Lynne C. Howarth

Uniform Titles From AACR to RDA

ABSTRACT Even before John Fiske (1878) reminded catalogers of their “duty” to correctly identify authors with the same name, uniform headings had assumed a place and purpose in nineteenth-century catalogs. Rules for names of persons, families, corporate bodies, and places have been developed to ensure consistency of both structure and application. Catalogers agree on the importance of form when creating either uniform headings or uniform titles. Paths diverge at the point of application. Effective collocation by means of uniform titles is entirely dependent on whether or not the option to establish them is exercised. In this article, we explore how the concept and treatment of “uniform title” has evolved within Anglo-American cataloging codes, and is changing within RDA: Resource Description and Access.

Designing a Common Namespace for Searching Metadata-Enabled Knowledge Repositories: An International Perspective

SUMMARY With the proliferation of digitized resources accessible internationally via Internet and Intranet knowledge bases and a pressing need to develop more sophisticated tools for the identification and retrieval of electronic resources, both general purpose and domain-specific metadata schemes have assumed a particular prominence. This has resulted in a growing number of online repositories that must be accessed using terminology that would be considered unfamiliar to most searchers. Assuming that a natural language “gateway” requiring no prior knowledge of specific metadata tagging could facilitate cross-repository searching, end-users were engaged in focus group testing of a “namespace” of common categories derived from nine metadata schemes. Findings and their implications within an international context are presented.

FRBR and Linked Data: Connecting FRBR and Linked Data

From the time of the earliest catalogs documenting private collections, to the present proliferation of repositories of material and digital objects, the bibliographic record as an aggregation of lgical and physical characteristics of a resource has prevailed. The development of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model introduced a shift in focus away from the record as a whole to component pieces of data (or disaggregated data) where those data elements have the potential to be shared and used in diverse, even novel ways. Tim Berners-Lees “rules” underlying the Open Linked Data Project offer an opportunity for FRBR-compliant, quality bibliographic data to be exposed to the digital universe via the Semantic Web. Context and potential for seizing this advantage are explored.

Metadata and Bibliographic Control: Soul-Mates or Two Solitudes?

SUMMARY The historical interweaving of evolving trends and applications in metadata and bibliographic control seems largely absent from the literature. To address this apparent gap in perspective, some historic and more recent developments related to each are traced, along with some speculation about future directions. Cataloguing rules are ancestors to the current lineage of bibliographic standards. Metadata schemas have been developed to meet the needs of particular fields or domains and to support a variety of functions related to resource discovery. While differences between the tools of bibliographic control and of metadata application still remain, the similarities have become sufficient to warrant a confluence in terminology and definition. While internationally determined codes and standards have fostered the goal of universal bibliographic control, syntactic structures, semantic element sets, transmission protocols, cross-schema mappings, and metadata harvesting tools have been instrumental to realizing the concept of interoperability.

Mountains to Molehills: The Past, Present, and Future of Cataloging Backlogs

While backlogs have existed in libraries and the literature that describes them, the decline in the acquisition of physical collections relative to digital resources, as well as the availability of cataloging copy has called into question the continued viability and relevance of arrearages. Yet, at a time of economic restraint, a rethinking of library operations is timely, if not urgent. What does nearly sixty years of research tell us about materials that are removed from cataloging workflow pending availability of a bibliographic record? This article analyzes the characteristics of, and reasons for, arrearages, and assesses approaches to reducing or eliminating backlogs.

Enigma Variations: Parsing the Riddle of Main Entry and the “Rule of Three” from AACR2 to RDA

ABSTRACT In the ten years since the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, long-standing debates have continued as to whether or not to have a “main entry,” and whether or not to exercise the rule of three to limit the number of headings or access points in certain cases. Recent proposals from the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA have recommended a change in “main entry” terminology to “primary access point,” and the elimination of the rule of three. This article explores how and why these shifts have occurred.

Recovering memory: Sense-making and recall strategies of individuals with mild cognitive impairment

Cognitive impairment as it relates to making sense of information, or to communicating information needs, can range from mild disorientation and aphasia, to a complete loss of short-term memory and use of language. While studies on semantic dementia (SD), for example, are evident in a range of health science disciplines, and social work, little research – particularly within the information science discipline – on categorization or classification strategies for sense-making and recall among those with SD or related cognitive impairments, has been identified. This poster reports on a pilot study exploring “sorting” strategies for recalling everyday life experiences, and the effectiveness of multi-modal tokens as context for association and reconstruction of participant scenarios. Preliminary to a larger study, participants diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer/Dementia (AD) responded to questions concerning personal everyday life events. After a delay of several weeks, they were asked to describe what they associated with representative non-verbal tokens or cues. Recollections were compared with original scenarios to determine (1) whether and how the multi-modal cues provided access to the initial recall of the everyday life event, (2) what additional scenarios, if any, were evoked, and (3) what associative links revealed, subsequently, about sense-making and sorting strategies around memory recall. Understanding how these strategies assist with reconstructing episodic and semantic memories could inform the design of life history retrieval systems for reinforcing or recovering intact memory.

To Every Artifact Its Voice: Creating Surrogates for Hand-Crafted Indigenous Objects

This article reports on findings from qualitative research undertaken with a group of Aboriginal seniors in Toronto, Canada, to assess how a community-based collection of handcrafted objects could be used to evoke memories of maker culture (craft), as well as to foster meaning-making—all in the course of gathering elements requisite to representing each item in a documented surrogate. The article will discuss how the need to give voice to this unique collection both challenges and enriches traditional approaches to representing and organizing artifacts. A rethinking of surrogate records that center the Indigenous experience in the cataloging process is proposed.

(Re)making the Serials cataloger: The SCCTP within an educational framework

ABSTRACT The Serials Cooperative Cataloging Program (SCCTP) is reviewed from the standpoint of a library educator. Although the demand for copy catalogers has declined in the era of digital information, the demand for original catalogers has remained constant due, in part, to the growth in titles in different media formats and different languages. Additionally linking to information housed externally or internally and embedding metadata tags for resource discovery are among the new tasks for organizers of information in the Internet era. Increasingly professional organizations are filling the need for continuing education and training for advanced-level catalogers. This article examines the SCCTP as a model for continuous professional development and concludes it is adaptable more generally.

Multilingual digital libraries: Research and practice

This session focuses on important issues in designing and implementing multilingual digital libraries. A group of experts who have both research and implementation experiences with multilingual digital libraries will join the panel to present and discuss: (1) the state of the art of searching a broad range of spoken word multilingual digital collections, (2) research and development of a multilingual cross-repository retrieval prototype, and (3) implementation of an open source digital library system that supports creating multilingual digital libraries.