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Presentation to Oregon State staff and librarians during a visit in July 2011. Topic focuses on changes in the library environment and what needs to shift in our conversations about those changes.
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Libraries, Standards, and the Web
Focusing Our Eyes and Attention
What We’ll Talk About
Part 1: Changing the Conversation Looking the crisis in the face Are the old battles worth fighting?
Part 2: Expanding the Conversation Beyond Our Silo Where our attention should be moving
Part 3: What’s up (or not) with Library Standards? Where’s the leadership? The participation?
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 2
After we empty the card catalog …
We hear that there’s a crisis in libraries, but we still haven’t realized how pervasive it is
Reality: we’ve gotten rid of the cards, now we need to get rid of the catalog.
If we don’t, we may lose our institutional support, our mission, and our way …
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 3
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 4
“As librarians, we pride ourselves on operating outside of the commercial marketplace. However, whether we like it or not, we are working in an information environment the dynamics of which are very much like those of a free market, except the the currency spent by our “customers” is not money, but time and attention. … We may believe, for example, that our carefully-crafted catalog records provide excellent value in return for the time and energy required to use them—and we may be right. But if our patrons doubt that the catalog will return good value in exchange for the time and energy required to use it, then whatever value the catalog may actually contain becomes irrelevant.”
Rick Anderson, The Crisis in Research Librarianship, Journal of Academic Librarianship, July 2011
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 5
“Wikipedia is founded on the belief (largely correct, as it turns out) that crowds both can and will provide high-quality content and metadata to the world at no charge. For our part, in research libraries we still tend to treat books as if they are primarily tools for linear reading, and metadata records as artisanal products. We still build collections that are fenced off from the larger information world and encourage our patrons, against all reason, to begin their information searches within the confines of our artificially limited collections.”
Rick Anderson, The Crisis in Research Librarianship, Journal of Academic Librarianship, July 2011
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 6
“We must look with cold and hard-headed rationality at our current practices and ask ourselves not what value they offer, but rather what value our patrons believe they offer. If what we offer our patrons is not perceived as valuable by them, then we have two choices: change their minds, or redirect our resources. The former is virtually impossible; the latter is enormously painful. But the latter is possible, and if we do not undertake such a redirection ourselves, it will almost certainly be undertaken for us.”
Rick Anderson, The Crisis in Research Librarianship, Journal of Academic Librarianship, July 2011
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 7
“In the big picture, very little will change: libraries will need to be in the data business to help people find things. In the close-up view, everything is changing-- the materials and players are different, the machines are different, and the technologies can do things that were hard to imagine even 20 years ago.”Eric Hellman
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2011/07/library-data-why-bother.html
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 8
“Promise of linked data offers many benefits across sectors, across ‘memory institutions’. But the institutions involved will need to face cultural change to achieve this. ‘Curators’ in any context (libraries, archives, museums) are used to their ‘vested authority’ – and we need to both recognize this at the same time as ‘letting go’ – from the library point of view no-one can afford to stand on the sidelines – we need to get in there and experiment.”
Eric Hellman, http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/07/linked-data-and-libraries-keynote/
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 9
The Old Battles are largely irrelevant …
OCLC’s assertion of ‘ownership’ over MARC data in WorldCat has been overtaken by the Linked Open Data movement.
Bulletin: MARC is really dead this time.
W3C Linked Library Data Incubator Group poised to issue report, signaling strong interest by SemWeb in library data.
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 10
Open Data Taking Over
May 2011: release of JISC Discovery Open Metadata Principles http://discovery.ac.uk/businesscase/principles/
July 2011: British Library announces Linked Open Data access to the British National Bibliography http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html
And in fact, if ‘records’ are no longer what we share, there is no longer a reasonable way to claim rights over metadata.
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 11
W3C on Linked Library Data “The group will explore how existing building blocks of
librarianship, such as metadata models, metadata schemas, standards and protocols for building interoperability and library systems and networked environments, encourage libraries to bring their content, and generally re-orient their approaches to data interoperability towards the Web, also reaching to other communities. It will also envision these communities as a potential major provider of authoritative datasets (persons, topics...) for the Linked Data Web. As these evolutions raise a need for a shared standardization effort within the library community around (Semantic) Web standards, the group will refine the knowledge of this need, express requirements for standards and guidelines, and propose a way forward for the library community to contribute to further Web standardization actions.”
-- http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 12
LC and New Metadata Framework
“Spontaneous comments from participants in the US RDA Test show that a broad cross-section of the community feels budgetary pressures but nevertheless considers it necessary to replace MARC 21 in order to reap the full benefit of new and emerging content standards. The Library now seeks to evaluate how its resources for the creation and exchange of metadata are currently being used and how they should be directed in an era of diminishing budgets and heightened expectations in the broader library community.”
http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-051311.html
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 13
The Standards Landscape
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 14
LC: Leading, or Following? Goals of the New Bibliographic Framework:
Consider benefits of evolving a new format for metadata
Experiment with SemWeb and Linked Data Foster maximum re-use of library data on the Web Enable users to better navigate relationships
between entities Explore approaches to displaying metadata Identify risks of action and inaction Develop plan for bringing library metadata into
new bibliographic systems
Tectonic Shifts Ahead …
LITA surveyed its membership about their thinking about standards
Some findings: NISO/ISO has traditionally been LITA’s focus
in the standards world—that is likely to broaden
ISO is increasingly seen as problematic because of their business model
Many web standards coming out of W3C, but most librarians are neither aware or participating
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 15
Librarians & Standards
• The LITA survey confirms that lack of participation by librarians has to do with: ▪ Lack of institutional support (time, money) ▪ Pervasive feelings of lack of competence
The changes in the environment challenge us all to reconsider how we relate to standards▪ Who do we think should be in charge of
building them?▪ If the Usual Suspects are not prepared to lead,
who will?▪ What is our responsibility as individuals?
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 16
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 17
Top Down vs. Bottom Up?
Where standards are developed and who supports them are critical to their success …
A case study is the RDA Vocabularies.
Is this an anomaly or the precursor of things to come?
Flickr photo by freebird4
A Brief History
It all started in London, the last day of April 2007 …
Participating: Joint Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC)Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Sponsor: ALA Publishing, on behalf of the RDA Publishers
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/1118
What Was Accomplished?
The participants agreed that DCMI and the JSC should work together to: Develop an RDA Element Vocabulary Expose RDA Value Vocabularies Develop an RDA Application Profile,
based on FRBR and FRAD The first two are largely complete;
the third is started
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 19
The General Strategy
Used the Semantic Web as our “mental model”
Focused on creating a “bridge” between XML and RDF to support innovation in the library community as a whole, not just those at the cutting edge or the trailing edge
IFLA has followed suit using the Open Metadata Registry to add the ‘official’ FRBR entities, FRAD, and ISBD
This provides exciting opportunities to relate all the vocabularies together
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 20
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 21
An Uphill Battle
Efforts by the TG to start building the vocabularies went largely unnoticed for years No feedback from JSC, very little from others
in the library community JSC-sponsored sessions addressed only the
rules, never mentioned the vocabularies Attempts to get support from NISO were
unsuccessful ▪ Some important funding came from the British
Library and Siderean Software
Building for Inside and Outside The ‘generalized’ RDA properties may be
the real RDA vocabulary The ‘bounded’ properties should be seen as the
first pass at an Application Profile Extensions can be built more usefully from the
generalized properties Mapping will be cleaner using the generalized
properties (since most properties mapped to or mapped from will not be based on FRBR)
Generalized properties are much more acceptable to non-library implementers (not often using FRBR)
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 22
Bringing It All Together
Relating the Vocabularies to the RDA rules Conversations with ALA Publishing around
integrating with the RDA Toolkit should provide some answers
The governance model for both have yet to be defined
LC’s Metadata Framework discussions will include the RDA Vocabularies Keep an eye on that process!
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 23
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 24
Where are we now?
JSC is reviewing the vocabulary work, starting with the value vocabularies Some are now complete;
announcements pending Discussions about classes and
elements just beginning Hoping for completion by the end of
2011 TG published in DLib Magazine about
the work: http://dlib.org/dlib/january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 25
Extending RDA Vocabularies
RDA Vocabularies weren’t built for a library silo.
The technical infrastructure is optimized for extension beyond those elements and vocabularies specified by the JSC.
This capability positions the RDA Vocabularies for the future.
Flickr photo by zizzybaloobah
How Extension Works
The inclusion of generalized properties provides a path for extension of RDA into specialized library communities and non-library communities They may have a different notion of how FRBR
‘aggregates’; for example, a colorized version of a film may be viewed as a separate work
They may not wish to use FRBR at all They may have additional properties to include,
that have a relationship to the RDA properties
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 26
RDA:adaptedAs
RDA:adaptedAsARadioScript
hasSubprope
rty
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 27
RDA:adaptedAs
RDA:adaptedAsARadioScript
KidLit:adaptedAsAPictureBook
hasSubproperty
hasSubprope
rtyOregon State Visit, 7/28/11 28
RDA:adaptedAs
RDA:adaptedAsARadioScript
KidLit:adaptedAsAPictureBook
hasSubproperty
hasSubprope
rty
KidLit:adaptedAsAChapterBook
hasS
ubprop
e
rty
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 29
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 30
More Extension in the Real World
Legislative Metadata Project (for Library of Congress, contracting with Cornell Legal Information Institute) Analysis of needs for metadata Building an event-based model and
forward-looking strategy Using a Singapore Framework-inspired
process, statement-based focus, functional needs for data (extensions, no shoehorns)
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 31
Trends to Notice I
A shift from ‘top-down’ to ‘bottom up’ standards development Large, slow-moving organizations no
longer driving the processes Requires some reconsideration of what
‘standards’ are, how they are ‘vetted’ and characterized
Process needs more participation from libraries and librarians▪ The publishers are already there …
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 32
Trends to Notice II
The LOD-LAM Effect ‘Linked Open Data-Libraries, Archives
and Museums’ After decades of separate standards
development, these groups are coming together and recognizing their common needs and challenges
This is far more possible in an environment no longer focused on the big players or silo-ed standards
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 33
Trends to Notice III
Open Data starting to drive innovation No real business models yet▪ Some efforts based on work at research
centers, others not so easy to characterize Starting to get very competitive Data licensing not yet dead but starting
to look perfunctory Moving fast, hard to keep track!
LOD-LAM: 5 stars for library data
Predictions
As differences in focus and expectation become more mainstream, we WILL change how we see our data.
The loss of that ‘library silo’ will help us see ourselves as important providers of data to other services.
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 35
Ending Thoughts
Our big investment is (and has always been) in our data, not our systems
Over many changes in format of materials, we’ve always struggled to keep our focus on the content that endures, regardless of presentation format
We are in a great position to have influence on how the future develops, but we can’t be afraid to change, or afraid to fail
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 36
Thank you! Questions?
Contact info: [email protected]
Metadata Matters: http://managemetadata.com/blog
Oregon State Visit, 7/28/11 37