Category Archives: Technology Issues

XXV Anniversary Annual Conference of the Russian Library Association, May 2021

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

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)

Guidelines For The Future – Sharing Best Practice For National Bibliographies In A Digital Age

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:

  • Service delivery & lifecycle
  • Resource description & standards
  • Business models & administration
  • How to demonstrate the continuing utility & relevance of services?
  • When to create, develop or cease services?
  • How to decide on appropriate service delivery options
  • What options exist for user support?

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:

  1. Background
  2. Organisation
  3. Purpose and value
  4. Scoping and selection
  5. Resource description and standards
  6. Service delivery
  7. Glossary/Useful links
  8. Bibliography

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.

Danish National Bibliography as linked open data

A testfile containing books in the Danish National Bibliography 2010 and 2011 as linked open data has been published by DBC (Danish Bibliographic Centre) on oss.dbc.dk. A SPARQL endpoint to the corresponding triple store is available at http://lod.dbc.dk/webui/. DBC will continue working with LOD, expanding the scope to other types of material and authority data, providing more links and moving towards publishing the National Bibliography on a regular basis as LOD

Web NDL Authorities

The Web NDL Authorities is now fully released by the National Diet Library, Japan (NDL).  The Web NDL Authorities is a service that provides NDL’s authority records as Linked Open Data and makes them accessible to the Semantic Web.

*The Web NDL Authorities

For details, please refer also to this paper:  http://conference.ifla.org/past/ifla77/149-tadahiko-en.pdf

By OSHIBA, Tadahiko (NDL)

 

Linked Open BNB Preview Now Available

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

LC Statement on ‘Transforming our Bibliographic Framework’

The Library of Congress has issued a statement ‘Transforming our Bibliographic Framework’ in which it announces a new collaborative initiative to be led by Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services, Deanna Marcum to look at the issues involved in migrating from MARC to new bibliographic metadata formats.

As part of its work the LC will:

  • Determine which aspects of current metadata encoding standards should be retained and evolved into a format for the future.  
  • Experiment with Semantic Web and linked data technologies to see what benefits to the bibliographic framework they offer.
  • Foster maximum re-use of library metadata in the broader Web search environment.
  • Enable users to navigate relationships among entities to search more precisely in library catalogs and in the broader Internet. 
  • Explore the use of promising data models such as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) in navigating relationships.
  • Explore approaches to displaying metadata beyond current MARC-based systems.
  • Identify the risks of action and inaction, including an assessment of the pace of change acceptable to the broader community
  • Plan for bringing existing metadata into new bibliographic systems within the broader Library of Congress technical infrastructure.