Cataloguing for the users: from catalogue objectives to bibliographic data

Using library catalogues today, it is very time consuming and sometimes even impossible to answer questions such as “What versions of Don Quixote are available in my library?” “What English translations of Don Quixote can I choose from?” “What other works by Cervantes are available at the library?” or “What kind of adaptations based on Don Quixote does the library hold?”. For each of these questions, the user would first have to form a correct query and then spend a considerable amount of time inspecting all the retrieved records in order to create a mental image of what is available in the collection and to select the records that best correspond to the query. In many cases, the system would not retrieve all the relevant records and the user would not be able to identify all the needed elements to make an informed decision. With a growing awareness that libraries need to create not only more functional, informative, and useful but also more technologically advanced library catalogues, we have witnesses several initiatives in the last few years that have triggered a long overdue deliberation on bibliographic data and formats. With FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), RDA (Resource Description and Access), BIBFRAME and other developments, libraries finally have the opportunity to set up a framework for data and an infrastructure that will enable more powerful retrieval and semantics within user interfaces and thus better meet users’ needs. However, the transition to new formats will not happen overnight which is why it is important to understand the limitations and potentials of the current format, cataloguing practices, as well as cataloguing rules in relation to the desired catalogue functionality. Not only that, there is a danger that the transformation is not going to be successful if the objectives of a library catalogue and the vision of user’s interaction are not placed at the centre of the development. Revisiting the objectives of library catalogues, the paper looks at how the missing functionality could be achieved by improving the underlying bibliographic data. To begin with, the paper identifies different types of queries and information needs that current catalogues do not efficiently support, such as finding all works of an author or endeavours where a person had a specific role, distinguishing between different versions of a work, identifying and associating related works etc. It then reviews bibliographic data in current MARC records, pointing out the inconsistencies and incompleteness that present an obstacle to fulfilling catalogue’s objectives. It also looks at how well RDA addresses these issues, and discusses some possible modifications (for example consistent use of descriptive identification, relator codes, field linking, access points) to help process records in a way that would support the creation of more advanced, FRBR-based library catalogues. Using our prototype system FrbrVis which enables exploration of all versions of a work, works related to the work and works by and about the author, the paper shows one possible improvement of library catalogues and discusses the changes that were needed to achieve such functionality

Interactive displays for the next generation of entity-centric bibliographic models

The model of bibliographic entities defined in the IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) represents a major transition from the digital card catalog to databases containing a rich structure of entities and relationships with well-defined semantics. However, the question of how to best search and present this entity-centric bibliographic data remains a challenge. In this paper we present a system for entity-centric search and a user study on how the displays of the FRBR entities compare in their ability to support different user tasks

An Observational Study of Equivalence Links in Cultural Heritage Linked Data for agents

This article presents an observational study of the virtual graph formed by equivalence links between agent entities across 8 knowledge bases. To evaluate the potential of this linked data graph, we measured the equivalences that it could provide for a real dataset. We crawled the virtual graph by starting from references to agents we found in descriptions of objects collected from data of cultural heritage institutions in Europeana. Our study characterizes the current virtual equivalence graph, presenting statistics about the links, their type and origin. Crawling the equivalences for agent URIs required several crawling iterations on the virtual equivalence graph. The amount of gathered equivalences grows steeply in the first 3 crawling iterations and stabilizes on the 4th iteration. VIAF was the KB with the highest number of equivalences, reaching 60.7%, and it was followed by Wikidata with 34.5%

Databases and Information Systems in the AI Era: Contributions from ADBIS, TPDL and EDA 2020 Workshops and Doctoral Consortium

Research on database and information technologies has been rapidly evolving over the last couple of years. This evolution was lead by three major forces: Big Data, AI and Connected World that open the door to innovative research directions and challenges, yet exploiting four main areas: (i) computational and storage resource modeling and organization; (ii) new programming models, (iii) processing power and (iv) new applications that emerge related to health, environment, education, Cultural Heritage, Banking, etc. The 24th East-European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2020), the 24th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2020) and the 16th Workshop on Business Intelligence and Big Data (EDA 2020), held during August 25–27, 2020, at Lyon, France, and associated satellite events aimed at covering some emerging issues related to database and information system research in these areas. The aim of this paper is to present such events, their motivations, and topics of interest, as well as briefly outline the papers selected for presentations. The selected papers will then be included in the remainder of this volume