VRA Core

The Visual Resources Association has announced that the release version of VRA Core 4.0 is now available.

VRA Core 4.0 is a data standard for the cultural heritage community that was developed by the Visual Resources Association's Data Standards Committee. It consists of a metadata element set (units of information such as title, location, date, etc.), as well as an initial blueprint for how those elements can be hierarchically structured. The element set provides a categorical organization for the description of works of visual culture as well as the images that document them.

Tagging

Order Is in the Eye of the Tagger by David Weinberger appears in the latest Wired. It is an excerpt from his recently published book Everything Is Miscellaneous

In the age of social tagging and folksonomies, where we all get to classify the things of the world into categories we make up on the spot, Linnaeus the Taxonomist seems quaint. But we shouldn't feel too smug. We are struggling against the same limitations as he did … and this time we don't have an excuse.

Access to Images

A new HP report Sharing, Discovering and Browsing Geotagged Pictures on the Web by Carlo Torniai, Steve Battle, and Steve Cayzer discusses access to images.

In recent years the availability of GPS devices and the development in web technologies has produced a considerable growth in geographical applications available on the web. In particular the growing popularity of digital photography and photo sharing services has opened the way to a myriad of possible applications related to geotagged pictures. In this work we present an overview of the creation, sharing and use of geotagged pictures. We propose an approach to providing a new browsing experience of photo collections based on location and heading information metadata.

Request for Comments: SKOS Use Cases and Requirements: Working Draft

This W3C working group is asking for comments on their work.

The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Use Cases and Requirements. Knowledge organization systems, such as taxonomies, thesauri or subject heading lists, play a fundamental role in information structuring and access. These use cases and fundamental or secondary requirements will be used to guide the design of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System), a model for representing such vocabularies. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. We would greatly appreciate your comments and feedback on this Working Draft, which should be submitted to the SWD mailing list.

MARC @ ALA

Announcement for a presentation at ALA that sounds very interesting.

Did you know that catalogers use only 10-20% of available MARC fields/subfields? Given evolving search behaviors and the amazoogle effects do our bibliographic records provide information users need?

The MARC Content Designation Utilization (MCDU) project team would like to invite you to "Informing the Future of MARC: An Empirical Approach", a panel presentation at the ALA 2007 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The session will take place on Saturday, June 23rd, 8am-10am.

This is an ALCTS sponsored event and will feature Dr. William E. Moen, Associate Professor and Dr. Shawne D. Miksa, Assistant Professor, from the School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas and Sally H. McCallum, Chief, Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress.

This program presents findings from a major IMLS-funded research study on catalogers’ use of MARC and an opportunity to discuss future directions for MARC and cataloging practices in the context of FRBR, RDA, and XML. The results of this study provide a much needed empirical basis to better inform MARC’s future in the bibliographic control environment.

MARC RTP

A while back I posted that the MARC Record Translation Program (MARC RTP) had disappeared. Now it is back, though at a temporary home.

MARC RTP was especially developed so that catalogue data contained in MARC format files could be converted, and selectively imported, into databases built with general-purpose applications.

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RTP allows you to select any part or parts of each MARC record, therefore you do not have to design a large unnecessarily complicated database. You need only include the data that is of interest to you. As an aid, RTP can produce a readable listing of all of the records from the MARC file, and information about which tags and fields exist in your MARC records.

Walt Crawford

Not since the Astros let Nolan Ryan go has such a poor management decision been made.

Ever thought you or one of the groups you work for or with could use a Walt Crawford?

Here’s your chance.

The RLG-OCLC transition will be complete in September. I’ve received a termination notice from OCLC, effective September 30, 2007.

I’m interested in exploring new possibilities. For now I’m trying not to narrow the options too much.