Ringing Changes

Published in regular Technicalities column: "View from a Parallel Universe

RDA for Who?

Article concerning the flawed development process for Resource Description and Access (RDA)

Back to the Future

Published in regular Technicalities column: "View from a Parallel Universe

March of the Librarians

Published in regular Technicalities column: "View from a Parallel Universe

Metadata Wants to Be Free (and Muddy)

Column: "View from a Parallel Universe"With the recent merger of OCLC and RLG, the near monopoly of OCLC over library metadata distribution is complete. This is, to some extent, a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that OCLC is as aware as any organization in libraryland (perhaps more aware, given its dependence on libraries for its future) of the need for new models and strong innovation in the very near term. They've taken leadership in surveying the landscape and their membership (which includes all but the smallest libraries) to determine where they should spend their resources to meet library needs

Present at the Creation

Libraries tend to focus on local needs rather than aiming their metadata creation at a larger world. In discussing the conclusions of the RLG Programs Descriptive Metadata Practices Survey, the author elaborates on where changes in outlook should be made

Adding New Skills to our Skillset

To be published in Technicalities, Sept./Oct. 2007Catalogers seeking more understanding of what kinds of new skills they need to develop to shift focus to metadata sometimes find the discussion daunting. This column identifies some issues around the development of technical skills for metadata librarians

Reconsidering Universal Bibliographic Control in Light of the Semantic Web

The goal of universal bibliographic control (UBC) as a world-wide system for the control and exchange of bibliographic information acknowledges the resource discovery metadata requirements of modern, global scale users of information. The first decade of this millennium has seen a significant change in thinking about the functions of UBC and how they can best be realized

Versioning Vocabularies in a Linked Data World

Submitted for and presented to the IFLA 2014 satellite meeting on Linked Open Data in Paris, France, August, 2014.Policies regarding change management in open or public vocabularies used in the context of Linked Open Data have lagged behind those driving other web-based communities of practice. A fresh emphasis on vocabulary management and maintenance has begun to emerge, as the reliance on potentially volatile vocabularies, and the implications of their ongoing growth and change, has begun to permeate the conversation. Particularly in libraries, where management of commonly used vocabularies has long been a community-wide activity, management of vocabularies has been seen as the realm of larger institutions and organizations. This centralized control has been workable (if slow to evolve to incorporate new needs) so long as data distribution has also been centralized, but this pattern of distribution has become more questionable as a transition to the more open world of linked data begins to demonstrate the inflexibility of traditional practices. As more attention shifts to new vocabulary standards and usages outside libraries, researchers and innovative organizations have sought to take advantage of this boom in interest, but unlike librarians, they have little experience in implementation over time. Merging the technology of the Semantic Web with the information management experience of libraries seems a reasonable strategy, but better understanding by all of where practices must change is critical

After the Report: Reactions to "On The Record"

Presentation at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in Portland, OR, July 14, 2008