Barbara B. Tillett

Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies and Their Application to the Semantic Web

SUMMARY This article discusses how various controlled vocabularies, classification schemes, and thesauri can serve as some of the building blocks of the Semantic Web. These vocabularies have been developed over the course of decades, and can be put to great use in the development of robust Web services and Semantic Web technologies. The article covers how initial collaboration between the Semantic Web, Library and Metadata communities are creating partnerships to complete work in this area. It then discusses some core principles of authority control before talking more specifically about subject and genre vocabularies and name authority. It is hoped that future systems for internationally shared authority data will link the worlds authority data from trusted sources to benefit users worldwide. Finally, the article looks at how encoding and markup of vocabularies can help ensure compatibility with the current and future state of Semantic Web development and provides examples of how this work can help improve the findability and navigation of information on the World Wide Web.

STATEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUING PRINCIPLES

1 International Conference on Cataloguing Principles (Paris : 1961). Report. London : International Federation of Library Associations, 1963, p. 91-96. Also available in: Library Resources and Technical Services, v.6 (1962), p. 162-167 ; Statement of principles adopted at the International Conference on Cataloguing Principles, Paris, October, 1961. Annotated edition / with commentary and examples by Eva Verona. London : IFLA Committee on Cataloguing, 1971. 2 Cutter, Charles A.: Rules for a Dictionary Catalog. 4th ed., rewritten. Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1904, Ranganathan, S.R.: Heading and Canons. Madras [India]: S. Viswanathan, 1955, Lubetzky, Seymour. Principles of Cataloging. Final Report. Phase I: Descriptive Cataloging. Los Angeles, Calif. : University of California, Institute of Library Research, 1969 3 Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final report. – Munich : Saur, 1998. (IFLA UBCIM publications new series; v. 19) IFLA 웹 사이트 http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/ (Sept. 1997, as amended and corrected through February 2008) 에서 이용할 수 있다 . FRBR 모형은 곧 Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) 와 Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) 에까지 확장될 것이다 .

FRBR and Cataloging for the Future

SUMMARY The conceptual model known as “FRBR” (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) reminds us of the basic elements in describing materials in the bibliographic universe, the inter-relationships, and the fundamental user tasks that we are trying to address when we create library catalogs. This model provides a new perspective on cataloging that should influence the design of future systems, cataloging codes, and cataloging practices. This paper explores current activities to utilize the FRBR model within cataloging principles, cataloging codes, and cataloging systems, and offers questions, visions, and suggests some next steps.

Keeping libraries relevant in the Semantic Web with resource description and access (RDA)

Cataloging is not just building a catalog, but about providing users with timely access to information relevant to their needs. The task of identifying resources collected by libraries, archives and museums results in rich metadata that can be reused for many purposes. It involves describing resources and showing their relationships to persons, families, corporate bodies and other resources, thereby enabling users to navigate through surrogates to more quickly get information they need. The metadata constructed throughout the life cycle of a resource is especially valuable to many types of users, from creators of resources to publishers, subscription agents, book vendors, resource aggregators, system vendors, libraries and other cultural institutions, and end users. The new international cataloging code, RDA (resource description and access), is designed to meet fundamental user tasks in a way that produces wellformed, interconnected metadata for the digital environment.

Authority control: State of the art and new perspectives

The Internet has brought us a new way to convey information and has opened up possibilities and opportunities that we never dreamt of even a few years ago. Catalogers can build authority records using the Web and all communities (publishers, rights management agencies, archives, museums, and other libraries) can use this information and reduce costs worldwide. Authority control will help users of the Web to benefit from collocation and search precision that authority control enables. And, very importantly, it also means we can do it in ways that are meaningful to users in their preferred language and script. We can open up the valuable information within our authority records to users worldwide and use the authority records as tools to connect, not only to bibliographic data, but to biographical dictionaries, telephone directories, abstracting and indexing services, official Web sites for the entity, and more. The authority records can be a key part, a building block for the infrastructure of the Semantic Web and beyond.

Numbers to Identify Entities (ISADNs–International Standard Authority Data Numbers)

SUMMARY The advantages of unique identifiers for the entities described in authority records are outweighed by the costs to manage an international system for assigning and maintaining such unique identifiers. Todays and tomorrows systems perhaps can do without unique identifiers, but the attraction of unique identifiers still persists. This paper provides a personal recommendation to use the existing machine-generated record control numbers from our authority records as an interim measure until we see what future systems need.

IFLA Cataloguing Principles: Steps towards an International Cataloguing Code, 5: Report from the 5th IFLA Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code, Pretoria, South Africa, 2007

Volume 35 presents the final stage in the development of an international set of principles that will guide the development of cataloguing codes worldwide. It is the report of the fifth and final meeting of the IME ICC. The series of meetings began in 2003. This volume contains information in English, French, and Portuguese where possible. The draft Statement of International Cataloguing Principles included here reflects the votes of agreement from all participants of the IME ICC1-5 for cataloguing codes worldwide.

Re: Hoffman, Gretchen L., “Meeting Users’ Needs in Cataloging: What is the Right Thing to Do?” CCQ 47, no. 7 (2009), pp. 631–641

I was disappointed in the tone of the article by Gretchen L. Hoffman and would have hoped for a more upbeat, inspirational article and especially an ending to guide us to actions to help users rather than imply the goals for our work are “empty, dishonest, and unethical,” and that we do not have a “truly ethical cataloging practice.” On the one hand she seems to agree that users are important in cataloging and that we should find ways to address their needs, better than we do now. But on the other hand, to turn that into a case of being unethical, somehow is very off-putting. Having “an ethical responsibility to help users” is fine, but I wish she had stuck to that premise without the unfortunate ending to her article. The Statement of International Cataloguing Principles sets internationally established goals for us to do our work for our users in whatever domain. Those are worthy goals and can be even better served with guidance from user studies and best practices and findings in a multitude of domains. Somehow Ms. Hoffman herself ignored the history of user studies (often conflicting) and consultations with librarians serving our users and discoveries in the Web environment that have informed current standards and practices, including some of the most recent studies from the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) of what librarians want and what other users want.1 Having a publication that identifies all of the user studies and best practices that went in to the development of standards seems to be the evidence she requires for proving that the international cataloguing experts who developed the current principles and standards knew about and cared about such information. She implies that we have ignored research and practices in the development of international standards, which simply is not so. I fully expect the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) statement of principles to be adjusted when there is more international sharing of data on user needs worldwide. That process of

RESULTS OF THE CODE COMPARISONS: A SUMMARY

Many noted that the Paris Principles were written for card catalogues or manual catalogues with a single alphabetical file for the bibliographic records and added entries and reference cards, whereas today, most online catalogues manipulate bibliographic records and index points to allow retrieval and display of full bibliographic records or brief displays of selected elements from the bibliographic record in addition to providing references from variant forms to authorized forms of headings.

High tech or high touch (panel session): automation and human mediation in libraries

There are those who now think that traditional library services, such as cataloging and reference, will no longer be needed in the future, or at least will be fully automated. Others are equally adamant that human intervention is not only important but essential. Underlying such positions are a host of assumptions - about the continued existence and place of paper, the role of human intelligence and interpretation, the nature of research, and the significance of the human element. This panel brings together experts in libraries and digital technology to uncover such issues and assumptions and to discuss and debate the place of people and machines in cataloging and reference work.