By Isabel Ayres
The VI Colloquium on RDA in Latin America and the Caribbean and the III Meeting on RDA in Brazil was organized by the Brazilian Federation of Associations of Librarians, Information Scientists and Institutions (FEBAB) and the National Library of Mexico and took place on October 18- 20, 2023.
Click here to get the full article – IFLA Metadata Newsletter – Dec. 2023
By Maud Henry, Mathilde Koskas, and Pat Riva
Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC) is a fundamental principle for national libraries, formulated over 50 years ago by IFLA and UNESCO. IFLA’s last official document on the subject, the IFLA Professional Statement on Universal Bibliographic Control, dates back to 2012, and the federation had not devoted a general meeting to the subject since the Lyon Congress in 2014. In the meantime, the international normative landscape for the production, sharing and dissemination of metadata has continued to evolve rapidly. The question arose: is the principle of Universal Bibliographic Control still valid?
Click here to get the full article – IFLA Metadata Newsletter – Dec. 2023
The IFLA Satellite Meeting on Universal Bibliographic Control at the crossroads: the challenges of unifying IFLA bibliographic standards took place in Brussels (KBR) on August 18 and 19, 2023.
Universal Bibliographic Control is a fundamental principle for national libraries, formulated over 50 years ago by IFLA and UNESCO. IFLA’s last official document on the subject, the IFLA Professional Statement on Universal Bibliographic Control, dates back to 2012, and the federation had not devoted a general meeting to the subject since the Lyon Congress in 2014. In the meantime, the international normative landscape for the production, sharing and dissemination of metadata has continued to evolve rapidly. The question arose: is the principle of Universal Bibliographic Control still valid? The satellite meeting organized by the Bibliography section with the Cataloguing and Subject Access and Analysis sections at KBR on August 18 and 19 brought together some fifty participants to examine this question. The program, alternating presentations (available here) and workshops, enabled these practitioners and experts from different countries to examine the foundations of UBC, its relationship with IFLA metadata standards (International Cataloguing Principles, IFLA LRM, ISBD, UNIMARC, MulDiCat), and its place in the contemporary context. Artificial intelligence, which was the subject of so many discussions during the congress, also featured prominently.
The conclusion of this day and a half of work is unanimous: yes, the concept of Universal Bibliographic Control is still valid, but the declaration needs to be revised so that it continues to be expressed in a way appropriate to the current context, paying particular attention to its status for IFLA and its place in the universe of IFLA metadata standards. The organizing sections will therefore be working on a framework for the revision in the coming months.
We’d like to thank all the participants, the speakers, KBR, the organizing committee and OCLC for sponsoring this event!
Text written by Mathilde Koskas and edited by Maud Henry
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
The volume The bibliographic control in the digital ecosystem publishes the proceedings of the International Conference which was held remotely from 8 to 12 February 2021, promoted by the University of Florence, Italy, by the IFLA Bibliography Section, the National Central Library of Florence, Casalini Libri, and by other institutions. The book aims to explore the new boundaries of universal bibliographic control with the contributions of more then 30 international experts of many parts of the World. Bibliographic control is radically changing because the bibliographic universe is radically changing: resources, agents, technologies, standards and practices. Among the main topics addressed: library cooperation networks; legal deposit; national bibliographies; new tools and standards (IFLA LRM, RDA, BIBFRAME); authority control and new alliances (Wikidata, Wikibase, Identifiers); new ways of indexing resources (artificial intelligence); institutional repositories; new book supply chain; “discoverability” in the IIIF digital ecosystem; role of thesauri and ontologies in the digital ecosystem; bibliographic control and search engines.
The bibliographic control in the digital ecosystem / edited by Giovanni Bergamin and Mauro Guerrini ; with the assistance of Carlotta Alpigiano. — Roma : Associazione italiana biblioteche ; Macerata : Edizioni Università di Macerata ; Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2022 — XXXV, 393 p. — (Biblioteche & bibliotecari ; 7, ISSN 2612-7709 (print), ISSN 2704-5889 (online)). — Published also: JLIS.it, vol. 13, no. 1 (2022), <https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/issue/view/34/2>. — ISBN 978-88-5518-542-4 (Print). — ISBN 978-88-5518-544-8 (PDF). — ISBN 978-88-5518-545-5 (XML). — DOI: 10.36253/978-88-5518-544-8. — PDF open access: https://media.fupress.com/files/pdf/24/10612/30806.
See: https://books.fupress.com/catalogue/bibliographic-control-in-the-digital-ecosystem/10612
2021 edition of the International Seminar The Art of Bibliography was held online in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Seminar was promoted by the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar / Brazil), with the participation of Dr. Luciana de Souza Gracioso and Dr. Zaira Regina Zafalon, in partnership with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ / Brazil), with Dr. André Vieira de Freitas Araújo, the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio / Brazil) and the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT / Brazil), with Dr. Gustavo Saldanha, and Università di Bologna (Unibo / Italy), in the person of Dr. Giulia Crippa. The previous editions took place in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Vitória, Recife, and Florianópolis, in person, in Brazilian universities, and the last one, remotely, was based in Ravenna (Italy).
The live stream sessions are available on YouTube so the event can be followed by a wider audience. With more than 250 participants, mainly from Brazil, it had participants from Argentina, the United States, Peru, Portugal, and Uruguay.
Keeping in mind historical and contemporary issues of Bibliography approached as art, science, technique, technology, and method. The problematizations proposed a conceptual and technical rethinking of Bibliography as a discipline that supports the process of knowledge construction, mainly in the academic and scientific, focusing on social justice issues, both in terms of bibliographic praxis and its exercise of social transformation.
The Seminar began on December 9th with the Opening Conference entitled “The education of ethnic-racial relations in Science teaching: construction of a field?”, given by Dr. Douglas Verrangia (UFSCar), which was followed by the Thematic Session Transgressions and Insurgencies in the Bibliography, with the participation of Dr. Antón Castro Míguez (UFSCar), who presented “A transgressive look at (making p)art of the bibliography: initial provocations)” and Dr. Fabrício José Nascimento da Silveira (UFMG), with “Representational insurgencies: when subordinate individuals and groups claim the word”. In the afternoon of this day, there were simultaneous sessions for the presentation of papers and discussion of proposals and the Thematic Session The Discourse and Bibliographic Practice and its Relationship with Social Justice, with the presentations: “Bibliography and documentary democracy: horizons of metalinguistic social justice” by Dr. Gustavo Silva Saldanha (IBICT/UNIRIO), “Discourse and bibliographic work in the Annals of the National Library: between documents and institutional commitment” by Dr. Carlos Henrique Juvêncio da Silva (UFF) and “Critical cataloging: a reflection on the potential of cataloging for social justice” by Dr. Lucia Sardo (UNIBO, Italy).
On December 10th, Dr. Giulia Crippa (UNIBO, Italy) delivered the Conference “Telling history and cultural memory: Public History and Bibliography” followed by the Thematic Session Human Migrations and Epistemicides, in which Dr. Bruno Nathansohn (UFRJ) presented “Between the fluidity of human migrations and documental fixity: refugee narratives as bio-bibliographic sources” Johnny Passos (UFSCar), from the Xakriabá ethnic group, commented on the research “Mapping the Brazilian scientific production of theses and dissertations on indigenous issues” and Mrs. Franciéle Carneiro Garcês da Silva, Master on Information Science (UFMG) discussed “(Re)knowing Black Bibliography: from epistemicide to informational justice” . During the afternoon, 8 papers were presented in simultaneous sessions and the Closing Conference Patrimonial and contextual texture of the document, in which Dr. José Augusto Chaves Guimarães (UNESP) presented “The document as context: rethinking the materiality of a content” and Dr. André de Freitas Araujo (UFRJ), “Critical dimensions of bibliographic heritage: meanings, value systems, and cultural rights”.
The Proceedings can be checked here.
— Zaira Regina Zafalon and Andre Vieira de Freitas Araujo
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.
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.
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.