Omeka OAI-PMH Harvester Plug-in

Image via WikipediaOmeka now has a OAI-PMH harvester plug-in for Omeka.net sites.

Since 2009, any Omeka website may make their data available by activating the OAI-PMH Repository plugin and may harvest OAI-PMH data sets with the OAI-PMH Harvester. Now, the OAI-PMH Harvester plugin is available with every Omeka.net site. Are you sharing and harvesting?

They have started a wiki page listing sets that can be harvested. If your Omeka collection supports OAI-PMH harvesting and you would like the community to be aware of that, let them know. It does look like the page is only for Omeka sites, not any exposed site.

Poster Session Call for Proposals

Image via WikipediaTLA's District 8 Fall Conference has issued a call for proposals for the poster session. The deadline is October 1, 2011. The meeting will be Saturday, October 22, 2011 - University of Houston M.D. Anderson Library.

There is still time to get in your session proposals. That deadline is September 1, 2011. Speakers will be notified of acceptance by September 16, 2011.

LCSH Mass Update

It seems all the subject headings in LSCH have been updated. In the 005 field I keep seeing the latest change as 2011. Records that haven't been touched since 1984 have suddenly been updated. Anyone have any info on the change? Was it just moving the records to another system or has something more been checked or changed?

Broadcasting Metadata

Image via WikipediaMetadata, especially MPEG-7, seems an important trend at the latest International Broadcasting Conference.

Metadata has never really got the juices going at IBC or anywhere else, but now at least it is being much more talked about and taken seriously by all participants in the content value chain. This will be reflected at IBC2011, where the fast expanding role of metadata in search and recommendation will be witnessed both in the conference and on the show floor. Even now metadata will not immediately leap out at delegates, since many of the relevant products and discussion topics will be under the heading of media asset management (MAM).

Thanks to Gary Price for bringing this to my attention.

Cost and Value of Bibliographic Control

Assessing the Cost and Value of Bibliographic Control by Erin Stalberg and Christopher Cronin appears in LRTS v. 55, no. 3.

In June 2009, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Heads of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries Interest Group established the Task Force on Cost/Value Assessment of Bibliographic Control to address recommendation 5.1.1.1 of On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, which focused on developing measures for costs, benefits, and value of bibliographic control. This paper outlines results of that task force’s efforts to develop and articulate metrics for evaluating the cost and value of cataloging activities specifically, and offers some next steps that the community could take to further the profession’s collective understanding of the costs and values associated with bibliographic control.

Additions to the MARC Country and Geographic Area Code Lists

Image via WikipediaAs the result of the split of Republic of the Sudan (or conventional short form: Sudan) into Sudan and South Sudan in July 2011, new country and geographic area codes are being defined for use in MARC records.

The coding for Republic of the Sudan will remain the current coding for Sudan: country code sj and GAC f-sj.

1. MARC country code changes
   
   The new country code is:
   • sd - South Sudan
   South Sudan was previously coded sj for Sudan before August 2011.
2. MARC geographic area code changes
   
   The new geographic area codes is:
   • f-sd - South Sudan
   South Sudan was previously coded f-sj for Sudan before August 2011.

Related articles

• South Sudan Country Codes (geonames.wordpress.com)

New Vocabulary Data Added to LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service

Image via WikipediaLC has announced that new vocabulary data has been added to the LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service.

The Library of Congress is pleased to make available additional vocabularies from its Authorities and Vocabularies web service (ID.LOC.GOV), which provides access to Library of Congress standards and vocabularies as Linked Data. The new dataset is:

• Library of Congress Name Authority File (LC/NAF)

In addition, the service has been enhanced to provide separate access to the following datasets which have been a part of the LCSH dataset access:

• Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
• Library of Congress Children's Headings

The LC/NAF data are published in RDF using the MADS/RDF and SKOS/RDF vocabularies, as are the other datasets. Individual concepts are accessible at the ID.LOC.GOV web service via a web browser interface or programmatically via content-negotiation. The vocabulary data are available for bulk download in MADS and SKOS RDF (the Name file and main LCSH file will be available by Friday, August 12).

Please explore it for yourself at http://id.loc.gov.

The new datasets join the term and code lists already available through the service:

• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
  
• Thesaurus of Graphic Materials
  
• MARC Code List for Relators
  
• MARC Code List for Countries (which reference their equivalent ISO 3166 codes)
  
• MARC Code List for Geographic Areas
  
• MARC Code List for Languages (which have been cross referenced with ISO 639-1, 639-2, and 639-5, where appropriate)
  
• PREMIS vocabularies for Cryptographic Hash Functions, Preservation Events, and Preservation Level Roles

Related articles

• Linking to LCSH and LCC (catalogablog.blogspot.com)
• AALL 2011 - Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web (conniecrosby.blogspot.com)

Unshelved

Today's Unshelved has cataloging references.

In other comic news, Rachael Rising by Terry Moore is off to a great start. Very creepy.

Linking to LCSH and LCC

Linking to LCSH and LCC: Controlled Subject Headings and Classification Systems through the Web Barbara Tillett, Libby Dechman, and Loche McLean will be presented on August 16, 2011, at the World Library and Information Congress : 77th IFLA General Conference and Assembly in San Juan.

The Library of Congress is making its controlled vocabularies and classification system freely accessible on the Web. This presentation describes our services related to two of those controlled vocabularies and classification schemes: the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification. It also describes the work to link various language versions of LCSH together.

The initial structure for this service uses SKOS, Simple Knowledge Organization System, which “Provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary.

Additionally we are exploring RDF XML as another structure to use for presenting this data. The service can be found at http://id.loc.gov and the LCSH/SKOS is at http://id.loc.gov/authorities.

Thanks to Gary Price for bringing this to my attention.

Related articles

• AALL 2011 - Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web (conniecrosby.blogspot.com)

OCLC Documentation

Image via WikipediaOCLC's Technical Bulletin 260, “OCLC-MARC Format Update 2011,” is now available.

This Technical Bulletin covers all of the Library of Congress’s MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings Formats Update No. 12, dated October 2010, elements from other recent MARC 21 Updates whose implementations had been postponed, code list additions and changes published chiefly since May 2010, and other suggestions from WorldCat users and OCLC staff. Many of these elements, including those from MARC 21 Update No. 12, are related to Resource Description and Access (RDA).

New IFLA Publications

Image via WikipediaVarious reports have been posted on the IFLA web site.

ISBD Review Group activities report and meeting reports

ISBD/XML Study Group activities report

A new version of Full ISBD Examples

FRBR Review Group activities report

Updated Cover Sheets for MARC Proposals and Discussion Papers

From LC's Network Development and MARC Standards Office.

The cover sheets for the proposals and discussion paper presented at the 2011 Annual meetings of the MARC Advisory Committee have been updated with the results of the discussions. They are available at:

Proposal 2011-02: RDA Production, Publication, Distribution and Manufacture Statements in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-02.html)

Proposal 2011-03: Encoding Date of Copyright Notice in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-03.html)

Proposal 2011-04: Adapting Field 377 (Associated Language) for Language of Expression in the Authority and Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-04.html)

Proposal 2011-05: Broadening field 373 (Affiliation) for Associated institutions in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-05.html)

Proposal 2011-06: RDA Fuller Form of Personal Name Attribute in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-06.html)

Proposal 2011-07: Additional Corporate Body Attributes for RDA in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-07.html)

Proposal 2011-08: Treatment of Controlled Lists of Terms for Carrier Characteristics in RDA in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-08.html)

Proposal 2011-09: Identifying the Source of Thematic Index Numbers in Field 383 in the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-09.html)

Proposal 2011-10: Geographic Codes in Classification Records
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-10.html)

Proposal 2011-11: Addition of 1st Indicator Value 7 (Other edition specified in $2) in DDC Number Fields in the MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority and Community Information Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-11.html)

Discussion Paper 2011-DP05: Additional Means of Identifying Medium of Performance in the MARC21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-dp05.html)

HotForWords

The latest video podcast by HotForWords is What is going to happen to the libraries? by Marina Orlova. She sees the demise of libraries looming. It is a combination of hearsay and personal experience that needs some correcting. Consider leaving a comment, she has a large following.

First RDA Vocabularies Published

Seen everywhere.

The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC), the DCMI/RDA Task Group (http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/), and ALA Publishing (on behalf of the co-publishers of RDA) are pleased to announce that the first group of RDA controlled vocabularies have been reviewed, approved, and their status in the Open Metadata Registry (OMR) changed to ‘published.’

This status change, from ‘new-proposed’ to ‘published’ signals that the final steps have begun in reviewing the work of the DCMI/RDA Task Group and ensuring that the RDA vocabularies (both elements and controlled vocabularies/concepts) are available in a stable form for the builders of applications. Additional reviews of the controlled vocabularies are in progress, with the parties involved expecting to finalize that group before starting on the element vocabularies. Both groups of vocabularies should be complete by the end of 2011, but developers and others should expect to see rolling announcements as reviews are completed.

Alan Danskin, Chair of the Joint Steering Committee, noted, “The RDA vocabularies are a fundamental component of RDA, promoting consistent description and discovery of bibliographic resources. The Committee is committed to publishing and maintaining the content of the RDA vocabularies, synchronized with the text of RDA, in order to support their use by the resource description community and by developers of Semantic Web applications.” JSC is grateful to the Task Group members and to the Open Metadata Registry for making possible the publication of RDA vocabularies as linked open data.

Gordon Dunsire, co-Chair of the DCMI/RDA Task Group, said: “This achievement is a significant waypoint on the collaborative journey initiated by the London meeting in 2007 between representatives of RDA and Semantic Web communities developing and maintaining metadata models covering bibliographic resources. We have learned much about each other along the way, and look forward to continuing to provide a bridge which supports our mutual interests to the benefit of all users of information. The RDA vocabularies represent many decades of library experience and practice which is now shared with the rest of the world.”

Troy Linker, Publisher, ALA Digital Reference, said: "The publishing of the RDA vocabularies in an open registry is an important step forward in making RDA accessible to the international library community and system vendors, and, significantly, beyond the library community to the rest of the Semantic Web. Working with the JSC, the Co-Publishers for RDA are committed to ensuring synchronicity between RDA Toolkit and the registry".

The finished vocabularies can be viewed using the links below. (The links lead to the description of the vocabulary itself, the specific terms can be viewed under the tab for ‘concepts’).

• RDA Aspect Ratio (http://RDVocab.info/termLIst/AspectRatio)
  
• RDA Form of Musical Notation (http://RDVocab.info/termList/MusNotation)
  
• RDA Form of Notated Music (http://RDVocab.info/termList/FormatNoteMus)
  
• RDA Layout of Cartographic Images (http://RDVocab.info/termList/layoutCartoImage)
  
• RDA Mode of Issuance (http://RDVocab.info/termLIst/ModeIssue)
  
• RDA Other Distinguishing Characteristic of the Expression of a Legal Work
  (http://RDVocab.info/termList/OtherCharExpLegal)
  
• RDA Production Method for Tactile Resource (http://RDVocab.info/termList/prodTactile)
  
• RDA Reduction Ratio (http://RDVocab.info/termLIst/RDAReductionRatio)
  
• RDA Scale (http://RDVocab.info/termList/scale)
  
• RDA Sound Content (http://RDVocab.info/termList/soundCont)
  
• RDA Status of Identification (http://RDVocab.info/termList/statIdentification)

All the RDA vocabularies can be viewed in the OMR by using this page: http://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm. Those interested in following the work of review and publication of the vocabularies can subscribe to the Registry RSS feeds linked from that page. Questions on the OMR can be conveyed using the ‘Feedback’ link on each Registry page.

Related articles

• RDA in XML - why not give it a shot? (kcoyle.blogspot.com)
• AALL 2011 - Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web (conniecrosby.blogspot.com)

No More Star Wars Films?

Image via WikipediaThe heading Star War films, and all other headings dealing with a series or character might be removed from the lcgft.

The recent separation of the genre/form thesaurus from LCSH provides an opportunity to reexamine the genre/form terms approved during the moving image experiment in order to determine whether they fit into the overall thesaurus, given the trajectory of development.

One ongoing issue has been what may be loosely referred to as “character- and franchise-based terms.” These are authorized terms that include either a character name or the title of a film or television program (e.g., Die Hard films; Dracula television programs; Scooby-Doo television programs; Star Wars films). PSD proposes cancelling all of these terms from the genre/form thesaurus, and has posted a discussion paper explaining the rationale on the Library of Congress’ genre/form web page, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html. The direct URL for the paper is http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/character_franchise_disposition.pdf. PSD requests input from interested parties before making a final decision.

Related articles

• Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (catalogablog.blogspot.com)

Go To Hellman

Eric Hellman has been writing some posts I find very interesting over on Go To Hellman.

I think it's important to convert this level of interest into action. The question is, what can be done now to get closer to the vision of ubiquitous interoperable data? My last three posts have explored what libraries might do to better position their presence in search engines and in social networks using schema.org vocabulary and Open Graph Protocol. In these applications, library data enables users to do very specific things on the web- find a library page in a search engine or "Like" a library page in a Facebook. But there's so much more that could be done with the data.

Related articles

• Review of Eric Hellman's Talk at ALA Annual 2011 (metadata.posterous.com)
• Library data: why bother? by Eric Hellman (catalogingmatters.blogspot.com)

Tematres 1.4

We have the glad to invite to test the beta version of Tematres 1.4

TemaTres is a web tool to manage, publish and exploit controlled vocabularies and other formals representation of knowledge (thesauri, taxonomies, glossaries, etc).

This release includes the following fixes and improvements:

• Quality indicators about controlled vocabularies The Quality assurance was improved with reports about the following quality indicators:
  
• Free Terms
  
• Terms without hierarchical relationships
  
• Average number of words per term
  
• Terms per N Broader terms
  
• Terms per N narrower terms and depth
  
• Terms words with not supported prefixes or suffixes

For more details: MARTÍNEZ, A.M.a et al. Concepto, forma y longitud de los términos preferentes del tesauro: una propuesta de indicadores de calidad. Anales de Documentación, 2010, vol. 13, p. 185-195. http://revistas.um.es/analesdoc/article/view/107151

MARTÍNEZ, A.M.a et al. Indicadores para evaluar el vocabulario y la estructura sistemática de un tesauro. I Jornada de Intercambio y Reflexión acerca de la Investigación en Bibliotecología, La Plata, 6-7 de diciembre de 2010. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. http://www.jornadabibliotecologia.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/jornada-2010/martine

• User-defined notes
  Has been added management capabilities to manage and create user-defined notes. (Thanks to Observatorio Estatal de la Discapacidad Spain: http://www.observatoriodeladiscapacidad.es/)
  
• Advanced configuration options
  Has been added detailed configuration options available to the administrator of the controlled vocabulary.
  
• Import controlled vocabularies
  Now TemaTres can import controlled vocabulary from plain tagged text.

For example:

• IMS VDEX Scheme (Vocabulary Definition and Exchange) Now with TemaTres you can Display, export and publish terms and controlled vocabularies through VDEX IMS XML schema (Vocabulary Definition and Exchange). http://www.imsglobal.org/vdex/
  
• Controlled vocabularies RESTful Services TemaTres have support for web services accessible through a clear and simple syntax. The service support a wide variety of queries and data can be viewed in XML, JSON or SKOS-Core.

Examples
Status:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/

Terms beginning with the letter B:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b/skos
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b/json

Search Terms:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/json
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/skos

Vocabulary Data
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/pt/api/fetchVocabularyData

Top of vocabulary terms
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/pt/api/fetchTopTerm

• Minor bugs was solved and was added some minor features

Seen on the Code4Lib email.

Corporate Names

A new paper from HP discusses the problems and an automated solution to distinguishing corporate names. Company Names Matching in the Large Patents Dataset by Timofey Medvedev and Alexander Ulanov, HP Laboratories, HPL-2011-90R1.

This paper addresses the name matching (duplicate detection) problem in the US patent dataset. It contains more then 400K unique company names spellings. In order to solve the matching problem we choose appropriate string similarity measure and clustering approach and estimate their parameters. Finally we apply them to the whole dataset and estimate the positives and negatives rates.

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

Codes for the following sources were announced June 14, 2011. The codes for these sources have been changed.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Classification Scheme Source Codes

The following source codes have been added to the Classification Scheme Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

ubtkl/2 (formerly klasskj)

Klassifikasjonsskjema (Trondheim: Fellesbiblioteket, Kongelige Norske videnskabers selskab, Museet, Norges laererhogskole)

Subject Heading and Term Source Codes

The following sources code have been added to the Subject Heading and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

noubomn (formerly nobomn)

University of Oslo Library Thesaurus of Science (Realfagstermer) (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)

noubojur (formerly noubojor)

Thesaurus of Law (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)

Genre/Form Headings Webinar

OCLC has made available the recording of the webinar held on May 12, 2011 entitled: Genre/Form Headings. This one hour webinar covers the definition of genre/form headings, different sources of genre/form terms, searching in Connexion (authority and bibliographic), and tagging/coding.