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
The XXV Anniversary Annual Conference of the Russian Library Association took place in Petrozavodsk (Karelia) in May 2021. The Forum gathered delegates from different regions of Russia and foreign countries.
The main theme of all the events of the congress is Library 2030: Building the Future Today. Three fundamental goals form the foundation of the library strategy: ensuring universal and equal access to the information resources of the library fund, preserving cultural heritage, and reflecting the modern needs of life in the work of the library network.
The program of the congress was extremely rich. The participants discussed current problems of library theory and practice in 30 sections and roundtables.
At a joint meeting of the sections “Automation, Formats and Cataloging” and “Electronic Resources and Information and Library Services”, bibliographers and catalogers shared their views on the ways of developing bibliography in the digital environment; discussed the theory of metadata, related data and cataloging; considered the prospects for applying new cataloging formats. It attracted the greatest attention of specialists. During the meeting, the participants discussed the IFLA LRM conceptual model of bibliographic data and the international UNIMARC format. The topic of digitalization of bibliography became one of the key topics of the meeting. The participants of the joint meeting discussed the technologies of artificial intelligence and big data analysis; the representation of information resources in digital format in the network virtual space; the problem of information reliability. The discussion on the choice of approaches to the creation of a national infrastructure to support scientific communications demonstrated the keen interest of the meeting participants in the problem of integrating the resources of libraries, archives and museums.
The participants of the meeting of the Inter-regional Cataloging Committee discussed the problems and solutions of the implementation of the national standard of bibliographic description. The reports presented by the participants of the meeting were devoted to updating the methodology of bibliographic description in the light of the development of Russian cataloging rules and the introduction of new international documents; issues of practical application of the provisions of the national standard.
The session of the Section of Bibliography and Information and Bibliographic Services began with information about the results of the III International Bibliographic Congress, which was attended, in particular, by representatives of the national libraries of the world (Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Kazakhstan, China and France). Then the meeting participants discussed the priorities of scientific and bibliographic activities for 2021-2024; the draft national standard for bibliographic references of online electronic documents; the quality of bibliographic lists in scientific monographs; problems of providing information services in digital format. Special attention was paid to the national bibliography, the creation of a national bibliographic repertoire; regulatory provision of access to bibliographic electronic resources; corporate cataloging as a form of bibliographic interaction; scientific support for the current state bibliographic accounting (in connection with the transfer of the functions of the Russian Book Chamber to the Russian State Library).
At the final plenary session, the President of the Russian Library Association, Mikhail Afanasyev, announced Nizhny Novgorod as the library capital of Russia in 2022.
Report contributed by:
Marina Neshcheret, Russian State Library (Moscow)
member of the Standing Committee of the IFLA Bibliography Section
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.
There were two panels at the end of the first day:
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.
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.
The changes brought about by the World Wide Web together with the dramatic growth of digital media have called into question many key assumptions on which national bibliography were founded. At the IFLA Bibliography Standing Committee’s Warsaw satellite meeting to the IFLA 2012 Congress a new web based resource was announced to replace the original printed National Bibliographies in the Digital Age: Guidance and New Directions (2009). After several years of development this new resource will be launched at the IFLA Congress in August 2015.
Why create this new resource?
In an era of disruptive change libraries require authoritative and current best practice guidance on an increasing range of bibliographic issues. The rapidly evolving nature of the subject matter means that a more flexible, open and dynamic solution than traditional printed text is needed. To address this need the IFLA Bibliography Standing Committee has created ‘Best Practice for National Bibliographic Agencies in a Digital Age’ using the new ‘Book Page’ option available on IFLA’s web site.
The new resource is not intended to be prescriptive since bibliographic control inevitably varies widely from country to country and local requirements may be influenced by financial, legal or practical constraints. A number of potential options will therefore be presented to enable their application to be tailored according to individual circumstances, with examples and use cases given to illustrate the possible range of approaches
What topics are covered?
The new resource aims to offer information on a wide range of topics of interest to those involved in the management of bibliographic information. Examples include:
How is the resource organised?
In order to ensure the site is easy to use and yet remain flexible for future developments it has been organised by key themes which are further divided by topic. The main themes are:
These thematic sections provide links to back up sources to ensure continuing relevance and currency and will be supplemented by ‘real world’ cases that show how libraries are tackling the challenges. It is hoped this sharing of experience will benefit not only new and existing national bibliographic agencies but all who wish to respond to the bibliographic opportunities offered by new technologies and media.
How will the site be kept up to date?
Following the launch, the IFLA Bibliography Standing Committee intends to implement an annual work cycle to maintain and extend the resource as new areas of interest emerge. The SC is also seeking input from experts and other IFLA committees to contribute text or review sections in order to keep it as accurate and relevant as possible.
The National Diet Library, Japan (NDL), adopts the MARC21 format for the JAPAN/MARC, a machine-readable form of the Japanese National Bibliography, from January 2012. At the same time, the NDL shifts character set for bibliographic records to Unicode for international use.
From January 2012, it is also possible to download JAPAN/MARC bibliographic records in MARC21 format through the NDL-OPAC.
*The Japanese National Bibliography through the NDL-OPAC
By OSHIBA, Tadahiko (NDL)
Background
The British Library is developing a version of the British National Bibliography which it will make available as Linked Open Data.
The initial offering includes published books with future releases extending coverage to include serial publications, multipart works, integrating resources, kits and forthcoming publications.
The first subset of the British National Bibliography, covering books published or distributed in the UK since 2005, is currently available for preview at:
SPARQL endpoint: bnb.data.bl.uk/sparql
Describe endpoint: bnb.data.bl.uk/describe
Search service: bnb.data.bl.uk/search & bnb.data.bl.uk/items
Links to the following linked open data sources have been provided:
VIAF
LCSH
Lexvo
GeoNames (for country of publication)
MARC country and language codes
Dewey.info
RDF Book Mashup
The preview system represents a work in progress, but one we hope is sufficiently developed to be of interest to external audiences. Some further details and background documentation may be found at: http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html