Describing Scholarly Works with Dublin Core: A Functional Approach

This article describes the development of the Scholarly Works Application Profile (SWAP)—a Dublin Core application profile for describing scholarly texts. This work provides an active illustration of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) “Singapore Framework” for Application Profiles, presented at the DCMI Conference in 2007, by incorporating the various elements of Application Profile building as defined by this framework—functional requirements, domain model, description set profile, usage guidelines, and data format. These elements build on the foundations laid down by the Dublin Core Abstract Model and utilize a preexisting domain model (FR-BR—Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) in order to support the representation of complex data describing multiple entities and their relationships. The challenges of engaging community acceptance and implementation will be covered, along with other related initiatives to support the growing corpus of scholarly resource types, such as data objects, geographic data, multimedia, and images whose structure and metadata requirements introduce the need for new application profiles. Finally, looking to other initiatives, the article will comment on how Dublin Core relates to the broader scholarly information world, where projects like Object Re-use and Exchange are attempting to better equip repositories to exchange resources

Three views of the "musical work": Bibliographical control in the music domain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of the “musical work”, and its consequences for library/information provision. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis of journal and monograph literature is supported by interviews with music editors, examination of documents, and self-reflection on music cataloguing practice. Findings – The nature of a musical work is shown to be complex, and influenced by many contextual factors. Phenomenological and ontological models can prove useful in understanding practical issues of information provision. The work of music editors has a strong relation to that of cataloguers and curators. Bibliographic models such as FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) can gain from, and contribute to, music information, through the centrality of the concept of “work”. Research limitations/implications – The literature review is selective rather than comprehensive. Practical implications – The study provides direct guidance for library/information practitioners in the music domain, and an insight into issues of relevance to information provision in any specialized subject. Originality/value – The paper is a contribution to the literature on the application of philosophical and conceptual analysis to documents and bibliographic entities in specialized subject areas, and to domain analysis

Towards improved performance and interoperability in distributed and physical union catalogues

Purpose of this paper: This paper details research undertaken to determine the key differences in the performance of certain centralised (physical) and distributed (virtual) bibliographic catalogue services, and to suggest strategies for improving interoperability and performance in, and between, physical and virtual models. Design/methodology/approach: Methodically defined searches of a centralised catalogue service and selected distributed catalogues were conducted using the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol, allowing search types to be semantically defined. The methodology also entailed the use of two workshops comprising systems librarians and cataloguers to inform suggested strategies for improving performance and interoperability within both environments. Findings: Technical interoperability was permitted easily between centralised and distributed models, however the various individual configurations permitted only limited semantic interoperability. Significant prescription in cataloguing and indexing guidelines, greater participation in the Program for Collaborative Cataloging (PCC), consideration of future 'FRBR' migration, and greater disclosure to end users are some of the suggested strategies to improve performance and semantic interoperability. Practical implications: This paper informs the LIS research community and union catalogue administrators, but also has numerous practical implications for those establishing distributed systems based on Z39.50 and SRW, as well as those establishing centralised systems. What is original/value of the paper?: The paper moves the discussion of Z39.50 based systems away from anecdotal evidence and provides recommendations based on testing and is intimately informed by the UK cataloguing and systems librarian community

Knowledge organization

Since Svenonius analyzed the research base in bibliographic control in 1990, the intervening years have seen major shifts in the focus of information organization in academic libraries. New technologies continue to reshape the nature and content of catalogs, stretch the boundaries of classification research, and provide new alternatives for the organization of information. Research studies have rigorously analyzed the structure of the Anglo- American Cataloguing Rules using entity-relationship modeling and expanded on the bibliographic and authority relationship research to develop new data models (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records [FRBR] and Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records [FRANAR]). Applied research into the information organization process has led to the development of cataloguing tools and harvesting ap- plications for bibliographic data collection and automatic record creation. A growing international perspective focused research on multilingual subject access, transliteration problems in surrogate records, and user studies to improve Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) displays for large retrieval sets resulting from federated searches. The need to organize local and remote electronic resources led to metadata research that developed general and domain-specific metadata schemes. Ongoing research in this area focuses on record structures and architectural models to enable interoperability among the various schemes and differing application platforms. Research in the area of subject access and classification is strong, covering areas such as vocabulary mapping, automatic facet construction and deconstruction for Web resources, development of expert systems for automatic classifica- tion, dynamically altered classificatory structures linked to domain-specific thesauri, crosscultural conceptual structures in classification, identification of semantic relationships for vocabulary mapped to classification systems, and the expanded use of traditional classification systems as switching languages in the global Web environment. Finally, descriptive research into library and information science (LIS) education and curricula for knowl- edge organization continues. All of this research is applicable to knowledge organization in academic and research libraries. This chapter examines this body of research in depth, describes the research methodologies employed, and identifies areas of lacunae in need of further research

FRBR, Facets, and Moving Images: A Literature Review

Annotated bibliography on resources related to FBRB, facets and moving images

Volume 28, Number 2, June 2008 OLAC Newsletter

Digitized June 2008 issue of the OLAC Newsletter

datos.bne.es and MARiMbA: an insight into Library Linked Data

Purpose – Linked data is gaining great interest in the cultural heritage domain as a new way for publishing, sharing and consuming data. The paper aims to provide a detailed method and MARiMbA a tool for publishing linked data out of library catalogues in the MARC 21 format, along with their application to the catalogue of the National Library of Spain in the datos.bne.es project. Design/methodology/approach – First, the background of the case study is introduced. Second, the method and process of its application are described. Third, each of the activities and tasks are defined and a discussion of their application to the case study is provided. Findings – The paper shows that the FRBR model can be applied to MARC 21 records following linked data best practices, librarians can successfully participate in the process of linked data generation following a systematic method, and data sources quality can be improved as a result of the process. Originality/value – The paper proposes a detailed method for publishing and linking linked data from MARC 21 records, provides practical examples, and discusses the main issues found in the application to a real case. Also, it proposes the integration of a data curation activity and the participation of librarians in the linked data generation process