Survey on Metadata Standards and Best Practices for E-Resources

- Results and Observations (Japanese) -

Mieko MazzaStanford University

Workshop on Electronic Resources Standards and Best PracticesCEAL Annual Meeting Pre-Conference Workshop

25 March 2014, PA

Library Responses

• 14 responses received • 13 respondents from academic and research

libraries, 1 from national library• 11 respondents are in Japan, 3 in the United

States • Mainly manage Japanese-language materials • More than half of respondents agree very few

Japanese providers/publishers have interaction with link resolution services (Q8a)

Q1a. What type of library do you work for?

Public library 0 0%National library 1 7%Academic and research library 13 87%

School library 0 0%Corporate library 0 0%Private non-profit library 0 0%Special library 1 7%Other 0 0%

Q1b. Your library location

Mainland China 0 0%

Hong Kong 0 0%

Macau 0 0%

Taiwan 0 0%

Japan 11 79%

Korea 0 0%

Mongolia 0 0%

Other Asian areas 0 0%

United States 3 21%

Canada 0 0%

Central/South America 0 0%

Europe 0 0%

Australia 0 0%

Africa 0 0%

Other 0 0%

Q1c. i. How many Chinese electronic packages/databases, complete set or selected resources, has your library acquired?

0 7 50%1-5 3 21%6-10 1 7%11-15 0 0%16-20 0 0%21-30 0 0%31-40 0 0%41+ 0 0%Not applicable (Please check here if you do not manage Chinese e-resources.)

3 21%

Q1c.ii. How many Japanese electronic packages/databases has your library acquired?

Q1c.iii. How many Korean electronic packages/databases has your library acquired or subscribed to?

0 8 57%1-5 3 21%6-10 0 0%11-15 0 0%16-20 0 0%21-25 0 0%26-30 0 0%31+ 0 0%Not applicable (Please check here if you do not manage Korean e-resources.)

3 21%

Q1g. Types of the resources you primarily manage or serve

Q1h. Languages of the resources you primarily manage

Chinese 1 4%

Japanese 14 54%

Korean 1 4%

English 10 38%

Tibetan 0 0%

Manchu 0 0%

Mongolian 0 0%

Other 0 0%

Q2a. For non-index (non-bibliographic) and non-reference packages/databases of e-books, e-journals, streaming media, maps, etc., what metadata services do you CURRENTLY obtain from the providers?

Title lists of current resources only, excluding the withdrawn titles 7 21%

Comprehensive title lists labeled with material status, such as withdrawn, ceased, etc. 4 12%

Comprehensive title lists plus separate title lists/sheets for new titles and withdrawn titles 5 15%

Free brief MARC records 5 15%

Fee-based brief MARC records 1 3%

Free full-level descriptive MARC records (include at least title, parallel title, other title info, author and contributor, edition, type of publication, first place of publication, first publishers, date(s) of publication, identifier (e.g., ISBN), series information, d notes if applicable). Does not include subject headings, such as LCSH, and/or classification, such as Library of Congress classification (LCC).

5 15%

Fee-based full-level descriptive MARC records 3 9%

Subject headings and classification numbers assignment service 1 3%

URL checking service 1 3%

An automatic error report mechanism that facilitates easy online instant report and instant fix on access and metadata problems 1 3%

Other 0 0%

Q2b. What metadata services WOULD YOU LIKE the providers to supply?

Comprehensive title lists labeled with material status, such as withdrawn, ceased, etc. 5 16%

Comprehensive title lists plus separate title lists/sheets for new titles and withdrawn titles 5 16%

Free brief MARC records 1 3%

Full-level descriptive MARC records from vendors (free or with minimum charge) 7 23%

Full-level descriptive MARC records from cataloging utilities (fee-based) 3 10%

Full-level bibliographic records in other metadata schemes for special types of e-resources 1 3%

Subject headings and classification numbers assignment service 3 10%

URL checking service 3 10%

An automatic error report mechanism that facilitates easy online instant report and instant fix on access and metadata problems

2 6%

Other 1 3%

Q3a. What metadata do you CURRENTLY receive from your vendors/publishers besides current title and URL?

Q3b. What metadata WOULD YOU LIKE to have besides current title and URL?

Author/Issuing organization 7 7%

ISBN/ISSN/ISRC or other standard number 9 9%

Other identifier information 4 4%

Other titles, including earlier title(s) and later title(s) 8 8%

Edition information 9 9%

Place of publication 6 6%

Publisher(s) 7 7%

Date of publication 7 7%

Page and volume information 4 4%

Series title 7 7%

System requirements 3 3%

Summary 7 7%

Table of Contents 7 7%

Romanization (such as Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Modern-Hepburn, Korean McCune-Reischauer Romanization, etc.), please specify in the blank under "other" below

2 2%

Holdings and restrictions info (year coverage, moving wall, etc.) 5 5%

Persistent links other than native URL (DOI, etc.) 7 7%

Date added to the package/database 1 1%

Other 0 0%

Q7. How does your library use the metadata in knowledge bases (KBs) created by link resolution services (Serials Solutions, Ex Libris, OCLC, etc.) for cataloging at title-level?

We buy records from link resolution services 6 40%

We convert the metadata in KBs to brief records 4 27%

We do not catalog the resources at title-level and do not use the metadata for cataloging purposes

2 13%

None of the above 3 20%Other 0 0%

Library responses (continued)

• Q8. How challenging are the following CJK-related issues in the KBs of major link resolutions services?

• h) Link resolution service providers’ lacking expertise to manage CJK resources

Library responses (continued)

• Q9. Are you aware that there are established national and international standards and best practices for describing electronic resources (or for providing bibliographic data)?

Library responses (continued)

• 76% expressed the most challenging issue when promoting metadata standards and best practices to vendors/publishers is the fact that vendors are unaware of the standards (Q11a)

Vendor responses

• 7 responses received• Many provide multiple services:

Publisher/Vendor/Provider/Aggregator/Platform provider/Identifier registry provider

• 4 of 7 respondents have 11+ years each in the electronic resources industry

• All 7 respondents are located in Japan

Q1a. Business type

Publisher 5 42%

Vendor/Provider/Aggregator 4 33%

Platform provider 3 25%

Identifier registry provider (e.g., DOI registration agency)

0 0%

Other 0 0%

Q1d. Types of E-resources primarily provided

E-books 4 31%E-journals 1 8%Online news sources 3 23%Other full-text databases (journal articles, proceedings, dissertations, etc.)

2 15%

References/Indexes Databases 3 23%

Maps/GIS 0 0%Streaming media 0 0%Other 0 0%

Vendor responses (continued)

• Q1e. Languages of the e-resources primarily provided

Q2. For non-index (non-bibliographic) and non-reference packages/databases of e-books, e-journals, streaming media, maps, etc., what metadata services do you provide?

Title lists of current resources only, excluding the withdrawn titles 2 40%

Comprehensive title lists labeled with material status, such as withdrawn, ceased, etc. 0 0%

Comprehensive title lists plus separate title lists/sheets for new titles and withdrawn titles 0 0%

Free brief MARC records 1 20%

Fee-based brief MARC records 0 0%

Free full-level MARC records (include at least title, parallel title, other title info, author and contributor, edition, type of publication, first place of publication, first publishers, date(s) of publication, identifier (e.g., ISBN), series information, and notes if applicable)

2 40%

Fee-based full-level MARC records 0 0%

Subject headings and classification numbers assigning service 0 0%

URL checking service 0 0%

An automatic mechanism that facilitates easy online error report and instant fix on access and metadata problems 0 0%

Other 0 0%

Q3. What metadata do you provide besides current title and URL?

Author/Issuing organization 4 14%

ISBN/ISSN/ISRC or other standard number 3 10%

Other identifier information 0 0%

Other titles, including earlier title(s) and later title(s) 0 0%

Edition information 4 14%

Place(s) of publication 3 10%

Publisher(s) 4 14%

Date(s) of publication 4 14%

Page and volume information 2 7%

Series title 2 7%

System requirements 0 0%

Summary 1 3%

Table of Contents 1 3%

Romanization (such as Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Modern-Hepburn, Korean McCune-Reischauer Romanization, etc.), please specify in the blank under "other" below

1 3%

Holdings and restrictions info (year coverage, moving wall, etc.) 0 0%

Persistent links other than native URL (DOI, etc.) 0 0%

Date added to the package/database 0 0%

Other 0 0%

Q4. For subscription based resources and continuing resources such as journals and magazines, how often do you supply metadata (title list, MARC records, etc.) to customers?

Q5. For subscription based resources and continuing resources such as journals and magazines, what tracking metadata do you provide in response to changes in titles, publication patterns, and relationships between parties?

Newly added titles 0 0%

Withdrawn/discontinued/ceased titles 0 0%

Separate entries/records of earlier title(s) 0 0%

Earlier title info recorded under the entry of its current title 1 50%

Later title(s) 0 0%

Other related titles info such as part titles, common titles, etc. 0 0%

Brief title history 0 0%

Current titles for the provided resources only without any title info listed above

1 50%

Other 0 0%

Q6. How do you distribute the metadata of your e-content (title list, MARC records, etc.) to customers?

Email automatically 1 20%Email upon request 2 40%Posted online irregularly with notification 0 0%

Posted online irregularly w/o notification 0 0%

Posted online regularly with notification 2 40%

Posted online regularly w/o notification 0 0%

FTP pickup 0 0%Other 0 0%

Vendor responses (continued)

• 4 respondents have never interacted with link resolution services but are considering doing so, while 3 have been proactively providing them with title lists/MARC records (Q7)

• Only 1 respondent is aware of the existence of national and international standards and best practices for describing electronic resources for providing bibliographic data, while 4 respondents wish to get more information about them (Q9)

Vendor responses (continued)

• Only 2 responded on current use of metadata and both use MARC21 (Q10a)

• 4 respondents showed interest in OpenURL and some interests in DOI, ONIX, ONIX-PL (Q10b)

• Reasons for not complying varied. Except for cost, all answers were selected (Q11)

Vendor responses (continued)

• Q11. Why does your company choose not to comply with some or all of the standards and best practices?

Observations

• Both librarians and vendors expressed concerns for the current metadata standards

• Both librarians and vendors expressed a strong desire to establish simple yet comprehensible metadata standards

• Strong expectations for ERMB task force to take a leading role and provide active communication between library professionals and vendors