Placing All Information Within Our Control?

1. Placing All Information Within Our Control? Standards, Information Organization, and the 21st Century Library William E. Moen <wemoen@unt.edu> Texas Center for Digital Knowledge College of Information, Library Science, & Technologies University of North Texas

2. What’s in a title? • No Longer Under Our Control: The Nature and Role of Standards in the 21st Century Library • Placing All Information Within Our Control? Standards, Information Organization, and the 21st Century Library Rice University -- March 16, 2009

3. What’s in a word? Parsing the title Placing All Information Within Our Control? Standards, Information Organization, and the 21st Century Library • Information organization • Standards • A standard represents an agreement by a community to do things in a specified way to address a common problem • All Information • Recorded information: 5 exabytes (2002) • Our • Control Rice University -- March 16, 2009

4. What kinds of control? Rice University -- March 16, 2009

5. What kinds of control? Rice University -- March 16, 2009

6. What kinds of control? Rice University -- March 16, 2009

7. Control in the library community • Bibliographic control • Vocabulary control • Authority control • Controlled access • … Rice University -- March 16, 2009

8. Control: LIS education/indoctrination • 5210. Organization and Control of Information Resources I. • Descriptive cataloging and subject analysis of different kinds of information resources. Anglo-American Cataloging Rules; Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems; vocabulary control; subject headings; … • 5220. Organization and Control of Information Resources II. • Development of cataloging and classification systems. Problems in classification and subject headings… Rice University -- March 16, 2009

9. Changing language • From control to finding/discovery Rice University -- March 16, 2009

10. Finding, discovery, and access • Cutter’s Objectives of the catalog • To enable a person to find a book • To show what the library has • To assist in the choice of a book • Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records • Find • Identify • Select • Access/acquire • Statement of Int’l Cataloguing Principles (Feb 2009) Rice University -- March 16, 2009

11. Objective and functions of the catalog • To find bibliographic resources in a collection as the result of a search… • To identify a bibliographic resource or agent (that is, to confirm that the described entity corresponds to the entity sought or to distinguish between two or more entities with similar characteristics); • To select a bibliographic resource that is appropriate to the user’s needs (… that meets the user’s requirements with respect to medium, content, carrier, etc…. • To acquire or obtain access to an item described (that is, to provide information that will enable the user to acquire an item through purchase, loan, etc., or to access an item electronically through an online connection to a remote source)… • To navigate within a catalogue and beyond Rice University -- March 16, 2009

12. Changes to MARC, changes to the catalog • MARC Discussion Paper 41 (May 1, 1991) • Dictionary of Data Elements for Online Information Resources • MARC Discussion Paper 54 (Nov 22, 1991) • Providing Access to Online Information Resources • MARC Proposal 93-4 (November 20, 1992 • Changes to the USMARC Bibliographic Format (Computer Files) to Accommodate Online Information Resources Rice University -- March 16, 2009

13. Changing language • From control to finding/discovery • From cataloging to resource description Rice University -- March 16, 2009

14. Description and representation • Representation • Surrogate records • Choosing to represent important aspects of an object • Resource Description • What we do in library cataloging practices • Resource Description and Access (RDA) • Guidelines for the creation of data to populate • Expressed in various metadata schemes • MARC • Dublin Core • VRA Core • MODs I've often said librarians should like any metadata they see. Roy Tennant Rice University -- March 16, 2009

15. Changing language • From control to finding/discovery • From cataloging to resource description • From searching to finding/discovery Librarians like to search but users want to find. Roy Tennant Rice University -- March 16, 2009

16. Searching Rice University -- March 16, 2009

17. Rice University -- March 16, 2009

18. Searching Rice University -- March 16, 2009

19. Discovering and finding Rice University -- March 16, 2009

20. Discovery and finding Rice University -- March 16, 2009

21. Discovering and finding Rice University -- March 16, 2009

22. Resource description from the masses • Folksonomies • Social tagging • Tag clouds Rice University -- March 16, 2009

23. Library Thing -- Taylor Rice University -- March 16, 2009

24. Tags for Taylor http://www.librarything.com/work/28622 Rice University -- March 16, 2009

25. TagCrowd tool: Tag cloud for lecture notes http://tagcrowd.com/ Top 50 terms of 667 potential from 4,000 in document Rice University -- March 16, 2009

26. A few ideas for libraries • Rethinking our resource description practices • Adding value for the benefit to our users • Digital repositories of local resources • Digital repository infrastructure Rice University -- March 16, 2009

27. Richness of MARC Rice University -- March 16, 2009

28. Rice University -- March 16, 2009

29. Example results • 7,595,887 LC-created records in dataset • Type of Record: Book, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets • Total number of unique fields: 167 • Number of fields accounting for 80% of occurrences: 14 fields (8.3%) • Number of fields accounting for 90% of occurrences: 21 fields (12.6%) • Approximately 110 fields (66%) occur in less than 1% of all records [Note: Fields are cataloger-supplied, not system-supplied] Rice University -- March 16, 2009

30. Commonly occurring/used elements • Commonly occurring across all Type of Records • LC-created: Commonly occurring fields: 7; Commonly occurring subfields: 10 • Non-LC-created: Commonly occurring fields: 6; Commonly occurring subfields: 20 • Commonly occurring elements in specific Type of Records • Sample results: Books, Pamphlets, and Printed SheetsRecords • LC-created: Commonly occurring fields:16; Commonly occurring subfields:70 • Non-LC-created: Commonly occurring fields:25; Commonly occurring subfields: 107 Rice University -- March 16, 2009

31. Adopting new cataloging practices • Select the appropriate metadata scheme. • Use level of description and schema (DC, LOM, VRA Core, etc,) appropriate to the bibliographic resource. Don’t apply MARC, AACR2, and LCSH to everything. • Consider …abandoning the use of controlled vocabularies [LCSH, MESH, etc] for topical subjects in bibliographic records. • Manually enrich metadata in important areas • Enhance name, main title, series titles, and uniform titles for prolific authors in music, literature, and special collections. • Automate Metadata Creation • Encourage the creation of metadata by vendors, and its ingestion into our catalog as early as possible in the process. • Import enhanced metadata whenever, wherever it is available from vendors and other sources. Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California (December 2005) Rice University -- March 16, 2009

32. Digital repositories of local information • Types of digital repositories • Institutional repository • Rice University's Digital Scholarship Archive • Rice University Repositories for Technical Papers • Learning objects repository • Data repository • … • Differentiated by • Types of objects • Types of metadata • Purpose • … Rice University -- March 16, 2009

33. Repositories – The technical side • Database component • Metadata component • Search and browsing component • Web interface component • Submission component • Administration component • … Rice University -- March 16, 2009

34. Repositories – The human side • Collection – what will be in the repository? • Submission – who can submit to repository? • Organization – how will resources be organized? • Administration – who is responsible for its operation? • … Rice University -- March 16, 2009

35. Learning object repositories • Focused on digital material to be used for education • Learning object: A digital resource (simple or complex) that can be used to support learning • Examples • Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Project • http://txcdk1.unt.edu/THECBLOR/ • The Orange Grove • http://www.theorangegrove.org/ Rice University -- March 16, 2009

36. Digital repository infrastructure • Helping to manage scholarly digital output • Preserving for long-term access • Putting the library in the digital production workflow • Making the resources visible Rice University -- March 16, 2009

37. Managing scholarly output for access Rice University -- March 16, 2009

38. Private Shared Mark Leggott’s repository landscape Open Object Space User Space Individual Create Collaborate Publish Re-Use Group Department Library University External Preservation, Migration, Transformation Based on Richard Green, RepoMMan Project Rice University -- March 16, 2009

39. OAIster.org • An automatically created union catalog of digital resources • Contains over 20,000,000 records describing freely-available and restricted-access digital resources • Uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting • Harvests the descriptive metadata (records) and makes those searchable • Currently harvesting from over 1092 digital repositories Rice University -- March 16, 2009

40. Exposing metadata via OAI-PMH From: http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/ Rice University -- March 16, 2009

41. We can… • Think differently • Be open to using OPM – other people’s metadata • Help users discover information – through a wide variety of tools • Collect, manage, and make visible digital resources • Insert the library in the scholarly production process • Forget about bringing it all within our control Rice University -- March 16, 2009

42. Favorite resources • Karen Coyle's InFormation • http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/ • Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog • http://orweblog.oclc.org/ • Loomware: Mark Leggott's blog • http://loomware.typepad.com/ • Next Generation Catalogs For Libraries • http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mailing-lists/ngc4lib/ • Designing the future -- Library Systems and Data Formats • http://futurelib.pbwiki.com/ Rice University -- March 16, 2009

43. Favorite resources • Karen Calhoun. (2006). The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools • http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf • Lorcan Dempsey. (2006). The Library Catalogue in the New Discovery Environment: Some Thoughts • http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/dempsey/ • Bibliographic Services Task Force. (2005). Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California • http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf • Roy Tennant. (2004). A Bibliographic Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century • http://roytennant.com/metadata.pdf Rice University -- March 16, 2009