1 / 27

Life After MARC A Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century

Life After MARC A Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century. Roy Tennant. Non-ILS Metadata Systems. Electronic research databases. Institutional Repositories. Silos Everywhere!. Archival Systems. Digital Library Collections. Pathfinders. Infrastructure Requirements. Versatility

ward
Download Presentation

Life After MARC A Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Life After MARCA Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century Roy Tennant

  2. Non-ILS Metadata Systems Electronicresearchdatabases Institutional Repositories Silos Everywhere! Archival Systems DigitalLibraryCollections Pathfinders

  3. Infrastructure Requirements • Versatility • Extensibility • Openness and Transparency • Low Threshold, High Ceiling • Cooperative Management

  4. Infrastructure Requirements • Modularity • Hierarchy • Granularity • Graceful in failure

  5. A Proposal • Create a new bibliographic metadata infrastructure with the following characteristics…

  6. A Transfer Schema • An XML schema for ingesting, storing, and transferring multiple bibliographic metadata packages intact • A current example: the Metadata Encoding and Transfer Syntax (METS) [ demo ]

  7. MARC ONIX DublinCore VRACore

  8. METS MARC ONIX DublinCore VRACore

  9. Bibliographic Schemata • We must be able to use a wide variety of metadata: • MARC records from libraries • MODS records from libraries and others • ONIX records from publishers • Dublin Core records from OAI repositories • VRA Core records from museums • etc.

  10. Application Rules • The “AACR2” of our new infrastructure • Rules and guidelines for use: • General application rules • Schema-specific rules

  11. Best Practices • Implementation practices — “on the ground” rules of thumb and procedures • Everything should not be codified in application rules — room should be allowed for experimentation • In these “gray areas” best practices can suggest non-prescriptive and reasonable sets of procedures

  12. Crosswalks • Librarians should be able to deal with metadata of many varieties • Proficiency will require crosswalks, or algorithms for translating metadata from one schema to another • The same infrastructure could be used to merge multiple formats into a searchable index

  13. Enrichment Services • Enriching metadata with additional information • Examples: • Book cover art • Tables of contents • Book reviews • See http://www.loc.gov/standards/catenrich/ for more information

  14. Tool Sets • Tools to help us manage and manipulate metadata • Examples: • XSLT Stylesheets • Crosswalking code (e.g., OCLC’s Metadata Switch service) • OCLC’s FRBR algorithm

  15. Relationships to Other Standards and Protocols • A rich metadata infrastructure will interoperate with a wide range of standards and protocols • Examples: • OAI-PMH • SOAP (REST)

  16. Challenges • Adapting to a diversity of record formats • Crosswalking and Merging • System migration • Staff retooling • Your favorite challenge here…

  17. Making the Transition • Any solution will need to accommodate MARC • Some libraries are already leading the way (e.g., OCLC) • Some vendors are already leading the way (e.g., moving to XML-aware database systems) • Initial ILS transition may be mostly transparent (i.e., same functionality, different infrastructure) • The difficulty does not lie with technology, but with people and procedures

  18. Why It Matters • We face many challenges and opportunities • Our once robust metadata infrastructure is now jaded — both conceptually and technically • Our users and the services we wish to provide them demand a metadata infrastructure equal to the tasks before us • We must renew our bibliographic infrastructure!

More Related