Tag Archives: ISNI

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.

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.

The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) launched

The ISNI International Agency aims to assist media companies prepare for the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI), a new standard which will streamline the way creative rights holders are referenced on the Internet.

“The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI – Draft ISO 27729) is an ISO certified global standard capable of easily identifying the millions of contributors to creative works, including writers, artists, creators, performers, researchers, producers, publishers and more. The ISNI International Agency, which will be responsible for ISNI’s administration and governance, was officially incorporated by its six founding members – CISAC, IFRRO, IPDA, ProQuest, OCLC and the Conference of European National Librarians (Represented by Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the British Library) – as a London-based not-for-profit organisation on December 22nd, 2010. The consortium members represent more than 300 rights management societies and 26,000 libraries worldwide. While the Agency creates the ISNI reference database – assigning ISNI identifiers to over 5 million names – and begins building a network of ISNI Registration Agencies, media and content companies are preparing to integrate ISNI into their operations.” (ISNI Press release)