S.R. Ranganathan's Ontology of the Book: On a Bibliographical Conceptual Model avant la lettre

This paper examines a conceptual model of the book advanced in the mid-20th century by the eminent Indian librarian and classification theorist S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1972), who formulated it with the aid of an ontological model drawn from Hindu philosophical thought. The analysis of this model, which has hitherto received only sporadic discussion in KO literature, unfolds in three parts. First, the paper outlines Ranganathan’s model, explains its Hindu philosophical background, and traces its development, showing that, in fact, it comprised two distinct versions – a triadic (i.e., three-entity) and a dyadic (i.e., two-entity) one – which were fully compatible to one another and which Ranganathan used in different contexts. Next, the structure of Ranganathan’s model, in both its triadic and dyadic forms, is compared with those of the contemporary bibliographic conceptual models most widely used today, IFLA-LRM (and its predecessor, FRBR) and BIBFRAME. It is shown that Ranganathan’s model bears some striking resemblances to these current models: in particular, the triadic version of Ranganathan’s model shares affinities with FRBR and IFLA-LRM, while the dyadic version is closer to BIBFRAME. Then follows a discussion of significant structural divergences between Ranganathan’s model and its latter-day counterparts, and an explanation for these differences is adduced. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the surprising lack of historical connection between Ranganathan’s conceptual model of the book avant la lettre and current bibliographic conceptual models, as well as a reflection on the enduring relevance of Ranganathan’s model for today

Documenting Performance and Contemporary Data Models: Positioning Performance within FRBR and LRM

One important aspect of performance documentation is the structure and models of data relating to performance. Documenting performance is a rapidly developing and changing field, as attested to by the work of various performance scholars across the world, the Documenting Performance project at City, University of London (Documenting Performance, 2017), among others. However, in a related universe, the bibliographic world has seen great changes in how they model bibliographic data over the last twenty or so years, through the model called Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), which has recently been superseded by the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM). So, this article is going to put these developments together by considering performance documentation through the lens of the FRBR and LRM models. There are a number of reasons why exploring FRBR and LRM in relation to performance documentation is worthwhile. As libraries hold some materials relating to performance (for example, collections of theatre programmes), understanding how these materials fit into the dominant library models is useful. For those working specifically with performance and its documentation, the FRBR and LRM models provide an alternative way of modelling the performance world, and ask interesting questions about the nature of performance documentation. This article starts with a brief précis of FRBR and LRM, followed by a summary of existing literature which discusses the treatment of performance within FRBR/LRM. A significant article by Miller and Le Boeuf (2005) is introduced: this paper models performance in FRBR, and forms the starting point for discussion. Then, three specific areas of performance documentation are discussed, describing and questioning the consequences of Miller and Le Boeuf’s (2005) realisation: performance ephemera such as programmes, and the interplay between performance document and performance-as-document; the relationships between performance and recordings, in particular how the Miller and Le Boeuf model fits (or not) within current realisations of FRBR; the issue of whether all performance (for example, dance, theatre, music) can be treated as one within a FRBR or LRM universe. The article shows how there is a tension between taking a pure FRBR approach which only places traditional ideas of performance documentation within its structure, and the Miller and Le Boeuf (2005) position of performances being the central unit, which could be seen as a proto-realisation of performance-as-document

FRBR / LRM Lectures in China

Pat Riva’s lectures on FRBR/LRM in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing will have a special importance. I hope more Chinese colleagues will pay attention to the future development of FRBR/LRM

LexMeta model za leksičke resurse: teorija i primjena

This paper presents LexMeta, a metadata model for the description of lexical resources, such as dictionaries, word lists, glossaries, etc., to be used in language data catalogues mainly targeting the lexicographic and broader humanities communities but also users exploiting such resources in their research and applications. A comparative review of similar models is made in order to show the differences and commonalities with LexMeta. To enhance semantic interoperability and support the exchange of (meta)data across disciplinary and general catalogues, the most influential models for our purposes, namely FRBR (used in library catalogues) and META-SHARE (used for language resources), are selected as a base for the design of LexMeta. We discuss how these models are aligned and extended with new properties as required for the description of lexical resources. The formal representation of the model following the Linked Data paradigm aims to further enhance the semantic interoperability. The choice to implement it in two formats (as an RDF/OWL and as a Wikibase ontology) facilitates its adoption and hence its enrichment, yet poses challenges as to their synchronisation, which are addressed through automatic workflows. We conclude with ongoing and planned activities for the improvement of the model.Rad opisuje LexMeta, metapodatkovni model za opis leksičkih resursa kao što su rječnici, popisi riječi, glosari i dr., koji će se upotrebljavati u katalozima podataka namijenjenima leksikografskoj i široj humanističkoj zajednici, ali i korisnicima koji upotreblajvaju takve modele u istraživanjima i praktičnoj primjeni. U radu je dan usporedni pregled sličnih modela kako bi se pokazale razlike i sličnosti s LexMetom. Kako bi se poboljšala semantička interoperabilnost i podržala razmjena (meta) podataka između strukovnih i općih kataloga, kao temelj za dizajn LexMeta odabrani su najutjecajniji modeli, naime FRBR koji se upotrebljava u knjižničnim katalozima i META-SHARE koji se upotrebljava za jezične resurse. Rad donosi raspravu o tome kako su ti modeli usklađeni i prošireni novim značajkama potrebnima za opis leksičkih izvora. Formalni prikaz modela koji slijedi paradigmu povezanih podataka ima za cilj dodatno poboljšati semantičku interoperabilnost. Izbor da se implementira u dva formata (kao RDF/OWL i kao ontologija Wikibase) olakšava njegovo usvajanje, a time i obogaćivanje, ali i postavlja izazove koji se tiču sinkronizacije formata, koji se rješavaju automatskim tijekovima rada. Zaključujemo rad s opisom tekućih i planiranih aktivnosti na unapređenju modela

Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem

With the contributions of international experts, the book aims to explore the new boundaries of universal bibliographic control. Bibliographic control is radically changing because the bibliographic universe is radically changing: resources, agents, technologies, standards and practices. Among the main topics addressed: library cooperation networks; legal deposit; national bibliographies; new tools and standards (IFLA LRM, RDA, BIBFRAME); authority control and new alliances (Wikidata, Wikibase, Identifiers); new ways of indexing resources (artificial intelligence); institutional repositories; new book supply chain; “discoverability” in the IIIF digital ecosystem; role of thesauri and ontologies in the digital ecosystem; bibliographic control and search engines

Semantic enrichment for enhancing LAM data and supporting digital humanities. Review article

With the rapid development of the digital humanities (DH) field, demands for historical and cultural heritage data have generated deep interest in the data provided by libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). In order to enhance LAM data’s quality and discoverability while enabling a self-sustaining ecosystem, “semantic enrichment” becomes a strategy increasingly used by LAMs during recent years. This article introduces a number of semantic enrichment methods and efforts that can be applied to LAM data at various levels, aiming to support deeper and wider exploration and use of LAM data in DH research. The real cases, research projects, experiments, and pilot studies shared in this article demonstrate endless potential for LAM data, whether they are structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, regardless of what types of original artifacts carry the data. Following their roadmaps would encourage more effective initiatives and strengthen this effort to maximize LAM data’s discoverability, use- and reuse-ability, and their value in the mainstream of DH and Semantic Web

An investigation into cataloguers' experiences with RDA.

Cataloguing has been undergoing significant transformation for the last several years in order to keep up with the changing world of digital technologies, dramatically increasing the number of resources to be catalogued and data to be managed in such a way that would satisfy library users’ needs and expectations. Cataloguers had to face a shift in thinking about bibliographic data and consequently a shift in practice to the new cataloguing standard of Resource Description and Access. This research investigated cataloguers’ experiences with using RDA and the current issues they encounter and discuss while RDA is still being reviewed and shaped. It also documented and explored their opinions and concerns regarding understanding of theoretical concepts behind RDA and the new Library Reference Model. The investigation took place in a virtual environment of two of the most popular listservs dedicated to cataloguing and, in this way, allowed a direct and immediate access to opinions expressed by cataloguers around the world. In order to explore their experiences, a qualitative, based on elements of grounded theory, content analysis of archive and most recent posts was conducted and compared with the literature on the research done in the initial period after RDA implementation. The research results indicated some strong divisions among cataloguers and different levels of understanding of the changes being introduced. It also showed a potential paradigm shift in cataloguing, professional knowledge and mental flexibility required of cataloguers. Moreover, the significant amount of learning that cataloguers have had to and will have to undertake in the nearest future, suggests an inordinately important need for adequate training and dialogue between them and the RDA Steering Committee that would be led in a more comprehensible way to enable those who call themselves ‘average cataloguers’ understand the model better and become confident, rather than confused, practitioners

In the Name of the Name : RDF Literals, ER Attributes, and the Potential to Rethink the Structures and Visualizations of Catalogs

The aim of this study is to contribute to the field of machine-processable bibliographic data that is suitable for the Semantic Web. We examine the Entity Relationship (ER) model, which has been selected by IFLA as a “conceptual framework” in order to model the FR family (FRBR, FRAD, and RDA), and the problems ER causes as we move towards the Semantic Web. Subsequently, while maintaining the semantics of the aforementioned standards but rejecting the ER as a conceptual framework for bibliographic data, this paper builds on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) potential and documents how both the RDF and Linked Data’s rationale can affect the way we model bibliographic data. In this way, a new approach to bibliographic data emerges where the distinction between description and authorities is obsolete. Instead, the integration of the authorities with descriptive information becomes fundamental so that a network of correlations can be established between the entities and the names by which the entities are known. Naming is a vital issue for human cultures because names are not random sequences of characters or sounds that stand just as identifiers for the entities—they also have socio-cultural meanings and interpretations. Thus, instead of describing indivisible resources, we could describe entities that appear in a variety of names on various resources. In this study, a method is proposed to connect the names with the entities they represent and, in this way, to document the provenance of these names by connecting specific resources with specific names

FRBR / LRM Lectures in China

Pat Riva’s lectures on FRBR/LRM in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing will have a special importance. I hope more Chinese colleagues will pay attention to the future development of FRBR/LRM

Semantic enrichment for enhancing LAM data and supporting digital humanities. Review article

With the rapid development of the digital humanities (DH) field, demands for historical and cultural heritage data have generated deep interest the data provided by libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). In order to enhance LAM data’s quality and discoverability while enabling a self-sustaining ecosystem, “semantic enrichment” becomes a strategy increasingly used by LAMs during recent years. This article introduces a number of semantic enrichment methods and efforts that can be applied to LAM data at various levels, aiming to support deeper and wider exploration and use of LAM data in DH research. The real cases, research projects, experiments, and pilot studies shared in this article demonstrate endless potential for LAM data, whether they are structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, regardless of what types of original artifacts carry the data. Following their roadmaps would encourage more effective initiatives and strengthen this effort to maximize LAM data’s discoverability, use- and reuse-ability, and their value in the mainstream of DH and Semantic Web