may be described using bibliographic records. We present an algorithmic approach for consistently generating URIs from textual data, discuss the algorithmic matching of author names and suggest how RDF generated from MARC records may be linked to other data sources on the Web.

Consolidated Edition of the International Standard Bibliographic Description

The consolidated edition of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) is now available online.

Due to arrangements with the publisher, K.G. Saur, the file cannot be printed or copied from.

Princeton's Slavic Cataloging Manual

Princeton's Slavic Cataloging Manual is a resource I'd not heard of before. Bookmarked. Thanks to all who helped create this resource.

LCCN Permalink

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce "LCCN Permalink" -- a new persistent URL service for creating links to bibliographic records in the Library of Congress Online Catalog using the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN).

LCCN Permalink is a convenient way to cite items from the Library's collection in your bibliographies, reference guides, emails, blogs, databases, web pages, etc. Not only can you easily construct a permalink yourself, but we also display them as part of the bibliographic record in the LC Online Catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov/).

How to create an LCCN Permalink

Simply begin your URL with the LCCN Permalink domain name -- http://lccn.loc.gov/ -- then add an LCCN.*
Examples: http://lccn.loc.gov/2003556443 or http://lccn.loc.gov/82643250 or http://lccn.loc.gov/mm78044693

* LCCNs should be formatted according to the info:lccn URI specification. Instructions are also available in the LCCN Permalink FAQ.

How LCCN Permalink works

An LCCN Permalink retrieves a MARCXML-formatted bibliographic record using the Z39.50/SRU protocol. Both valid and cancelled LCCNs (MARC 21 fields 010a and 010z) are searched. LCCN Permalink displays are based on the Full Record display in the LC Online Catalog. Not only can you link directly into the LC Online Catalog, but you can also view the record in MARCXML, MODS, and Dublin Core formats.

More Information

The LC Permalink FAQ provides additional information on this new service. Specific questions can also be sent to the Library's Ask-A-Librarian service.

MARC Advisory Committee Papers

The cover sheets for the proposals and discussion papers presented at the
2008 Midwinter meetings of the MARC Advisory Committee have been updated with the results of the discussions. They are available at:

• Proposal 2008-01: Representation of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) System in MARC 21 formats
• Proposal 2008-02: Definition of field 542 for information related to copyright status in the MARC 21 bibliographic format
• Proposal 2008-03: Definition of first indicator value in field 041 (Language code) of the MARC 21 bibliographic format
• Discussion Paper 2008-DP01: Identifying headings that are appropriate as added entries, but are not used as bibliographic main entries
• Discussion Paper 2008-DP02: Making field 440 (Series Statement/Added Entry--Title) obsolete in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
• Discussion Paper 2008-DP03: Definition of subfield $3 for recording information associated with series added entry fields (800-830) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
• Discussion Paper 2008-DP04: Encoding RDA, Resource Description and Access data in MARC 21

Text Mark-up

Calais looks like an interesting tool for semantic mark-up of text. Not sure how good it is, experimetns to generate keywords or a summary from texts have been just OK at best. Still it may be useful in some instances and is something to be aware of. What would this mean for TEI encoding, for example?

The Calais initiative seeks to help make all the worlds content more accessible, interoperable and valuable via the automated generation of rich semantic metadata, the incorporation of user defined metadata, the transportation of those metadata resources throughout the content ecosystem and the extension of it’s capabilities by user-contributed components.

Seen on LISNews.

Wordpress Plug-in

The CrossRef Citation Plugin is a "WordPress plugin that allows blog entry authors to search CrossRef's metadata using full or partial citations and then insert the formatted and DOI-linked citation into their blog posting along with COINs metadata." Can these plug-ins work on the hosted version of Wordpress? Have to investigate. If so, makes my decision to move much easier.

Wordpress

I've made a copy of this weblog on the Wordpress site. Thinking of moving over. Comments?

Cali Lewis @ TLA

I notice that Cali Lewis is scheduled as part of New Fair. In the past this has been a draped-off area in the exhibit area. Both small and noisy. I'm not sure this is the best venue for a Web 2.0 star. As someone who been on MSNBC and the CBC TV as well as having a very big Web presence she deserves a better space. I think she may also draw a larger crowd than the Nat Fair can handle. I'm going by the spaces I've seen in the past. Maybe this year's Net Fair is both quiet and spaciuos. I hope so.

Having someone like Ms Lewis speak well of the conference and profession is excellent PR. This is a chance to show the Web 2.0 crowd what the library 2.0 crowd is doing. I just hope we don't waste the opportunity.

TLA Conference

The program for the Texas Library Association Annual Conference is now available. What a line-up. Cali Lewis, Walt Crawford, Roy Tennant, Stephan Abram, Karen Schneider, etc. Most time slots have too many sessions I want to catch. Hope to see some of you there.

I plan to Twitter at the conference, see if that helps make connections for meals, and drinks.

Taxonomies

Better Living Through Taxonomies by Heather Hedden appears in the latest Digital Web Magazine.

Large websites and intranets can benefit from improved methods of search and navigation. These include site maps, A-Z indexes, sophisticated search engines, and generally improved navigational design--and playing a potential role in all of these methods is well-planned taxonomy.

THATCamp

The Center for History and New Media, George Mason University is having an unconference.

Short for “The Humanities and Technology Camp”, THATCamp is a BarCamp-style, user-generated “unconference” on digital humanities. THATCamp is organized and hosted by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Digital Campus, and THATPodcast.

May 31 - June 1, 2008. Limited space, so apply for a spot early.

THAT Podcast

The Humanities and Technology, THAT podcast sounds interesting. Brought out by the folks at The Center for History and New Media
@ George Mason University. The 1st show is about Wordpress.

Our inaugural episode of The Humanities and Technology Podcast explores Wordpress, the popular open source blogging platform. We interview Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, and demonstrate how to install the ScholarPress Courseware course management plugin used to set up a course website and blog.

IFLA Cataloging News

IFLA Cataloging News.

The annual report of the Cataloguing Section for 2007 has been posted on IFLANET and is available from the section's home page.

Also, draft version 0.9.1 of the object-oriented definition of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) is available from the page of the Working Group on FRBR/CRM Dialogue

Capturing Government Documents

Managing Web Harvested Content: Results from the EPA Harvesting Pilot Project describes the results of a crawl of the EPA site by the GPO. They have questions about thier use of PURLs, keeping local copies of the harvested items and bib level considered useful. Comments accepted through Feb. 8.

LSCM believes that providing access to the monographs and serials harvested as part of the EPA Pilot Project via the CGP best serves the needs of the depository community and the general public. As can be seen from the sample of 300 publications, making the content from the EPA Pilot Project accessible to the public is a multi-step process and involves the commitment of a significant amount of time. However, as staff become more familiar with the new brief bibliographic record format the time required to create one of these records will decrease. The identification of complete publications, the identification all the parts or issues of a title scattered within the results of the harvest and the de-duplication of the contents will continue to require a significant amount of time and staff to complete.

Additionally 1,000 monographs within scope of the FDLP have been identified from EPA Pilot Project for inclusion in the Automated Metadata Extraction Project. This is a two year project with the Defense Technical Information Service (DTIC) and Old Dominion University (ODU) to use automated metadata extraction software tools to create metadata for groups of electronic publications in GPO’s electronic collection. This is a two year project and the results are not expected until near the end of the project.

Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme

Some classification news.

The 2008 edition of the AIP's Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS)--an essential tool for classification and efficient retrieval of scientific literature--has been released. PACS, used by AIP and other international publishers, is a hierarchical subject classification scheme, comprised of ten broad subject categories subdivided into narrower categories. For PACS 2008, five categories received extensive revisions based on the contributions of experts from the physics community.

We have also prepared a Special Edition of PACS, which contains embedded mapping instructions for transforming the deleted 2006 PACS codes into the new 2008 codes.

Free downloads.