Category Archives: Conferences

Bibliography Section at WLIC 2021

WLIC 2021, held 17-19 August 2021, was IFLA’s first entirely online conference. The Bibliography Section participated in organizing two sessions and members of the Standing Committee were speakers at two more.

Towards entity management : new roles and new service models for libraries (Cataloguing with Bibliography)

Andrew MacEwan (British Library) and Iris Berbain (Bibliothèque nationale de France) spoke about “Using ISNI to manage entity identification in the publishing supply chain”, detailing current work in matching ISNI with pre-publication data right at source with major publishers, and with integrating ISNI further into their libraries’ workflows. This leveraging of ISNI has potential to bring authority work earlier in the workflow for creating national bibliographic descriptions for new materials.

Karina Esman (National Library of Russia) presented on a project to create rich cataloguing descriptions for culturally significant rare materials – the book monuments – in the collection of the National Library. Fascinating examples and tricky to catalogue!

Subject to Change : how to deal with changes in subject information? (Subject Analysis and Access with Bibliography)

Hollie White (Curtin University, Perth, Australia) set the stage with “Subject to flexibility: Theory and history of knowledge organisation systems” where she situated library knowledge organisation systems in the history of western knowledge organisation. She contrasted the grand unified systems with more flexible pluralistic approaches, and situated sociological and critical theories.

Violet Fox (Accessible Book Consortium, USA) used her perspective in the development of classification systems to advocate for adopting open structures in “Transparency & Change in Knowledge Organization”. Maintaining a history of when classes or terms were valid should be part of every KOS. Violet also points to the importance of understanding where the funding for developing our access systems comes from.

F. Tim Knight (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada) in “Using Linked Data to Mitigate Colonial Subject Bias” showed the potential for a linked data implementation of equivalent terms as “term circles” with no single preferred term. SKOS attributes allow for tagging terms by language, and this could be extended to an attribute for “worldview”.

This topic led to a lively discussion!

SC member Maud Henry (Royal Library of Belgium, KBR) presented “Covid as a catalyst: towards dematerialized cataloguing at KBR” at the session National Libraries: Innovating and Transforming for Today and Tomorrow. Remote work during the pandemic provided the impetus to consider new workflows to maintain cataloguing of print materials received through legal deposit and allow the timely publication of the Bibliography of Belgium. Strategies implemented in the short term, once some onsite work was possible, include scanning initial pages for cataloguers to complete bibliographic descriptions from home, and maximizing the reuse of metadata entered through the legal deposit workflow. Their positive experience is an inducement to invest further in transforming data for reuse throughout the workflow. Maud also wrote about this project in the Metadata Newsletter (v.7, no.1, June 2021, pages 12-14).

During the session The role of IFLA Standards in the context of a changing information society organized by the Committee on Standards, Rebecca Lubas and Mathilde Koskas presented on the Section’s major project: the 2021 edition of the Common Practices for National Bibliographies in a Digital Age, which is already available as a pre-publication draft.

Section business meetings were held remotely before and after the Congress and did not require conference registration for attendance.

WLIC 2022 is planned for Dublin, Ireland. Hoping to see you all in person then.

Bibliography Section on YouTube

This year the Bibliography Section launched a new communication method, our own IFLA Bibliography YouTube channel.

You can find it directly at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUrrt_nxhc4rYlDYfkO93-Q

The impetus was to make the video of our Metadata Webinar New Horizons: emerging metadata standards and practices in the 21st century (27 May 2021) available. Now that the channel is created, the IFLA metadata sections have a venue to publish video from any future online events. Material uploaded directly to our channel is retained as long as the Section requires.

The IFLA Bibliography YouTube channel also allows us to highlight relevant videos available through other organizations’ channels by adding them to our playlists.

2021 has been a strong year for recorded conference presentations and sessions of particular relevance to bibliography in general and our section in particular. Some of these conferences have been recently described on this blog. Now the playlists allow quick access to these specific sessions.

  • On Universal Bibliographic Control (English) 8 February 2021 (3:27): by Mathilde Koskas, opening remarks at the Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem (BC2021) Conference (post: 30 April 2021)
  • On National Bibliographies (Panel: English and Russian) 28 April 2021 (2hrs): during the 3rd International Bibliographic Congress (post: 5 May 2021)
  • On the IFLA Bibliography Section (Russian, with English slides) 28 April 2021 (18:00): by Mathilde Koskas, presented during the 3rd International Bibliographic Congress (post: 3 May 2021)
  • Our most recent playlist: National Bibliographies and National Bibliographic Metadata in the Age of Mass Information (English) 29 June 2021 (18:00) features Mathilde Koskas’ most recent presentation, given in English during the 10th Eurasian Academic Libraries Conference (EALC–2021), June 29-30, 2021. (Note that the video file covers the whole first day of the conference. Mathilde’s presentation starts at minute 2:46:15 and ends at 3:02:00, followed by Q&A until 3:11:46, it is in the middle of the recording of the full day.)

The 10th Eurasian Academic Libraries Conference was organized by Nazarbayev University Library and the Association of University Libraries in the Republic of Kazakhstan with the theme Contemporary Trends in Information Organization in the Academic Library Environment. The EALC conference program can be found at: https://nu.kz.libguides.com/EALC-2021/program. It features several metadata presentations by IFLA colleagues, including Aliya Saidembayeva (Bibliography), Pricilla Pun (Cataloguing), and a keynote by Chris Oliver, Why RDA? Organizing Bibliographic Information in the 21st Century. Worth a look!

Presentation slides are available through the Nazarbayev University’s institutional repository. Mathilde’s 29 June slides are posted (PPTX and PDF): https://nur.nu.edu.kz/handle/123456789/5538?show=full

EALC Proceedings will be published at: https://nu.kz.libguides.com/EALC-2021/publications

Having a YouTube channel has opened some new opportunities. We hope this new tool will prove useful. The Section is happy to gather and highlight relevant videos by creating playlists in this way. Your suggestions will be gratefully accepted.

Session 8 during the 3rd International Bibliographic Congress, April 30, 2021

The last week of April 2021 was marked by a significant event. It was during these days that the III International Bibliographic Congress Bibliographic Information in Digital Culture was held. The organizers were the Russian Library Association, the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian National Library, the Russian State Library, and the Russian State Public Scientific and Technical Library. For the first time, the event was held in an online format.

The topics of the Congress were extremely diverse. The strategy for the development of bibliographic activities at the international level was discussed. The problems of formation, distribution and promotion of bibliographic information were considered. Special attention was paid to the development and implementation of new international and domestic standards of bibliographic description. In addition, the Congress participants discussed the linguistic aspects of the presentation of metadata on the web, and models of functional requirements for bibliographic and authoritative records.

On April 30, 9 reports were presented at the session of Section No. 8 devoted to strategies and methods of bibliographic activity in the digital age. Among the speakers were representatives of libraries and universities in Moscow, Kemerovo, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk and Chelyabinsk. The issues of international bibliographic activity, the formation of consortia, the creation of electronic bibliographic manuals and hybrid resources with elements of bibliography, professional competencies of bibliographers, and others were discussed.

Tatiana Likhovid (Moscow State Institute of Culture) in her report highlighted the diverse activities of IFLA to support research in the field of bibliography. Natalia Gendina (Kemerovo State Institute of Culture), together with her colleagues, presented the report Bibliographic products as part of electronic information resources of libraries: transformation of nature and functions in the era of digitalization. Postgraduate student Pavel Prikhozhev (Scientific Library of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation) spoke about the organizational forms of cooperation in library and bibliographic activities. The participants listened with great interest to the speech of Olga Lavrik (State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) on the creation of a system of information resources aimed at supporting scientific research. Natalia Sitnikova (Chelyabinsk Regional Universal Scientific Library) highlighted the features of information and bibliographic activities of regional libraries in the era of digital technologies.

The participants of the meeting unanimously recognized that digital technologies bring with them fantastic opportunities and promise exciting prospects. At the same time, it is important to remember that the pursuit of innovative technologies should not be thoughtless. When using digital technologies in bibliographic activities, it is necessary to realize the limits beyond which the use of digital systems becomes irrational. Digitalization should be based on a solid foundation of classic bibliography, on accumulated theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Report contributed by:

Marina Neshcheret, moderator of section No. 8

Russian State Library (Moscow)

member of the Standing Committee of the IFLA Bibliography Section

The session recording is available on YouTube (in Russian)

Panel on National Bibliographic Resources during the 3rd International Bibliographic Congress, April 28, 2021

When invited to participate in the panel on National Bibliographic Resources, moderated by Mathilde Koskas, chair of the Bibliography Section, I was concerned about being able to participate due to time zones. Organizers and participants(!) were very flexible in holding the panels involving North American panelists in the evening (in Novosibirsk) so that they could be in the early morning on the east coast of North America.

The other panelists were:

  • Miriam Björkhem, National Library of Sweden
  • Nataliya Konstantinovna Lelikova, Russian National Library
  • Boris Rodionovich Loginov, Central Scientific Medical Library, and the National Information and Library Center (LIBNET)

We responded to these 5 questions:

  1. What is the specificity of National Bibliographic Resources?
  2. Is there still a role for national bibliographic resources when international resources are available?
  3. What is the relevance of national bibliographic resources in the digital era?
  4. How important is it to work collaboratively for creating national or international bibliographic resources?
  5. What should we do to keep national bibliographic resources relevant, used, strong in the future?

Nataliya (a former member of the Bibliography SC) gave a shout out to the Section’s National Bibliographic Register, a good way to get a snapshot of national bibliographies around the world.

We highlighted the special role of national bibliographies even in a digital context with many international bibliographic databases, first in gathering the national output in one place, and fundamentally as a provider of authoritative metadata. Whether digital resources should be included on the same footing as print, and if so, which of them, was seen as linked to legal deposit legislation and practices. Lack of visibility can hinder the support for the maintenance of national bibliographies, leading to the need for continued advocacy.

View the recording on YouTube.

Simultaneous translation was essential for the success of the panels which included Russian and English speakers. The translators allowed panelists to have a real dialogue and meaningfully react to each others’ points.

Bibliographic Information in Digital Culture, 3rd International Bibliographic Congress, April 27-30, 2021

This III International Bibliographic Congress was organized by the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS), Novosibirsk. It follows the first congress held in 2010 at the Russian National Library and the second in 2015 at the Russian State Library.

Originally to be held in-person in Novosibirsk in September 2020, organizers had to rethink the formula and chose a new date. Re-conceiving the congress format to online, sessions were held during a time-slot broadly convenient to European and Central Asian participants. This opened awareness of the Congress to a broader audience and made it accessible beyond Russia. Statistics presented at the closing session showed 1180 registrants from 32 countries on 5 continents, 950 registrants were from all over Russia. Originally planned for 3 days, the Congress was extended to a fourth day as a total of 112 presentations had to be accommodated.

With its focus on bibliography, the Congress has a clear interest to the Bibliography Section. IFLA colleagues participated in organizing panels, moderating a session and presenting at the plenary session and at concurrent sessions.

The Congress started on April 27 with a plenary session, which included a welcome from Christine Mackenzie, IFLA President, and eight presentations, three from IFLA colleagues.

  • Mauro Guerrini: New perspectives of the Universal Bibliographic Control in the digital era
  • Mathilde Koskas: Report from the Chair of IFLA’s Bibliography Section: National Bibliographies and national bibliographic metadata in the age of mass information
  • Caroline Saccucci: Library of Congress CIP Program: Collecting the U.S. National Imprint

There were two panels at the end of the first day:

  • Using DOI in bibliographic reference – present and prospects for the future (recording)
  • МARC: Replace or remain? Moderator: Caroline Saccucci; panelists: Sally McCallum, Regina Reynolds, Nathan Putnam, Boris Rodionovich Loginov, Olga Nikolaevna Zhlobinskaya. (recording)

On April 28, the session “Modern directions for national bibliography – Bibliographic activities in the national libraries around the world” had reports from the national libraries of China, Bulgaria, Belarus, France, United Kingdom, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and several from Russia. The session “Collaborative cataloging as a form of bibliographic interaction between libraries”, moderated by Renate Behrens, chair of the IFLA Committee on Standards, included reports on aspects of union catalogues, authority files and standards from Russia, Iran, Germany, Italy, China, Canada, and Poland. Section members Aliya Saidembayeva (National Library of Kazakhstan) and Marina Neshcheret (Russian State Library) were among those who presented reports.

All recordings from the Congress are available on YouTube, individual sessions are best accessed from the Connect link in the Congress program. Very unfortunately the simultaneous translation is not captured, so that the Russian presentations are not accessible to a non-Russian speaking audience.

Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem, International Conference, February 8-12, 2021

Organized in Firenze, Italy, and promoted by an extensive listing of Italian libraries and organizations concerned with bibliographic control, BC2021 was chaired by Mauro Guerrini (Università degli studi di Firenze), member of the Bibliography Section Standing Committee. The Bibliography Section was honoured to be among the promoters of a conference whose theme is central to our sphere of interest.

The online formula was designed to accommodate European and North (and South) American time zones, by having sessions for 4 hours a day over 5 days, held respectively in the afternoons or the mornings. This certainly favoured participation, as did having the primary language of presentations be English, with some presentations in Italian (which I greatly enjoyed).

All presentations were in plenary, which meant that I could follow everything in real time without having to make any difficult choices. IFLA colleagues were present throughout. After the welcoming statements were the opening remarks by Mauro Guerrini and by Mathilde Koskas, chair of the Bibliography Section. The first presentation was by Renate Behrens, chair of the Committee on Standards, “Standards in a new bibliographic world – community needs versus internationalisation”. The second day started with “Towards an identifier’s policy: the use case of the Bibliothèque nationale de France” by Vincent Boulet, chair of the Cataloguing Section. Agnese Galeffi, member of the Cataloguing Section SC and the BCM RG, closed the fourth day with “DREAM: A project about non-Latin script data”. On the final day, Gordon Dunsire, Cataloguing Section SC, spoke on “Bibliographic control in the fifth information age”, followed by Françoise Leresche on “Rethinking bibliographic control in the light of IFLA LRM entities: the ongoing process at the National Library of France”.

I was honoured to be part of this effort and at the end of the third day, right in the middle of the conference, I spoke on “The multilingual challenge in bibliographic description and access”, situating the need to offer comprehensive bilingual and multilingual access as a natural progression on the road to Universal Bibliographic Control.

The extremely rich program included contributions from all points of view in the publication chain, libraries, publishers, legal deposit, research data, institutional repositories, authority control, identity management, linked data, points of view from several European national libraries on bibliographic control, and closed with a review of “The Italian national bibliography today” by Paolo Wos Bellini. I was particularly intrigued by the cross-domain perspective on authority control provided by Pierluigi Feliciati who discussed authority control and ontologies from the archival point of view in his presentation “Call me by your name: the potential of cross-domain sharing of authority records control”. All presentations were recorded and made available on YouTube, and are linked directly from the conference program: https://www.bc2021.unifi.it/programme

In my view BC2021 succeeded admirably in its aim of exploring the new boundaries of Universal Bibliographic Control.

Bibliography@IFLA WLIC 2016: Opening the National Bibliography: transforming access to data and building connections

Information Coordinator Rebecca Lubas introduces the panel.

Information Coordinator Rebecca Lubas introduces the panel.

Anke Meyer-Hess explains the use of CCo at the DNB

Anke Meyer-Hess explains the use of CCo at the DNB.

Ylva Sommerland talks about the use of Tableau in presenting biographic data

Ylva Sommerland talks about the use of Tableau in presenting biographic data.

Saeedeh Akbari-Daryan shows how Search Engine Optimization is used in Iran

Saeedeh Akbari-Daryan shows how Search Engine Optimization is used in Iran.

The Bibliography Section organized a thought-provoking program in Columbus! We learned about visualizing biographic data in Sweden, using CCo in Germany, and Search Engine Optimization in Iran. Please visit the IFLA Library to read our authors’ papers at http://library.ifla.org/view/conferences/2016/2016-08-18/716.html