Author Archives: Drahomira Cupar

ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 23-28 January 2020

The American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and Conference took place in Philadelphia at the end of January. The weather was quite mild, especially compared to the last time the meeting was in Philadelphia when we had major snowfall.

As usual, I had a very full agenda. I represented the Cataloging in Publication Program at the LOC Pavilion in the exhibit hall. I also volunteered an hour at the IFLA Booth, where I had the chance to chat with Helen Mandl, Deputy Secretary General of IFLA. Our mission at the IFLA booth was to inform ALA attendees about the next IFLA WLIC in Dublin, Ireland, to promote the Library Map of the World, and to encourage libraries in the United States to submit Sustainable Development Goal Stories.

Helen Mandl and Caroline Saccucci in front of a poster of Librrary Map of the World

Helen Mandl and Caroline Saccucci at the IFLA booth

 

One of the most interesting sessions I attended, especially relevant to IFLA SC SAA, was a series of presentations on ethics in cataloging, particularly in the choice of subject headings assigned to a work. I attended some interesting meetings about transliteration and non-Latin scripts in bibliographic records. I also attended the LC BIBFRAME Update meeting to learn more about the LD4P2 Project. The ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) met twice, Sunday morning and Monday afternoon, and as the LC Dewey Program Liaison to SAC, I attend those meetings as much as possible, although I was unable to attend the Sunday morning meeting due to a schedule conflict. The majority of the meetings focused on reports of the various subcommittees and reports from liaisons, such as the liaison from the Music Library Association and the American Law Library Association.

Dewey-related reports were on the Monday afternoon agenda. Violet Fox, OCLC Dewey Editor, gave the OCLC Dewey report, and I gave the report of the LC Dewey Program. Outgoing ALA appointee to the Dewey Editorial Policy Committee Deborah Rose-Lefmann gave her final report to SAC on EPC Meeting 142 held at the Library of Congress in September 2019. Daniel Joudrey, Ph.D., Professor in the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University, and a current member of SAC, is the new ALA-appointee to EPC. Usually there is a program as part of the Monday afternoon SAC meeting, but no program was scheduled for this conference.

This was probably the last ALA Midwinter meeting that I will attend because ALA is changing the format of this conference. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), the division in ALA with cataloging standards committees including SAC, has already determined that it will not meet at ALA Midwinter 2021. I guess the next time I visit Philly will be just for fun. It’s a good thing I had a Philly cheesesteak this time!

Caroline Saccucci.
CIP and Dewey Program Manager
Library of Congress

Cynthia Whitacre and Caroline Saccucci at ALA Midwinter 2020

Cynthia Whitacre, Senior Metadata Operations Manager at OCLC and Carolince Saccucci in front of the Library of Congress “Ceremonial Office” at the LOC Pavilion in the exhibit hall.

WLIC 2019 – what happened?

Prepared by Harriet Aagard, National Library of Sweden, and Caroline Saccucci, Library of Congress

The Subject Analysis and Access Section was engaged in several sessions during the IFLA WLIC 2019 in Athens.

 

Satellite Meeting: Metadata Specialists in the Machine Age 

The Bibliography, Cataloguing, Subject Analysis and Access, and IT Sections collaboratively organized an all-day satellite meeting, “Metadata Specialists in the Machine Age,” held at and sponsored by Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, on 22 August. Approximately 80 library professionals attended this event. The meeting, coordinated by Mélanie Roche (Cataloguing Section), included three 30-45 minute presentations with 45 minutes for discussion at each table after each presentation. In his presentation On the Automation of Subject Analysis and Access:  Foundations, Requirements, Steps towards implementation, Andreas Oskar Kempf (Subject Analysis and Access Section) discussed the project he and his colleague Anna Kasprzik have been working on at ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. Caroline Saccucci (Subject Analysis and Access Section) presentedAutomagic” CIP Data at the Library of Congress with PrePub Book Link.” Finally, Tiphaine Cécile Foucher from the Bibliothèque nationale de France gave a recorded presentation What Does it Mean to be a Librarian in the Digital Age? Examples from data.bnf.fr, with Mélanie Roche providing more insight about this topic. At the end of the day, representatives from each table gave a summary of the discussions at their tables. The presentations were very well received and led to quite interesting discussions.

 

Presentations will be published at https://www.lib.auth.gr/en/iflawlic2019

Photo of Caroline Saccucci

Caroline Saccucci

 

 Open Session: Libraries, Archives and Museums in Dialogue

The Subject Analysis and Access Section together with the Art Libraries Section presented Open Session 206 Libraries, Archives and Museums in Dialogue: Improving Access to Complementary Collections, held on 28 August, 8:30-10:30 am. The goal of the open session was to demonstrate how libraries can improve subject access to collections and how new tools and technologies, linked metadata, and shared authority data enable librarians to support interlinking objects between different collections. Andreas Oskar Kempf, SAA, and Lucile Trunel, chair of the Arts Libraries Section, co-chaired the session, which over 120 delegates attended. The co-chairs kept the session on time with some time at the end for a few questions.

1. Not just art : the challenges and successes of integrating archival, library and image collections into an art focussed collection management system / Claire Eggleston, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Paper in English
Translation: Español

2. Leveraging wikidata for descriptive cultural heritage metadata / Regine Heberlein, Princeton University Library, United States
Paper in English

3. Archives, museums and libraries: breaking the metadata silos /Richard Gartner, Warburg Institute, London, United Kingdom; Raphaele Mouren, Warburg Institute, London, United Kingdom
Paper in English
Translation: Español

4. Bringing Library and Museum Resources Together: How Can Artificial Intelligence Help (based on the Ivan Tsvetaev’s Book Collection Project)? / Ekaterina Igoshina, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russian Federation ; Juliya Dubrovskaya, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Research Library, Moscow, Russian Federation
Paper in English
Translation: Español

5. Taking on the content discovery challenge: The NLB Case Study / Patrick Cher, National Library Board of Singapore, Singapore
Paper in English

6. Digital Library of the Artistic Production of ECA/USP /Francisco Carlos Paletta, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil ; Marina M. Macambyra, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil ; Sarah Lorenzon Ferreira, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil ; Vânia Mara Alves Lima, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Paper in English

7. Metadata Obscura: Refocusing digital collections through the lens of art history / Alia Levar Wegner, Miami University, Oxford, United States ; Stefanie Hilles, Miami University, Oxford, United States
Paper in English
Translation: Español

Photo of Claire Eggleston talks about the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Claire Eggleston talks about the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

 

Division III Session: Library Services for a Multicultural World: with Special consideration to the Many Languages Involved

Each section within Division III was invited to give a lightning talk at this session.
From the Subject Analysis and Access Section, Andreas Kempf and Athena Salaba discussed the benefits with a using a controlled vocabulary  when dealing with multicultural issues and biases in subject analysis.

After each of the sections had given a presentation, delegates at the tables discussed various questions posed by each of the speakers. Ligthning talk presentation

Photo of Andreas Kempf and Athena Salaba

Andreas Kempf and Athena Salaba at the Division III open session

 

Metadata Reports Session

The Genre/Form Working Group

Ana Stevanovic reported that, after IFLA WLIC 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, the Genre/Form Working Group commenced an ongoing project to compile a list of vocabularies, thesauri, etc. related to genre/form concepts and to collect bibliographic references about genre/form topics. Compiled lists will be updated and published on WG web page regularly.

 

The Metadata Newsletter

Harriet Aagaard reported about the IFLA Metadata Newsletter – a collaboration between the three bibliographic sections: Bibliography, Cataloguing, and Subject Analysis and Access. Two issues are published every year in June and December. The newsletter is filled with information about the work of the sections, about metadata activities around the world, including meetings and conferences – everything that people with an interest in metadata would want to read! The Metadata Newsletter

Photo of the Editors of the Metadata Newsletter

Jay Weits – Bibliograhy, Harriet Aagaard – Subject Analysis and Access, Marja-Liisa Seppälä – Cataloguing

 

 

The Automated Subject Analysis and Access Working Group

Harriet also presented the new working group Automated Subject Analysis and Access. The goal is to create a report that includes case studies of library projects using automated indexing and a literature review. More information will be published at the WG web page.

Photo of The Working Group on Automated Subject Analysis and Access

The Working Group on Automated Subject Analysis and Access

Subject Analysis and Access Section – new and outgoing members

2019 was an election year, and for the first time – at least to our knowledge – we had too many people wanting to join us and IFLA institutional members had to vote for two candidates.

Photo of IFLA Subject Analysis and Access Section

From left: Jane Makke, Sally McCallum, Caroline Saccucci, Athena Salaba, Rehab Ouf, Harriet Aagaard, Drahomira Cupar (in front), Andreas Kempf, Elise Conradi, Aida Slavic, Ana Stevanovic, Chris Oliver, George Prager, Ulrike Junger.
Missing: Rosali Fenandez de Souza, Stanoslav Golubtsov, Jinxia Huang, Seung Jeong Kim,  Jean Maury, Maria Stegaeva

Outgoing members 2019: John DeSantis, Mauro Guerrini and Elena Zagorskaya

On the photo below  you also find our outgoing chair John DeSantis. From 2019 he is a new member of the Bibliography Section. The new chair of our section is Athena Salaba.

Photo of IFLA Subject Analysis and Access Section with otgoing chair John DeSantis

WLIC 2019 satellite: Metadata specialists in the machine age 22 August

WLIC 2019 is starting next week with several satellite conferences. The IFLA Subject Analysis and Access section will together with the Bibliography Section, the Cataloguing Section and the Information Technology Section arrange the satellite Metadata specialists in the machine age on August 22 in Thessaloniki. There will be two satellites at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Library & Information Centre – on August 21 there will be an RDA conference. You find more information about Thessaloniki at the joint conference page

The satellite was originally planned for WLIC 2018, but we held a program at WLIC 2018 instead, to talk about the need for discussing what happens to cataloguing today and how it affects catalogers. Many catalogers are now metadata specialist – the work of a cataloger is changing! The session was well attended and the audience thought that a satellite to discuss cataloguing and metadata today was a good idea.

I am looking forward to the satellite and hope we will achieve our goal: to write a white book about the situation today.

 

I do not expect to be able to visist the famous cathedral Hagios Demetrios or other sights in Thessaloniki!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stdemetriusthess.jpg

WLIC 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Subject Analysis and Access Section had a successfull meeting at WLIC 2018 in Kuala Lumpur. Our open session on Automatic indexeing was attended by 110 persons. The papers are available at the IFLA Library. We also plan to publish their presentation slides.

  1. JUNGER, Ulrike Automation first – the subject cataloguing policy of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
  2. GOH, Rachael Using Named Entity Recognition for Automatic Indexing
  3. GHORBANI, Mahboubeh and TORKASHVAND, Fattaneh Lessons learned from Automatic Indexing Projects regarding to Persian Language Specifications
  4. BRYGFJELD, Svein Arne and WETJEN, Freddy and WALSØE, André Machine learning for production of Dewey Decimal
  5. HLAVA, Marjorie M. K. and RUSSELL, Judith C. and HANSEN, David “Win” Inverting the Library Cataloguing Process to Streamline Technical Services and Significantly Increase Discoverability and Search for Special Collections

 

 

 

From left to right: Jane Makke, Caroline Saccuci, Athena Salaba, John DeSantis, George Prager, Harriet Aagaard, Rehab Ouf, Elise Conradi, Sally McCallum, Jean Maury, Andreas Kempf, Chris Oliver, Ulrike Junger.

 

ALA Annual 2018

It’s been about a month since ALA Annual 2018, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, but it’s never too late for a subject-related update! As the CIP and Dewey Program Manager at the Library of Congress, it is both my pleasure and my responsibility to attend many subject-related meetings and programs. The OCLC Dewey Update Breakfast met at 7:00 AM on Saturday morning, as it does every ALA, with an interesting set of presentations on what’s new with the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Alex Kyrios, OCLC Dewey editor, updated the attendees on changes to the DDC based on Dewey Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) exhibits from electronic meetings EPC-140A and EPC-140B; notable topics included vegan cooking, electronic games, and child rearing, among several others. (Exhibits are proposal documents prepared by OCLC Dewey editors that provide narrative about the proposed changes, usually followed by sample hierarchies with the proposed new notation and/or notes and excerpts from the Relative Index for context; this helps EPC members understand the proposed changes and how those changes would affect the overall DDC.) Alex discussed some new features in WebDewey, such as the link to the DDC 23 Manual in WebDewey and the long-awaited ability for users, like me, to contribute built numbers for editorial vetting. (Now I’ll need to go looking for all the numbers I have built in the 400s to contribute them.) Finally, I gave a talk on the long-standing collaborations between OCLC editors and LC Dewey classifiers. This may come as a surprise to many of you, but the OCLC Dewey editors sit next to the LC classifiers at the Library of Congress, and we meet on a monthly basis to discuss trends, exhibits, and other issues related to the DDC and its application.

As the LC Dewey Liaison to the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services/Cataloging and Metadata Management Section/Subject Analysis Committee, or ALCTS/CaMMS/SAC, or even more simply SAC (read: “sack”) for short, I submit a formal written report and then speak briefly at the meeting on what’s new in the LC Dewey Program. My report is part of a trio of Dewey-related reports: the ALA representative to the EPC gives a report on recent EPC decisions; the OCLC Dewey representative gives DDC and WebDewey updates; and the LC Dewey liaison reports on LC Dewey news. At this meeting, members of various subject-related communities, such as the American Association of Law Libraries, the Art Libraries of North America, and the Music Library Association, give their reports. SAC has also reports from its own subgroups, the SAC Research and Presentation Working Group and the SAC Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies. There is, of course, the report from the IFLA Liaison to SAC, SAA’s own George Prager. Finally, the LC Liaison from the Policy and Standards Division (PSD), Janis L. Young, gives her written and oral report to the committee.

Janis announced at the ALA Annual 2018 SAC meeting that PSD will cancel “multiple” subdivisions from Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) beginning in fall 2018. “Multiple” subdivisions are a special type of subdivision that automatically gives free-floating status to analogous subdivisions used under the same heading. In the example Computers—Religious aspects—Buddhism, [Christianity, etc.], the multiple subdivision is —Buddhism, [Christianity, etc.]. This policy change results from the need to provide unique identifiers for each valid subject string to facilitate linked data. Please contact Janis Young with any questions about this change. Of particular interest to law librarians may be that the Library of Congress Classification schedules KIM-KIP: Indigenous Law: Central America, including a comparative class for Central America and the countries Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, are now available in Classification Web. Finally, one of my favorite parts of Janis’ reports lists the new and revised subject headings for inclusion in LCSH. This year we have Alcohol trafficking, Gene editing, Centaur objects, Fried chicken, and Generation Z.

These were some of the many subject-related highlights from ALA Annual 2018. I look forward to seeing you in Kuala Lumpur!

Best wishes,
Caroline Saccucci
Library of Congress

 

 

 

Subject Analysis and Access Section membership profiles

Photo of Athena Salaba, chair of the IFLA subject Analysis and Access Section

Athena Salaba

Member since 2017

Professor,  School of Information, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA

Work/ research experience: Cataloging & metadata, Knowledge organization systems (KOS), Conceptual modeling of bibliographic data

Areas of special interest: Subject access to information, User experience & user interaction with KOS, and bibliographic information

Email: asalaba @ kent.edu
Web: ischool.kent.edu
Personal web: athenasalaba.org

 

Photo of Elise conradi, secretary of the Subject Analysis and Access SectionElise Conradi

Member since 2013

Head of Bibliographic Services

Biblioteksentralen AL
Oslo, Norway

Work/ research experience: Knowledge organization systems, Authority files (for works, persons, subjects), Linked Data

Areas of special interest: Open structured data (for example Linked Open Data), LRM, Machine Learning, Subject Access, Readers’ Advisory, Good books

Email: elise.conradi @ bibsent.no
Web: www.bibsent.no/

 

Harriet AagaardPhoto of Harriet Aagaard, information coordinator of the Subject Analysis and Access section

Member since 2013

Senior librarian/Classification expert

National Library of Sweden, Meta Data and Systems Support Departement

Stockholm, Sweden

Work/ research experience: Classification and Subject headings, Subject Access for librarians, for end users, Linked data

Areas of special interest: Dewey Decimal Classification, Classification systems, Linked Data, Transition from Marc21 to Linked Data, Bibframe, Automatic Indexing

Email: harriet.aagaard @ kb.se
Web: www.kb.se

 

Photo of EduardoCivalleroEdgardo Civallero

Corresponding member since 2017

Library Director, Charles Darwin Research Station

Puerto Ayora, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

 

Work/ research experience: :  Consultant member of the Revision Advisory Committee of the Universal Decimal Classification Consortium (2004-2010), associate editor and assistant editor (2010- 2012), and editor and translator of the UDC Summary (2012-).

Areas of special interest: Biases in classification schemes, classification and indigenous knowledge.

Email: edgardo.civallero@fcdarwin.org.ec
Personal web: http://www.edgardocivallero.com/

 

Judy Jeng

ALA/ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee liaison since 2019

Community Representative

Digital Public Library of America, USA

Work/ research experience: Librarian at various universities, Faculty at various library schools, evaluation consultant of digital library

Areas of special interest: Cataloging and classification, digital library, usability evaluation.

Email: jeng.judy@gmail.com

 

 

Photo of Andreas Oskar KempfAndreas Oskar Kempf

Member since 2017

Research assistant

German National Library of Economics / Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. academic services

Hamburg, Germany

Work/ research experience: Development and management of knowledge organization systems (thesauri, classifications)

Areas of special interest: i) interoperability of KOS (mappings), ii) automatic indexing, iii) KOS for access to research data

Email: a.kempf @ zbw.eu
Web: http://www.zbw.eu/de/
Personal web: https://www.zbw.eu/en/about-us/profile/andreas-oskar-kempf/

 

Photo of Seung Jeong KimSeung Jeong Kim

Member since 2017

Librarian

National Library of Korea, Bibliographic Control Division

Seoul, South Korea

Work/ research experience: Bibliographic Control

Areas of special interest: Bibframe

Email: Sjkim72 @ korea.kr
Web: www.nla.go.kr

Photo of Jane MakkeJane Makke

Member since 2017

Metadata coordinator

National Library of Estonia

Tallin, Estonia

Work/ research experience: Cataloguing standards; Authority control; training; RDA; FRBR

Areas of special interest: Cataloguing standards; Automation of workflows; Data quality; Usability of library metadata

Email: jane.makke @ nlib.ee
Web: https://www.nlib.ee/

 

Photo of Chris OliverChris Oliver

Member since 2013

Head, Resource Description and Metadata Services, University of Ottawa Library

Resource Description and Metadata Services, University of Ottawa Library

Ottawa, Canada

Work/ research experience: Bibliographic conceptual models; implementation of models in cataloguing standards; RDA, Resource Description and Access; multilingual subject access; description, access and thesauri in bilingual user communities

Email: christine.oliver @ uottawa.ca
Web: http://biblio.uottawa.ca/en

 

Photo of George PragerGeorge Prager

Member since 2013

Head of Cataloging.

New York University Law School Library

New York, NY, USA

Work/ research experience:  Law cataloging, working with colleagues to revise and update Library of Congress legal subject headings and classification, especially law of indigenous peoples; RDA; Guidelines for use of relationship designators (bibliographic and authority), trainer and/or reviewer for Program for Cooperative Cataloging for name and series authority records, as well as U.S. national level bibliographic records for monographs, serials, and integrating resources

Areas of special interest: Genre/form, Issues regarding law cataloging; training and standards for cataloging

Email: pragerg @ mercury.law.nyu.edu
Web: http://www.law.nyu.edu/library

 

Caroline Saccucci

Member since 2017

CIP anc Dewey Program Manager

Library of Congress, U.S. Programs, Law, and Literature Division

Washington, D.C. USA

Work/ research experience: Working with pre-publication metadata

Areas of special interest: ONIX metadata, Mappings, Classification, CIP

email: csus @ loc.gov
Web: http://www.loc.gov/publish/cip/
Personal web: http://www.loc.gov/aba/dewey/

 

Photo of Maria StegaevaMaria Stegaeva

Member since 2017

Deputy Head, Assoc. Prof. Ph.D

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library. Department of the Formation and Processing of Information Resources

St. Petersburg, Russia

Work/ research experience:  1996-2010 National Library of Russia, Processing & Cataloguing Department, Senior Researcher
• participation in the development of Russian exchange formats for bibliographic and authority data (RUSMARC), co-author of Russian Cataloguing Rules, cataloging all types of resources, participation in projects on corporate cataloguing, development of courses of lectures and seminars on machine-readable cataloging, development of guidelines for authority files and authority control 2003-2010 Higher Library Courses, National Library of Russia, Senior Lecturer
• cataloging all types of resources, authority files, and authority control
2003- present – St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, Library and Information Faculty, Senior Lecturer, since 2017 – Associate Professor
• computer library and information technology, linguistic support of library technologies
2010- present – Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, Department of the Formation and Processing of Information Resources, Deputy Head
• theoretical and practical issues of creating integrated digital resources and collections, subject access to digital content, coordination and standardization in the area of the digital libraries

Areas of special interest: Modern trends in theory and practice of indexing: enhancing subject access in digital libraries; strategy and policy for building digital collections; FR family of conceptual models (FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD) and consolidated FRBR-LRM model in library catalogues; National Subject Authority File development and maintenance; development of linguistic instruments for information retrieval in OPAC; Semantic Web technologies in libraries

Email: stegaeva @ prlib.ru
Web: https://www.prlib.ru/

 

Photo of Ana StevanovícAna  Stevanović

Member since 2013

Librarian for catalogisation and classification

National Library of Serbia, Department of Serial Publication. Section for Component Parts Analysis

Belgrade, Serbia

Work/ research experience:  From 2007-2011 I worked as a gymnasium teacher. Since 2011 I am working at the National Library of Serbia. Also, I am a Phd candidate at the Philological Faculty of Belgrade University – Department for Serbian Literature.

Areas of special interest: Subject analysis and classification. Genre/form.

Email: ana.stevanovic @ nb.rs
Web: https://www.nb.rs/