Category Archives: National Bibliographic Register

For new and updated profiles in the NBR

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 Nationa 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

National Bibliographic Register

The Section’s ongoing project, the National Bibliographic Register (NBR), has moved to a new address with IFLA’s website renewal. You can find it directly at: https://www.ifla.org/g/bibliography/national-bibliographic-register/

The Register consists of profiles of national bibliographies, submitted by those responsible for them. Each profile includes information on the scope of the bibliography, the organization of the national bibliographic agency, the format the bibliography and its metadata is available in, and the standards used. The NBR began in 2009. Updated and additional profiles are integrated as they are received.

In addition to making the profiles available in their own words, since 2015 the Section has designed a system for comparison of the responses question by question. The analysis of the 48 entries received up to August 2021 is complete. The full comparative data tables and graphics were posted at the end of August. These graphics provide an overview of the options different bibliographies have taken, and permit a quick visualization. The comparative tables indicate which bibliographies appear in which category.

The NBR analysis has been the subject of recent conference presentations.

  • Insights from IFLA’s Register of National Bibliographies – Pat Riva (7:03) at National Libraries Now on 16 September 2021. Paper available.
  • A perspective on national bibliographies from the IFLA Bibliography section – Mathilde Koskas, prepared with Pat Riva (minutes 15:01-25:04) at the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) Bibliographical Data Working Group’s workshop “National Bibliographies and Catalogs: Curation and Research” on 30 September 2021. Slides available.

The recordings of these two presentations (in English) can be viewed through the Bibliography YouTube channel on the playlist: On the National Bibliographic Register.

The whole DARIAH national bibliographies workshop (2 hours) is well worth viewing. The Finnish, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Swedish national libraries presented on their bibliographic data tools and services, with an emphasis on their national bibliographies.

The IFLA Metadata Newsletter is another source of information on the analysis of the NBR. Consult the series of four articles by Pat Riva, for a tour of all the sections.

  • “National Bibliographic Register”, v.3, no.1 (June 2017), p.18-19. (section 1)
  • “National Bibliographic Register”, v.3, no.2 (December 2017), p.26-28. (section 6)
  • “The National Bibliographic Register, putting national bibliographies in context”, v.7, no.1 (June 2021), p.5-12. (sections 3, 4 (part), and 5)
  • “National Bibliographies revealed in the National Bibliographic Register”, v.7, no.2 (December 2021), [forthcoming]. (sections 2, 4 (remainder))

The NBR analysis has been a fascinating project to coordinate during my term on the Bibliography Section Standing Committee. Each profile gives insight into a national bibliography and the agency behind it. The comparative analysis is sometimes surprising, showing which solutions are common and which are unique. It has given me a lot to think about, and I hope it will for you as well.

Now that my term on the Bibliography Section has come to an end, a new team consisting of Maud Henry (Belgium), Rebecca Higgins (Australia), and Marika Holmblad (Sweden), is taking over coordinating the NBR. Many thanks for taking this on! I’m sure you will find it rewarding.

The NBR will continue being relevant as long as it is kept up to date. We all benefit from the increased information sharing. Send new profiles or updates to existing profiles, to the Section’s Information Coordinator, Monika Szunejko.

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.

ISNI in Quebec

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) announced joining the ISNI network as a registration agency (RA) for Quebec on 3 July 2019 (press release-French). At the Congrès des professionnel.le.s de l’information (CPI) held 2-6 November 2020, three members of the project team presented their implementation of ISNI services: “BAnQ, nouvelle agence ISNI :
pour qui et à quoi ça sert?”. The slides are available (in French): https://congrescpi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/BAnQ-nouvelle-agence-ISNI_Poirier-Danielle_CPI-2020.pdf.

This project shows the synergy that exists between the role of a national bibliographic agency and an ISNI-RA. BAnQ is responsible for the Bibliographie du Québec, published online at: https://www.banq.qc.ca/ressources_en_ligne/bib_bibliographie.html and described in the Bibliography Section’s National Bibliographic Register. In their CPI presentation on 5 November 2020, Wassim Cherif, Marie-Chantal L’Écuyer-Coelho, and Danielle Poirier, explain why BAnQ decided to join the ISNI network and their one-year implementation process for ISNI services.

The first stage involved submitting ISNI identifier requests in batch for all personal and corporate body names present in the national library’s name authority file. Of approximately 300,000 authority records sent in November 2019, 210,000 entities, or 70%, received an ISNI through this retrospective process.

The next step was to integrate ISNI assignment with creating or updating name authority records during current cataloguing. The scope is materials of received by legal deposit and catalogued for the national bibliography. A daily process, implemented in August 2020, extracts the appropriate name authorities, submits them for ISNI assignment via API, and then imports the ISNI into field 024 of the authority record. Of 4,350 authority records submitted in the first two months of this service, 3,740 or 86%, received an ISNI.

The daily process captures names that are in scope for the authority file and that come through legal deposit. However, some creators of cultural products are not included in the national library’s collecting scope and fall outside of legal deposit. To provide these creators with ISNI identifiers, BAnQ created a web form for requesting an ISNI: https://isni-formulaires.banq.qc.ca/. This was launched in September 2020.

The project is a fascinating example of how a national bibliographic agency can expand its service offer beyond the traditional, and prepare the national bibliography for linked data applications.

National Bibliographic Register Updates!

One of our Section’s important projects, the National Bibliographic Register, provides information on national catalogs and metadata sharing.  Recently, updated information has been added for New Zealand and Finland.  Please visit the register to see this important resource!

If you have information to update about your national bibliography, or you’d like to add your country’s information for the first time, please contact the Section Information Coordinator!