Tag Archives: National Bibliographic Agencies

Bibliographic Information in Digital Culture, 3rd International Bibliographic Congress, April 27-30, 2021

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.

  • Mauro Guerrini: New perspectives of the Universal Bibliographic Control in the digital era
  • Mathilde Koskas: Report from the Chair of IFLA’s Bibliography Section: National Bibliographies and national bibliographic metadata in the age of mass information
  • Caroline Saccucci: Library of Congress CIP Program: Collecting the U.S. National Imprint

There were two panels at the end of the first day:

  • Using DOI in bibliographic reference – present and prospects for the future (recording)
  • МARC: Replace or remain? Moderator: Caroline Saccucci; panelists: Sally McCallum, Regina Reynolds, Nathan Putnam, Boris Rodionovich Loginov, Olga Nikolaevna Zhlobinskaya. (recording)

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.

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 Spanish Bibliography Online

Since January of 2010 the National Library of Spain (Biblioteca Nacional de España) has renewed the web service of the Spanish Bibliography online:  http://www.bne.es/es/Servicios/BibliografiaEspanola/BibliografiaEspanolaEnLinea/

The implementation of the new Integrated Library Management System has motivated some changes in the search and display interface for bibliographic records and it has delayed the start-up.  Monographs are now available and updated.

This electronic resource provides immediate and universal access to the bibliographic records that are part of the Spanish publishing output http://www.bne.es/es/Servicios/BibliografiaEspanola/  incorporated into the National Library through Legal Deposit.

The Spanish Bibliography online allows a more rapid, punctual and efficient distribution of the information available and makes easier data exchange thanks to the universal access offered by Internet today.

The Spanish Bibliography makes the search and browse process easier by offering multiple access points and a user-friendly interface with three diverse search options:

  • Alphabetical index (by author, title, subject, series, etc.)
  • Search by subject, records are arranged in large CDU groups of CDU in Monographs
  • Search by keyword, combining Booleans and other operators and truncation with specific fields and geographic areas
  • Static web resources –PDF documents – is also included

Additionally, it allows the download and export of records that will be extremely valuable for other national bibliographic agencies, libraries and institutions.

Free of charge access to the bibliographic records

  • Link to the National Library catalogue and download records in ISBD, labelled and MARC 21 (ISO 2709) formats

This new electronic bibliographic service replaces the printed versions that are no longer published. With the new service the National Library fulfils its function to disseminate information on the Spanish bibliographic output using the latest technologies available and we expect this tool will be useful to both professionals and general library users.

Francisca Movilla

Spanish Bibliography Section

The British National Bibliography is 60!

The British National Bibliography (BNB) is 60 years old in January 2010.

The BNB is the national bibliography of the United Kingdom. It lists and describes the books and serials newly published or distributed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland that are received by the British Library under legal deposit as provided for in various Acts of Parliament. It also includes information on forthcoming titles supplied under the British Library’s Cataloguing-in-Publication Programme.

The BNB was established in 1949 in response to the recommendations of Lionel McColvin who had undertaken a survey of the UK’s public library service in 1942 which resulted in the McColvin Report. McColvin concluded that it was inefficient for libraries to produce their own catalogues and that where catalogues did exist they only provided brief descriptions of library holdings rather than all available books of potential interest to users. McColvin identified a requirement for a detailed weekly list of bibliographic descriptions for new books which could be used by libraries to develop their catalogues by cutting and pasting the printed entries on to their catalogue cards.

The Council of the British National Bibliography was established in March 1949 and the new national bibliography commenced full operations in 1950. It consisted of weekly lists of all books and first issues of new serial titles published in Great Britain catalogued in accordance with the Anglo-American Code and classified according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system. Author/title indexes were provided every four weeks and the lists were cumulated into an annual volume. A pilot issue number 0 was produced in December 1949 and issue Number 1 was published on 4 January 1950. It contained just 25 entries.

The British Library took on the responsibility for the production of the BNB following its foundation in 1973 and still produces a weekly printed version of the BNB together with interim cumulations and annual volumes. However, the average weekly issue now contains around 3,500 entries in line with the huge increase in publication that has occurred over the last 60 years. This period has also seen numerous other developments for the BNB resulting in a database of over 3 million bibliographic records.

Coverage of the BNB has always been selective; the emphasis being on titles available via normal book buying channels.

A weekly BNB data service began in January 1969 using the (then) innovative combination of the new UKMARC bibliographic data and ISO2709 MARC record exchange formats with magnetic computer tape. BNB MARC records were first made available online in 1977 with the introduction of BLAISE, the British Library Automated Information Service. Distribution of BNB records via FTP began in 1998 and eventually replaced the tape service and the Library moved to the MARC21 format in 2004.

Following a pilot CD-ROM produced in co-operation with the Biblothèque Nationale in 1988, BNB on CD-ROM was launched in 1989. It originally consisted of a two-disc backfile covering the period 1950 to 1985 and a single disc current subscription service covering records created from 1986 updated quarterly. A new MS Windows version of the BNB on CD-ROM was produced in 1996 by which time current file discs were updated monthly and the backfile had been compressed on to a single disc. Production of BNB on CD-ROM ceased in December 2008 when the database became available for searching on the British Library’s Integrated Catalogue as a subset search.

The British Library coordinates the UK Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) Programme and has included advance notification publication records in the BNB since the 1980s. Information on new titles appears up to 16 weeks ahead of the announced publication date. Advance information on over 60,000 titles each year is provided in this way via the BNB.

In addition to Dewey Decimal Classification several other forms of subject access to the BNB have been used over the years, ranging from international standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to in-house systems such as PRECIS and COMPASS.

BNB development continues and in October 2009 it was added to the British Library’s new Primo based catalogue again as a catalogue sub-set search. A pilot is also under way for a free Z39.50 based BNB MARC record download service for non-commercial use.  However, the final innovation launched in January 2010 is another pilot of a new, weekly, PDF-based BNB e-journal version, initially for existing subscribers to the printed product. This new service will bring the story of the BNB full circle by enabling the British Library to deliver a ‘printed’ BNB to customers with improved currency and greater functionality while also saving paper. Lionel McColvin would surely have approved!