oregon state visit 2011

Libraries, Standards, and the Web

Focusing Our Eyes and Attention

What We’ll Talk About

Part 1: Changing the Conversation Looking the crisis in the face Are the old battles worth fighting?

Part 2: Expanding the Conversation Beyond Our Silo Where our attention should be moving

Part 3: What’s up (or not) with Library Standards? Where’s the leadership? The participation?

Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 2

After we empty the card catalog …

We hear that there’s a crisis in libraries, but we still haven’t realized how pervasive it is

Reality: we’ve gotten rid of the cards, now we need to get rid of the catalog.

If we don’t, we may lose our institutional support, our mission, and our way …



“As librarians, we pride ourselves on operating outside of the commercial marketplace. However, whether we like it or not, we are working in an information environment the dynamics of which are very much like those of a free market, except the the currency spent by our “customers” is not money, but time and attention. … We may believe, for example, that our carefully-crafted catalog records provide excellent value in return for the time and energy required to use them—and we may be right. But if our patrons doubt that the catalog will return good value in exchange for the time and energy required to use it, then whatever value the catalog may actually contain becomes irrelevant.”

Rick Anderson, The Crisis in Research Librarianship, Journal of Academic Librarianship, July 2011


“Wikipedia is founded on the belief (largely correct, as it turns out) that crowds both can and will provide high-quality content and metadata to the world at no charge. For our part, in research libraries we still tend to treat books as if they are primarily tools for linear reading, and metadata records as artisanal products. We still build collections that are fenced off from the larger information world and encourage our patrons, against all reason, to begin their information searches within the confines of our artificially limited collections.”



“We must look with cold and hard-headed rationality at our current practices and ask ourselves not what value they offer, but rather what value our patrons believe they offer. If what we offer our patrons is not perceived as valuable by them, then we have two choices: change their minds, or redirect our resources. The former is virtually impossible; the latter is enormously painful. But the latter is possible, and if we do not undertake such a redirection ourselves, it will almost certainly be undertaken for us.”



“In the big picture, very little will change: libraries will need to be in the data business to help people find things. In the close-up view, everything is changing-- the materials and players are different, the machines are different, and the technologies can do things that were hard to imagine even 20 years ago.”Eric Hellman

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2011/07/library-data-why-bother.html

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2011/07/library-data-why-bother.html


“Promise of linked data offers many benefits across sectors, across ‘memory institutions’. But the institutions involved will need to face cultural change to achieve this. ‘Curators’ in any context (libraries, archives, museums) are used to their ‘vested authority’ – and we need to both recognize this at the same time as ‘letting go’ – from the library point of view no-one can afford to stand on the sidelines – we need to get in there and experiment.”

Eric Hellman, http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/07/linked-data-and-libraries-keynote/

http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/07/linked-data-and-libraries-keynote/

http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/07/linked-data-and-libraries-keynote/


The Old Battles are largely irrelevant …

OCLC’s assertion of ‘ownership’ over MARC data in WorldCat has been overtaken by the Linked Open Data movement.

Bulletin: MARC is really dead this time.

W3C Linked Library Data Incubator Group poised to issue report, signaling strong interest by SemWeb in library data.


Open Data Taking Over

May 2011: release of JISC Discovery Open Metadata Principles http://discovery.ac.uk/businesscase/principles/

July 2011: British Library announces Linked Open Data access to the British National Bibliography http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html

And in fact, if ‘records’ are no longer what we share, there is no longer a reasonable way to claim rights over metadata.

http://discovery.ac.uk/businesscase/principles/

http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html


W3C on Linked Library Data “The group will explore how existing building blocks of

librarianship, such as metadata models, metadata schemas, standards and protocols for building interoperability and library systems and networked environments, encourage libraries to bring their content, and generally re-orient their approaches to data interoperability towards the Web, also reaching to other communities. It will also envision these communities as a potential major provider of authoritative datasets (persons, topics...) for the Linked Data Web. As these evolutions raise a need for a shared standardization effort within the library community around (Semantic) Web standards, the group will refine the knowledge of this need, express requirements for standards and guidelines, and propose a way forward for the library community to contribute to further Web standardization actions.”

-- http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/


LC and New Metadata Framework

“Spontaneous comments from participants in the US RDA Test show that a broad cross-section of the community feels budgetary pressures but nevertheless considers it necessary to replace MARC 21 in order to reap the full benefit of new and emerging content standards. The Library now seeks to evaluate how its resources for the creation and exchange of metadata are currently being used and how they should be directed in an era of diminishing budgets and heightened expectations in the broader library community.”

http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-051311.html

http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-051311.html


The Standards Landscape


LC: Leading, or Following? Goals of the New Bibliographic Framework:

Consider benefits of evolving a new format for metadata

Experiment with SemWeb and Linked Data Foster maximum re-use of library data on the Web Enable users to better navigate relationships

between entities Explore approaches to displaying metadata Identify risks of action and inaction Develop plan for bringing library metadata into

new bibliographic systems

Tectonic Shifts Ahead …

LITA surveyed its membership about their thinking about standards

Some findings: NISO/ISO has traditionally been LITA’s focus

in the standards world—that is likely to broaden

ISO is increasingly seen as problematic because of their business model

Many web standards coming out of W3C, but most librarians are neither aware or participating


Librarians & Standards

• The LITA survey confirms that lack of participation by librarians has to do with: ▪ Lack of institutional support (time, money) ▪ Pervasive feelings of lack of competence

The changes in the environment challenge us all to reconsider how we relate to standards▪ Who do we think should be in charge of

building them?▪ If the Usual Suspects are not prepared to lead,

who will?▪ What is our responsibility as individuals?



Top Down vs. Bottom Up?

Where standards are developed and who supports them are critical to their success …

A case study is the RDA Vocabularies.

Is this an anomaly or the precursor of things to come?

Flickr photo by freebird4

A Brief History

It all started in London, the last day of April 2007 …

Participating: Joint Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC)Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Sponsor: ALA Publishing, on behalf of the RDA Publishers

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What Was Accomplished?

The participants agreed that DCMI and the JSC should work together to: Develop an RDA Element Vocabulary Expose RDA Value Vocabularies Develop an RDA Application Profile,

based on FRBR and FRAD The first two are largely complete;

the third is started


The General Strategy

Used the Semantic Web as our “mental model”

Focused on creating a “bridge” between XML and RDF to support innovation in the library community as a whole, not just those at the cutting edge or the trailing edge

IFLA has followed suit using the Open Metadata Registry to add the ‘official’ FRBR entities, FRAD, and ISBD

This provides exciting opportunities to relate all the vocabularies together



An Uphill Battle

Efforts by the TG to start building the vocabularies went largely unnoticed for years No feedback from JSC, very little from others

in the library community JSC-sponsored sessions addressed only the

rules, never mentioned the vocabularies Attempts to get support from NISO were

unsuccessful ▪ Some important funding came from the British

Library and Siderean Software

Building for Inside and Outside The ‘generalized’ RDA properties may be

the real RDA vocabulary The ‘bounded’ properties should be seen as the

first pass at an Application Profile Extensions can be built more usefully from the

generalized properties Mapping will be cleaner using the generalized

properties (since most properties mapped to or mapped from will not be based on FRBR)

Generalized properties are much more acceptable to non-library implementers (not often using FRBR)


Bringing It All Together

Relating the Vocabularies to the RDA rules Conversations with ALA Publishing around

integrating with the RDA Toolkit should provide some answers

The governance model for both have yet to be defined

LC’s Metadata Framework discussions will include the RDA Vocabularies Keep an eye on that process!



Where are we now?

JSC is reviewing the vocabulary work, starting with the value vocabularies Some are now complete;

announcements pending Discussions about classes and

elements just beginning Hoping for completion by the end of

2011 TG published in DLib Magazine about

the work: http://dlib.org/dlib/january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html

http://dlib.org/dlib/january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html

http://dlib.org/dlib/january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html


Extending RDA Vocabularies

RDA Vocabularies weren’t built for a library silo.

The technical infrastructure is optimized for extension beyond those elements and vocabularies specified by the JSC.

This capability positions the RDA Vocabularies for the future.

Flickr photo by zizzybaloobah

How Extension Works

The inclusion of generalized properties provides a path for extension of RDA into specialized library communities and non-library communities They may have a different notion of how FRBR

‘aggregates’; for example, a colorized version of a film may be viewed as a separate work

They may not wish to use FRBR at all They may have additional properties to include,

that have a relationship to the RDA properties


RDA:adaptedAs

RDA:adaptedAsARadioScript

hasSubprope

rty


RDA:adaptedAs


KidLit:adaptedAsAPictureBook

hasSubproperty

hasSubprope

rtyOregon State Visit, 7/28/11 28

RDA:adaptedAs


KidLit:adaptedAsAPictureBook

hasSubproperty

hasSubprope

rty

KidLit:adaptedAsAChapterBook

hasS

ubprop

e

rty



More Extension in the Real World

Legislative Metadata Project (for Library of Congress, contracting with Cornell Legal Information Institute) Analysis of needs for metadata Building an event-based model and

forward-looking strategy Using a Singapore Framework-inspired

process, statement-based focus, functional needs for data (extensions, no shoehorns)


Trends to Notice I

A shift from ‘top-down’ to ‘bottom up’ standards development Large, slow-moving organizations no

longer driving the processes Requires some reconsideration of what

‘standards’ are, how they are ‘vetted’ and characterized

Process needs more participation from libraries and librarians▪ The publishers are already there …


Trends to Notice II

The LOD-LAM Effect ‘Linked Open Data-Libraries, Archives

and Museums’ After decades of separate standards

development, these groups are coming together and recognizing their common needs and challenges

This is far more possible in an environment no longer focused on the big players or silo-ed standards


Trends to Notice III

Open Data starting to drive innovation No real business models yet▪ Some efforts based on work at research

centers, others not so easy to characterize Starting to get very competitive Data licensing not yet dead but starting

to look perfunctory Moving fast, hard to keep track!

LOD-LAM: 5 stars for library data

Predictions

As differences in focus and expectation become more mainstream, we WILL change how we see our data.

The loss of that ‘library silo’ will help us see ourselves as important providers of data to other services.


Ending Thoughts

Our big investment is (and has always been) in our data, not our systems

Over many changes in format of materials, we’ve always struggled to keep our focus on the content that endures, regardless of presentation format

We are in a great position to have influence on how the future develops, but we can’t be afraid to change, or afraid to fail


Thank you! Questions?

Contact info: [email protected]

Metadata Matters: http://managemetadata.com/blog


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://managemetadata.com/blog



oregon state visit 2011

Technology

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research librarianship

data interoperability

research libraries

promise of linked data

metadata records

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data business