National Bibliography and web publications: initiatives of the IFLA Bibliography Section

Bohdana StoklasováMaja ŽumerBeacher Wiggins

Authors• Bohdana Stoklasová (chair 2001-2005, new

chair Unni Knutsen)• Maja Žumer – chair of the Working group on

(electronic) national bibliography• Beacher Wiggins – new secretary + survey

on inclusion of electronic resources in national bibliographies

IFLA Bibliography Section

Mission:[Strategic Plan 2004-2005]The Bibliography Section furthers universal bibliographic control (UBC) by promoting standards and best practices in the production, content, arrangement, dissemination and preservation of bibliographic information.

IFLA Bibliography Section Mission:

In the context of UBC the Section is particularly concerned with the work of national bibliographic agencies. It is also concerned with the promotion of the importance of the discipline of bibliography to library professionals in all types of libraries, to publishers, distributors and retailers, and to end-users. While taking full account of technological capabilities, the Section will ensure that its solutions are not necessarily dependent on particular technologies.

IFLA Bibliography Section

Cooperation:The Section is closely associated with the other sections within the Division of Bibliographic Control– Cataloguing– Classification and indexing– Knowledge ManagementWhere appropriate, it cooperates with otherdivisions and sections.

IFLA Bibliography Section

More information:

http://www.ifla.org/VII/s12/index.htm

IFLA Bibliography Section• program of the Section focused on subjects

important for the region of the IFLA congress

• Web resources – selection criteria, collection development, bibliographic control, archiving & preservation - extremely important for Europe: Berlin 2003, Oslo 2005

• other priorities for Latin America, Africa etc.

Web resources: Berlin 2003

More: Oslo 2005• program focused on electronic resources

and electronic bibliographies• survey

Survey• exponential availability of Web and other

digital resources• critical need to address how national

bibliographic agencies were incorporating these resources into the national bibliography

Survey - dissemination• Europe (IFLA in Oslo)• 44 national libraries and bibliographic

agencies (two institutions sharing responsibility for NB in some countries – Denmark, Poland, Russia)

• 33 institutions answered the survey

Responding countriesAustria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Subject areas covered• Legal deposit framework• Current archiving and legal deposit practice• Bibliographic description• Access to Web archive

Legal deposit framework• legal deposit as foundation for NB• robust legal deposit activity• 30 countries have legislation requiring legal

deposit of some or all types of publications• 11 countries: remote electronic resources

included• 26 countries: fixed electronic resources

included• 21 coutries: plans to change the legal

deposit framework during the coming 5 years

Current archiving and legal deposit practice• 18 agencies archive remote resources• 26 agencies archive fixed resources• 11 countries – shared responsibility for

archiving (libraries with academies, archives, government agencies, museums etc.)

Types of archived remote electronic resources• 11 agencies: the entire national domain name space

(e.g. “.fi”, “,uk”)• 12 agencies: selected resources within national

domain name space• 9 agencies: resources published outside the national

domain space (e.g. “.com”, .”org”, “net”)• 7 agencies: only digital born resources• 7 agencies: only resources accessible without cost• 2 agencies: resources that have a fee to be accessed• 2 agencies: resources for restricted user groups• 13 agencies: experiments to test the archiving or

selecting of remote resources

Tools for harvesting• Heritrix • Nedlib harvester• Wget and Httrack

International Internet Preservation Consortium• 12 member institutions (more in 2006)• mission: to acquire, preserve and make

accessible Internet materials• goal: to encourage the development and

sharing of tools, methods and standards that support the building of international archives

• standards, tools, tests, recommendations

Bibliographic descriptionA high percentage of electronic resources are given bibliographic description

• 26 agencies: bibliographic description for fixed resources

• 20 agencies for some or all remote resources

• 9 agencies share the responsibility for bibliographic description with another entity

Metadata schemas• 11 agencies: DC• 6 agencies: MARC 21• 2 agencies: UNIMARC• [2 agencies: METS]

Cataloguing toolsCataloguing tool Remote

electronic resources

Fixed electronic resources

AACR 8 10

ISBD 13 21

LC Rule Interpretations

2 2

Identifiers• ISBN: 21 agencies• ISSN: 22 agencies• URL: 13 agencies• URN: 10 agencies

Level of bibliographic description

• Fixed resources: mostly full level bibliographic description + authority control

• Remote resources: selection, often full level bibliographic records, only small percentage of authority control

Capture of ER in NBFixed resources: 18 agencies

Capture of ER in NBRemote resources: different types included in different countries:

• The entire national domain name space: 2• Topical web sites: 2• Web sites of government institutions: 2• Web sites of non-government institutions: 4• Weblogs (Blogs): 1• Monographs (except those mentioned below): 11• Research reports, dissertations and other academic

works: 10• Textbooks: 7• E-books: 12

Capture of ER in NB• Serials (except those mentioned below): 12• E-journals: 13• Article archives: 4• Newspapers: 9• Newspaper archives: 2• Maps (including databases): 4• Music scores: 5• Sound recordings: 3• Motion pictures: 2• Games: 2• General learning objects and multimedia: 2• Databases (e.g., bibliographic, full text, numeric,

image, audio, mixed): 3• Chat groups, News groups, Ephemera: 0

Selection criteria• Fixed resources: 17 agencies• Remoted resources: 10 agencies • Published criteria – URLs to be posted to

the Section’s Website

Bib description of ER experiments

• use of a metadata generator• use of DC• use of descriptions in an article database to

access the full texts of the articles• use the newly created LC access level

record for creating catalogue records

Access to Web archive• legislation concerning the rights of users to

access and use electronic resources: 14 countries

• access to the Web archive: 10 agencies (mostly local access)

• digital repository for the archiving of ER: 16 agencies

Survey conclusion • national bibliographic agencies are seeking ways to

provide bibliographic description based on using and capturing existing metadata

• bibliographic description will be accomplished using alternatives to the full level catalog records that are used for analog and print resources

• revising legal deposit legislation will be crucial to the inclusion of Internet resources to the collections of national libraries

• most European libraries are planning such revision of legal deposit legislation

• national bibliographies are moving towards more extensive inclusion of electronic resources – both remote and fixed

Survey conclusion• experimentation is under way to improve the capture,

preservation, and provision of access to Web resources by national bibliographic agencies

• best practices and emerging standards will result from the various experimentation

• the IIPC will play an influential role in Web harvesting, archiving and access

What about national bibliography in this context?NB [only] 50 years ago and today• different context• different documents• different users• need for different solutions• need for new guidelines• WG on (electronic) national bibliography

50 years ago»The ideal [current national] bibliography is conceived as a complete listing of all books, documents, pamphlets, serials, and other printed matter published within the bounds of a single country and within the time limits of the previous year or less« (Conover, 1955).

TodayNational bibliography in the modern sense of the word is defined as a cumullation of the authoritative and comprehensive records of the national imprint (i.e., products of the national publishing industry) of a country, published regularly, and with the least possible delay. It is produced in accordance with international standards by the national bibliographic agency. Publication details and authorship are investigated and verified in detail.

What does it really mean?• How is the national imprint (or, production

of national publishing industry) defined?• What are its borders (geographically,

conceptually)?• Which standards should be followed?• What is the appropriate delay in publication

of national bibliographies?• Which format of the national bibliography is

the most appropriate?

What are NB used for now?• Selection and acquisition in libraries and

similar institutions• Cataloguing • Verification of authorship and publication

history• Statistical account of a country’s publishing

output• Evidence of the impact of government

policies in relation to education, language, economic programs, etc.

• To reveal the extent of a country’s self sufficiency in producing the publications it requires

WG on (electronic) national bibliography• Goal: To develop guidelines for national

bibliographies in electronic form (ENB)– develop selection principles that will

cover electronic resources– prepare recommendations for ENB

functionality– define access points– prepare guidelines for the interface

Competition on the information market• there is an overlap (and competition) with

other products and services:– books-in-print – national union catalogues – catalogues of big university/research

libraries– Google, Amazon, Yahoo…

• the national bibliography should provide something other products and services do not or cannot

• the added value of NB has to be advertised

Users of NB

• good evidence and understanding of use in libraries

• some investigation into other users in some countries

• broader studies on both current and potential users are needed

Present and potential users• librarians• end-users• book trade• agencies• rights management organisations• others

Librarians• cataloguers

– copy cataloguing– cataloguing support (bibliographic and authority

records)• acquisition librarians

– ordering publications– identifying publishers, distributors, publication status

• collection development– analysis and selection– awareness of future publications

• reference librarians– acting on behalf of end-users

• legal deposit management– analysis and control of legal deposit

• preservation– to determine trends in publishing and plan preservation

procedures

End-usersVery heterogeneous• library patrons• remote users• formal or informal groups• corporate bodies

Book trade• publishers:

commercial and non-commercial sector, also government and official publishers use national bibliographies to analyze the market and competition

• booksellerssimilar to collection development and acquisition librarians. In addition they may perform the function of a reference librarian and possibly even refer customers to libraries (or Google, Yahoo…?) for out-of-print publications

Agencies• funding bodies: to study the impact of

existing funding or to plan future funding policies

• official statistics for statistical account of all aspects of country’s publishing output

Rights management• collecting societies: high-quality authority

control and authoritative data on authorship - national bibliography data can be (and is) used to support management of intellectual rights

• government bodies: for management of lending right remuneration

Others• printers identifying publishers to offer

cooperation• journalists to identify language/genre/origin

patterns in publications• organizers of book fairs• identification of translators from/to specific

language• identification of illustrators

Information needs and contexts• cataloguing• re-use of records• collection development• acquisition and booksellers• publisher analysis• analysis of publishing sector• rights management• computer software

– federated/distributed searching– harvesting

Analysis• searching requirements

– types of searching– necessary access points

• data needed– extent of record– format

• additional expectations

Next steps• analysis of existing selection

principles• recommendations on selection

principles• specification of functionality of ENB• guidelines for the interface• interoperability with other

environments and systems– conceptual– technical

The future?• challenge for the Bibliography Section• challenge for the IFLA WG on (electronic)

national bibliography• challenge for you• challenge to influence the picture of the

future