Cartoon Gets Subject Heading Changed

Today's Shelf Check cartoon managed to get a subject heading changed on a bib record. That was quick.

DBpedia 3.7 Released

Image via WikipediaDBpedia has a new version ready to be downloaded.

we are happy to announce the release of DBpedia 3.7. The new release is based on Wikipedia dumps dating from late July 2011.

The new DBpedia data set describes more than 3.64 million things, of which 1.83 million are classified in a consistent ontology, including 416,000 persons, 526,000 places, 106,000 music albums, 60,000 films, 17,500 video games, 169,000 organizations, 183,000 species and 5,400 diseases.

The DBpedia data set features labels and abstracts for 3.64 million things in up to 97 different languages; 2,724,000 links to images and 6,300,000 links to external web pages; 6,200,000 external links into other RDF datasets, and 740,000 Wikipedia categories. The dataset consists of 1 billion pieces of information (RDF triples) out of which 385 million were extracted from the English edition of Wikipedia and roughly 665 million were extracted from other language editions and links to external datasets.

Library of Congress Preparing for RDA

Image via WikipediaWidely posted.

The Policy and Standards Division, part of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), is launching a new website as the Library prepares for RDA. The site is located at: http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/. There are links to training documents, presentations, exercises, and examples of records as well as to other RDA related sites. Many more links will be added as items are created, edited, and updated as preparations for RDA proceed. The page originally created for LC documentation related to the US RDA Test will no longer be maintained. Links from that site will be migrated to the new site over time as appropriate.

Related articles

• ALA 2011: Some RDA news (catalogingfutures.com)

Permalink Service for Authority Data Available at LC

Image via WikipediaWidely posted and distributed.

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce an expansion of its LCCN Permalink Service for the Library's name and subject authority records. These persistent URLs are based on the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). As with bibliographic records, LCCN Permalinks are displayed on authority record entries in LC Authorities.

Create an LCCN Permalink
Simply begin your URL with the LCCN Permalink domain name -- http://lccn.loc.gov/ -- then add an LCCN.
Examples: http://lccn.loc.gov/n79018774 or http://lccn.loc.gov/sh85026371

LCCNs should be formatted according to the info:lccn URI specification. Instructions are also available in the LCCN Permalink FAQ.

How LCCN Permalink Works
An LCCN Permalink retrieves a MARCXML-formatted record using the Z39.50/SRU protocol. Both valid and cancelled LCCNs (MARC 21 fields 010a and 010z) are searched. Authority record displays for LCCN Permalink follow the labelled display found in LC Authorites. MARCXML and MADS versions of the records are also available. Displays link to entries in LC Authorities and the LC Online Catalog -- and, where appropriate, to entries in the Virtual International Authority File and LC Authorities and Vocabularies.

Related articles

• Permalink service for authority data now available at LC (tslltechscans.blogspot.com)

MARC21 Update

From the Network Development and MARC Standards Office

Update No. 13 (September 2011) is now available on the MARC website (www.loc.gov/marc/). It is integrated into the documentation for each of the Online Full and Concise formats that are maintained on that site -- the Bibliographic format, Authority format, Holdings format, Classification format, and Community Information format. The documentation includes changes made to the MARC 21 formats resulting from proposals which were considered by the ALA ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI), the Canadian Committee on MARC (CCM) and the BIC Bibliographic Standards Group in January and June 2011.

The changes are indicated in red. Each format also has an appendix,"Format Changes for Update No. 13 (September 2011)" that lists the changes that comprise the update. The Web version of the formats is the official version and is considered the start for implementation planning for MARC 21. Users are not expected to begin using the new features in the format until 60 days from the date of this announcement: September 1, 2011. For more information about format documentation

see: http://www.loc.gov/marc/status.html

Related articles

• OCLC Documentation (catalogablog.blogspot.com)

CILIP CIG E-forum on Reclassification

On the 26 and 27 September the Cataloguing & Indexing Group (CIG) of CILIP will host a free e-forum on reclassification. On both days, sessions begin at 10 am and end at 5 pm (BST, i.e. GMT +1 hour).

The arrangement of libraries is rarely static, and even in these times of financial hardship there are many drivers for reclassifying libraries or sections of libraries. As the new edition of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC23) starts to take hold, we ask how libraries tackle reclassification. What methods of reclassification have worked best for your library and/or what methods are you considering in the future? Which groups of institution staff have you consulted for your reclassification work and can you share tips for getting management buy-in for these important projects? Where do you stand on the in-house versus out-sourcing reclassification debate? What is the relationship between reclassification and retrospective cataloguing in your library, and are the two activities automatically and eternally entwined?

This e-forum will enable discussion on reclassification both specifically and generally. We welcome input from any library, whichever sector, and however big or small. We hope that everyone will feel encouraged to share ideas, thoughts and to ask questions -- whether you are a reclassification pro, working on your first reclassification project or generally interested in this important topic. Though the e-forum will debate reclassification generally, on the morning of Tuesday 27th September we will open up the floor to a specific discussion about DDC23 - under the helm of our special guest moderator, Gill Cooper. The e-forum will finish with a debate about the future of classification and reclassification, and will ask whether classification is even relevant in twenty-first century libraries.

It is free but registration is required.

Related articles

• CIG e-forum on reclassification, September 26th and 27th, 2011 (communities.cilip.org.uk)
• Cost-free CPD from CIG (communities.cilip.org.uk)

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)