Author Archives: John DeSantis

European Retrospective Bibliographies at CERL

European Retrospective Bibliographies at CERL

Early in 2022, the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL – www.cerl.org) established a Working Group on Retrospective Bibliographies. The Working Group’s main focus was to identify electronic resources with bibliographical descriptions for national, regional, format-specific (i.e. incunabula, newspapers) or language-specific print cultures (up to 1830). Over the years, CERL has included several of these resources in the Heritage of the Printed Book (HPB) database, has closely aligned itself with the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), and more recently started to act as the host for bibliographies such as the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) and Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN).

The members of the Working Group (see also https://www.cerl.org/collaboration/work/retrospectivenationalbibliographies) dream of a day when these electronic bibliographies together offer a comprehensive overview of European prints before 1830. The Working Group wishes to encourage the inclusion of permanent identifiers from retrospective bibliographies in catalogue records and research projects as a basis for connecting these bibliographies to form a strong and rich data network.

From the start, the Working Group was very much aware of the IFLA Register of national bibliographies, and felt that CERL would be in a position to create a supplement to this valuable list with information about bibliographies that focus on or have a strong component of books printed up to 1830.  A first overview  created by Olga Tkachuk, Ossoliński National Institute, in 2022, primarily gathered information about bibliographies (national, regional, language-specific) in nations in the east of Europe (currently listed are Albania / Belarus / Bosnia and Herzegovina / Bulgaria / Croatia / Cyprus / Czech Republic / Estonia / Greece / Hungary / Latvia / Lithuania / Moldavia / Montenegro / North Macedonia / Poland / Romania / Serbia / Slovakia / Slovenia / Ukraine). The list will gradually be expanded with information from European countries not yet listed.

As a result of the work on this overview, CERL decided to organise a conference on the topic. The title of the conference is Retrospective Bibliographies and European Print Cultures to 1830 – Challenges and perspectives in the digital age, and it will take place on 29 and 30 June 2023 at the Ossolineum Library, in Wrocław, Poland. For the programme and registration details see  https://www.cerl.org/services/seminars/rnb2023.

The key-note address by Marieke van Delft (now retired, but formerly of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands) will reflect on the word ‘national’ for these bibliographies, a term  used in established librarianship tradition in accordance with IFLA and bibliographic control standards, but in today’s world and in the historical context of early printing a term that throws up questions regarding content and scope of retrospective (national) bibliographies.

Looking at our European retrospective bibliographies, which today are no longer printed books, but databases, files with records and identifiers, we see that their scope is usually a mix of geographic/territorial and language aspects, according to the cultural impact and context of a given era.  Today, creating such a bibliography, maintaining and developing it, remains a cooperative challenge – as CERL’s and IFLA’s interest in this topic underlines – and a long-term financial commitment of national impact. Creating and maintaining the kind of retrospective bibliographies that are the focus of the CERL WG is often conceived of as a national duty and a commitment to cultural heritage – a national commitment to a national research infrastructure of transnational importance and impact. CERL as a consortium of European research libraries has a unifying role in this huge cooperative undertaking.

During the conference, we will take a closer look at inclusion and exclusion criteria for the bibliographies, as well as issues related to making data accessible and re-usable, the economics of funding the work and how we organise workflows and collaboration. And we would also like to talk about these bibliographies in the CERL context. Certain retrospective bibliographies, such as the Short Title Catalogue Netherlands and the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue are hosted by CERL, while some, such as the German Verzeichnisse der deutschen Drucke and the Short Title Catalogue Flanders, are included in the Heritage of the Printed Book (HPB) database (and some are both in the HPB and hosted by CERL as stand-alone databases). Should CERL differentiate between records from retrospective bibliographies and records from library catalogues in how this data is made available to the user community? And how can we help to make the data more visible and more accessible?

We hope that our conference will put us on the path of defining what makes retrospective (national) bibliographies valuable today, how we can present them in a way that offers the greatest benefit to end users, and what their long-term perspectives and development could be. For this we would be very happy to collaborate with IFLA’s Bibliography Section to encompass the print output from the earliest printed book to today.

Marian Lefferts, Consortium of European Research Libraries

Claudia Fabian, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München

 

June 2023

 

Italian translation of Common Practices published

The Italian translation of the Common Practices for National Bibliographies in the Digital Age was recently completed and has now been published in the IFLA Repository:
Pratiche condivise per le bibliografie nazionali nell’era digitale

From Cataloguing to Metadata Creation: A Cultural and Methodological Introduction

Mauro Guerrini, a member of the Bibliography Standing Committee, recently published the book From Cataloguing to Metadata Creation: A Cultural and Methodological Introduction. More information about the book, along with information on purchasing the book, can be found at:
https://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/page/detail/?K=9781783306282

New file in Names of Persons project

The Cataloguing Section’s Names of Persons project webpage (https://www.ifla.org/g/cataloguing/names-of-persons/) has a new file from Poland for Polish language authors. The file follows the usual structure of NoP files: Elements forming part of a name, Additional elements to names and Order of elements in catalogue headings.

The document has been prepared by the National Library of Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa). I want to thank Mr. Paweł Leleń, from the National Library, and Priscilla Pun for her intermediation.

You can access the file here: https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/2499. I hope this new document is useful for all the cataloguing community. Please, write to me if you have comments.

All the best,

Ricardo Santos Muñoz

IFLA’s Cataloguing Section

Standing Committee Member

Information Coordinator

National Library of Spain /Biblioteca Nacional de España

Email: Ricardo.santos@bne.es

Bibliography Section member completes doctoral thesis

Sandra Gisela Martin recently completed her doctoral thesis “Conceptual model for universal bibliographic control”.

 

ABSTRACT

The present research sought to establish a conceptual model for universal bibliographic control (UBC) based on the study of three epistemic axes: the legal deposit, national bibliographies, and bibliographic and authorship identifiers. The methodological approach responded to the analytical method based on a bibliographic design of documentary research with a qualitative strategy.  The study population consisted of the 20 Latin American countries that are members of the Association of Ibero-American States for the Development of National Libraries of Ibero-America (ABINIA), excluding Spain and Portugal. A comparative content analysis and a hermeneutic reading of the legal deposit legislation were carried out, the coverage, format and degree of visibility of Latin American national bibliographies in progress on the Web were investigated, and the degree of insertion of bibliographic and author identifiers in the bibliographic control process in Latin American national libraries and/or national bibliographic agencies was investigated. Some categories of analysis proposed in the texts were selected and others that emerged from the reading of the documents were proposed, from which comparative tables with descriptive characteristics were elaborated.

Then, a proposal for a conceptual model of universal bibliographic control was presented, based on general systems theory (GST) and considered as a global system with a model structure of decentralized, distributed, collaborative, interconnected and linked.   The CBU was reflected upon based on the four principles of relevant knowledge proposed by Morin (1999): context, global, multidimensional and complex; and nine dimensions of analysis were proposed: theoretical/conceptual framework, political, legislative, librarian, collaborative, normative, technological, relational, services.

The results and conclusions show the need, on the one hand, to rethink the conceptualization and scope of documentary heritage from a theoretical dimension and, on the other, to question the visions and missions of national libraries.  It is also pointed out that the legal deposit does not represent the totality of a country’s documentary heritage, but only a part of it, which is subject to the legislation in force and the possibilities of complying with it. In relation to the CBU, it can be concluded by highlighting the need to move from a pragmatic vision oriented to data and the strict application of bibliographic description regulations, to a theoretical and systemic vision that contemplates the complexity of the bibliographic multiverse.

Experience as a member of the IFLA Bibliography Section

Sandra Gisela Martín will present IFLA’s mission, vision, values and governance structure. She will mention the mechanisms to collaborate and join IFLA and will explain some documents referring to the organization’s actions: the Trend Reports 2013-2019, the Global Vision 2018, the Idea Store 2019 and the Strategy 2019-2024.

On the other hand, she will comment on IFLA’s activities and services in general and her experience as a member of the Bibliography Section in particular.  She will detail its functions and the resources developed by the Section: common practices for national bibliographies and the national bibliographic register.

SANDRA GISELA MARTÍN holds a PhD in Library Science and Documentation (UBA), a Master’s degree in Digital Documentation (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain), a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (UES21) and a Bachelor’s degree in Library Science and Documentation (UNC). She has been Director of the Library System of the Catholic University of Córdoba since 2003. She is a professor of the subjects: Information Sources and Services II and Information Systems of the Bachelor’s Degree in Librarianship at the UNC.  She teaches at the postgraduate level in several doctoral, master’s and specialization programs in the country. She is also an external consultant for the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU) in the area of Libraries.

The Deutsche Nationalbibliografie and its formats : 1931 to 2030

 

The history of the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie (German National Bibliography) is bound up not only with librarianship but also with technology. Kurt Schneider’s publication (24 pages, 17 illustrations) explores the links between them. It takes the reader on an exciting journey through time from the historic print editions of the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie to the digital editions stored on data carriers, the online formats currently used and the formats that will be used in the future.

This publication is available online, see https://d-nb.info/1261192672/34.