Jane Greenberg – Associate Professor at UNC SILS; AMeGA project (automatic metadata generation); Director of UNC Metadata Research Center <MRC>
“Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data”
Discussed current research and the current issue of CCQ, which she co-edited, “Knitting the Semantic Web”
Sees Bade and Hillmann not on different planets, but as part of a continuum. [Ah yes, a good word.]
Discussion of the landscape and challenges of Standards and Structures
Provided a conceptual map of bibliographic control:
- Data structures (standards) as labels, containers and semantics providing element ordering functions
- Data communication standards for encoding, markup, exchange (ex MARC ISBD) as grammar
- Data value standards (NAF/ontologies/taxonomies) as syntax
- These are not discontinuous but are often collapsed into each other.
Structures for bibliographic control include:
FRBR/FRAR/RDF/OWL/DCMI Abstract Model/METS/SKOS
We use/encode/package bibliographic data using agreed upon statements which provide control.
Professional consensus consists of agreed upon statements of best practices representing the knowledge and experiences of practitioners, thinkers and leaders.
Likes to think of structures as standards.
Problems with our structures:
- Complex/overwhelming/inflexible/vary in scope
- Discussion of these is infused with politics and emotions
Yet these are helpful in order to give a sense of the scope and continuum of the bibliographic universe which has/is evolved/evolving from the world of recorded knowledge into the world of information output (info, data, knowledge):
- Traditional – recorded knowledge: Bibliographic entities (books, images, sound recordings, archives, music, etc.)
- Evolving – information output: Bibliographic entities AND people, places, activities/events, data, relationships
In response to the Working Group questions she produced a taxonomy of ?s:
- Need
- Use
- Development
- New applications
Need
Dependent on functions, users, information, objects (continuum) –
- Which standards to use in which context? It will take work but we can provide guidance to others
- Do we need an Übermodel [she kept referring to this übermodel but I never got a feel for what she meant]
- Are the standards adequate?
- YES because we have CVs and SKOS, and the Application Profiles (AP)s from DCMI
- NO because CVs are still developing, nothing BETTER exists
Use
How can we make better use of current standards?
- Make them easily accessible and shareable. Look to the W3C thesaurus links as a model.
- Look to the open standards like XML, MARC-XML, SKOS, etc.
- Registries – look to the NSDL registry sandbox and Harper and Tillett’s chapter in the current issue of CCQ
How best to take advantage of legacy data?
- Convert to XML or another interoperable standard
- Do not dumb down; streamline these traditional structures with care to prevent data loss.
Development
What communities need to have input?
- All! In open forum with leadership from the library community, “society’s chief information custodian”
- We need to close the Semantic Web/Library gap (Greenberg 2007 in CCQ)
- See Greenberg (2005) AMeGA Final Report [pdf]/ functionalities (in response to section 4.2 of the BCBC) [See here for commentary on the AMeGA report from Jenn Riley]
What organizations and organizational structures?
- Standards making organizations: NISO, W3C, etc.
- Professional associations/committees
- Organizational structures … doesn’t know … streamline the process … defer to the 3rd meeting?
New Applications for the Future
What is the relationship between traditional bib control, the Semantic Web and tagging?
- View this as a continuum
- We can harness everyone’s bibliographic activity and data
- The intermediary role of librarians and catalogers is evolving to include the promotion of good bibliographic practices and the extension of standards.
What standards requirements are becoming evident due to new emphases (data integration, sharing/reuse)?
- Make trackable preservation metadata, contextual metadata, the ability to track the life cycle of an object
- Make trackable – data integrity, authenticity, use, reuse
Greenberg’s Questions for the Working Group
- What structures for which contexts? Will FRBR work for institutional repositories? Should we push for CVs in social networks? Create an übermodel?
- Which data creation methods should be used? How rich? Which creators? (People, methods, costs)
- How do we improve metadata quality? Metadata evaluation? (See JCDL; Lagoze, 2006; Mitchell, 2006; Paytner, et. al., 2005)
- Interoperability – what are the limits to this goal? Open access is critical.
Conclusions
- The bibliographic universe is changing to one of information output
- Be positive; this is an exciting time
- Take the time to reconceptualize the right research questions. Have we identified the right problem? What research methods and questions will examine these challenges?
- Balance in our approach
Questions
Q1: [Schottlaender] Why do we keep talking about bibliographic control? Will that phrase itself stand in the way of convergence?
[Swan Hill] We are inventing so many new terms. WE may need a new term but not yet.
[Greenberg] Organization of information = bibliographic control, what ever you call is at the introductory level for LIS. UNC is working on the “Knowledge Trust”** to create a new vocabulary for our field in order to recognize and value the characteristics of libraries and librarians.
[Jose-Marie Griffiths] This is all part of a wider discussion of values as the school doubles in size and this process of creating the “Knowledge Trust” will become part of how the school defines itself/is defined. (SILS). “Knowledge” here is an umbrella concept
[Bade] Bibliographic control is a simple notion – I just want it – help me find it.
**[For those of you waiting for my snide comments, it was at this point that I leaned over to Kathryn and said, "We need to be careful here. UNC has a "Knowledge Trust" and a Metadata Research Center, while we only have a Metadata Round Table. If we don't watch it we won't be No. 1 for much longer!" To which she "reminded" me that we are tied for No. 1. That, of course, just makes my point even quicker. 
]
Thanks goes to Kathryn whose notes provided much of this. I had a lot of it down—and changed/added/subtracted some pieces here and there—but being able to cut and paste from her file was much simpler than typing it all in by hand.
Next up: Jennifer Bowen on RDA
