Metadata Blog

This post includes links to write-ups on other blogs, as well as on this blog, to consolidate them all into one place. I just went back and reviewed the post before ALA and here's what I could find. If you've posted on your blog and want a link, email me (Kristin Martin) at kmarti@email.unc.edu.

FRBR Interest Group
Friday, June 27: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
ALCTS
Write-up on: LibLime Developer's Blog

Electronic Resources Management Interest Group
Friday, June 27: 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
LITA/ALCTS
Write-up on: LITA Blog

Cataloging and Classification Research Discussion Group
Saturday, June 28: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
ALCTS/CCS
No write-up as of yet.

Electronic Resources Interest Group
Saturday June 28: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
ALCTS
No write-up as of yet.

RDA Update Forum
Saturday, June 28: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
ALCTS/CCS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

Catalog Management Discussion Group
Saturday, June 28: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
ALCTS/CCS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

Cataloging Norm Discussion Group
Saturday, June 28: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
ALCTS/CCS
No write-up as of yet.

Metadata Mashups: Creating and Publishing Application Profiles
Saturday, June 28: 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
ALCTS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

There's No Catalog Like No Catalog: The Ultimate Debate on the future of the Library Catalog
Saturday, June 28: 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
LITA
Write-up on: LITA Blog (with Podcast)

MARC Formats Interest Group
Saturday, June 28: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
LITA/ALCTS
No write-up yet.

Getting Ready for RDA and FRBR: What You Need to Know
Saturday, June 28: 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
ALCTS CCS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

Creating the Future of the Catalog and Cataloging
Sunday, June 29: 8:00 am - 12:00 pm
ALCTS CCS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group
Sunday, June 29: 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM
ALCTS
Write-up on: NRMIG Metadata Blog

You Know FRBR But Have You Ever Met FRAD?
Sunday, June 29: 1:30 pm - 5:30 pm
LITA
Write-up on: LITA Blog

Heads of Cataloging Discussion Group
Monday, June 30: 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM
ALCTS CCS
Presentation from Robert O. Ellett

Emerging Technology Interest Group
Monday, June 30: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
LITA
Write-up on: LITA Blog

Next Generation Catalog Interest Group
Monday June 30: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
LITA
Write-up on: LITA Blog

Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee Annual Update Forum
Monday June 30: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
ALCTS CRS
No write-up yet.

Institutional Repositories: New Roles for Acquisitions
Monday June 30: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
ALCTS AS
Write-up on: Overdue Ideas

Map Cataloging/GIS Metadata Cross Walk
Monday, June 30: 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
ALA MAGERT
No write-up yet.

Collaborative Digital Initiatives: Show and Tell and Lessons Learned
Monday, June 30: 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
LITA/ALCTS PARS
No write-up yet.

ALCTS Program at the 2008 Annual Conference
Metadata Mashup: Creating and Publishing Application Profiles
*Slides are currently available or will be available at: http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Saturday%2C_June_28

This One is Just Right: Metadata Design and Implementation at the University of Maryland
Jennifer O'Brien Roper, University of Virginia (Previously Metadata/Electronic Resources Librarian at University of Maryland)

Jennifer O’Brien Roper presented the metadata application profile employed by University of Maryland’s Digital Repository, UMDM (University of Maryland Descriptive Metadata), which uses Dublin Core, VRA Core and local elements with customized DTD for element parsing and validation. She spoke on how they developed this customized and rich metadata standard for individual collections and cross-collection search in the UM Digital Repository.

UM Digital Repository is based on Fedora platform. In light of the metadata standards requirement and the local needs, they created the application profile which utilizes rigorous minimum standard and is flexible in providing standard and unique descriptive information by collection. It was based on the one originally developed by the University of Virginia, and it includes required based elements, some optional base elements and the mandatority and repeatability of these elements. In her discussion, Roper went into great detail on what these elements are and how they were presented. She talked about the input standards including those consistent input key to cross-searchability, existing standards (such as DCMI media types, language ISO standard, LC name authority file, Getty Thesaurus of Geographical Names), local standards (such as local lists and terms created for culture and style elements) and un-mandatory standards. The documentation of the application profile can be used by MARC catalogers, XMLers, subject specialists and students and it can be used for metadata creation, maintenance and data migration. It documents the minimum requirement for base elements, elements, child elements, attributes and variations, input standards (such as ISO 8601 for date and time format), local standards and a combination of and borrowing from LCSH, ATT, TGM and MESH.

Roper concluded that it is not recommended to reinvent everything in the creation of a project-specific application profile, and it is important to make self-contained documentation, to document when the decision was made and to keep the documentation consistent.

Application Profiles at the University of Tennessee
Melanie Feltner-Reichert, Director, Digital Library Initiatives, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Feltner-Reichert presented the development of metadata application profiles at the University of Tennessee in view of the changing world of metadata standards and the expanding landscape of today’s digital initiatives. She elaborated on how they tailor complex schemas for project-specific usage and collaborate with all project stakeholders.

She quoted at the beginning that “Metadata is expected to follow existing and emerging standards in order to facilitate integrated access to multiple information providers over the web…” “…and it is rare that the requirements of a particular project or site can all be met by any one standard ‘straight from the box’” (Baker, Dekkers, Heery, Patel, Salokhe).

Feltner-Reichert discussed in detail “Volunteer Voices: The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee”, an IMLS funded and statewide digital library project. It covers diverse materials from various cultural heritage institutions. In order to make such a statewide cooperative project work, there are many decisions for them to make such as branding and different metadata needs from different partners. Similar to every other application profile, their profile includes the selection of elements, child elements and attributes, their usage and constraints. To implement the profile, policies and guidelines, training, metadata creation tools and pre-ingestion quality control were established. Feltner-Reichert further introduced the tools they used such as an administrative database for facilitating metadata quality control in institutional, collection level and item level, and metadata workbook, an open web form which generates valid MODS XML syntax and enables compliance to their application profile.

Application (of METS) Profiles for Documentation
Arwen Hutt, University of California at San Diego

Hutt started by defining what application profile is, in plain term, “documentation, and documentation”. In detail, an application profile declares how we are using standard schemas and it documents the purpose of this profile, the schemas used, specific elements used, controlled vocabulary, constant data, content guidelines and encoding guidelines.

She furthered discussed how to document, why UCSD uses METS to document the profile and the pros and cons of this approach.

The traditional documentation tools consist of text docs, html and wiki, and newer ones include METS profile schema. A very recent one is Singapore Framework for DC Application Profiles presented at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications in Singapore, September 2007.

Hutt reported that they have created 5 application profiles starting from 2004, 2 of them have been registered with the METS Editorial Board: Simple object profile and complex object profile (for example: the latter can present the structure of a photograph object as well as its zoomed portions, and METS allows this approach). The draft application profiles are electronic thesis and dissertations profile (a complex profile customized for theses), Archivist’s Toolkit profile (it is for data exported from Archivist’s Toolkit and focuses more on structure), and File preservation transfer package profile (it deals with data validation and format migration).

The pros of their METS approach is that it employs standardized structure for encoding information (XML schema), unique IDs for specific rules and required sample documents (METS file) and a community forum provided for sharing data and profile. The cons is that it is not very user friendly in readability (style sheet needed for data re-generating and editing), it is not modular in dealing with simple and complex objects and it is not machine actionable (cannot validate automatically).

Thinking about Application Profiles:
Providing Interoperability in a World of Silos
Diane Hillmann, Director of Metadata Initiatives, Information Institute of Syracuse

Hillmann discussed application profiles in a higher view of the semantic web and from a broader approach of the domain application profiles. She first addressed human readable profile and the interoperability of the profile. While interoperability is a need within an institution, the profile should be extendable and reusable (e.g. operate at project, institution, community and domain level). She calls for a shift from internal services to aggregated access.

She promotes community consensus building and thinking on a macro level. There are two aspects to consider: human aspects (consensus building, documentation of consensus, communication of data intensions) and machine aspects (validation, increasingly specific expectations for content, improved ability to assess and improve metadata). Hillmann pointed out application profiles are not just documentation activity, and she asks us to rethink its functional requirement and domain model.

Hillmann urges us to think web as a platform and think of web standards in creating application profiles. She talked about the semantic web community’s work and the Singapore Framework for DC Application Profiles model. According to this framework, a Dublin Core Application Profile is packet of documentation which consists functional requirements, domain model, Description Set Profile (DSP), usage guidelines (optional) and encoding syntax guidelines (optional). This model shows “how the components of a Dublin Core Application Profile relate to ‘domain standards’ -- models and specifications in broader use by communities -- and to the W3C standard Resource Description Framework (RDF), the default foundation for machine-processable semantics in our time.” “Description Set Profiles are based on the DCMI Abstract Model (DCAM) inasmuch they specify how the entities of the DCAM are used in a specific set of metadata. In this sense, the DCAM constitutes a broadly recognized model of the structural components of metadata records. The DCAM, in turn, is grounded in RDF.” “Description Set Profiles typically use properties and classes defined in standard Metadata Vocabularies such as the DCMI Metadata Terms. Metadata Vocabularies, in turn, are expressed on the basis of the RDF Vocabulary Description Language (also known as RDF Schema, or RDFS).” (See http://dublincore.org/documents/singapore-framework/)

Hillmann gave us some examples such as SWAP (The Scholarly Works Application Profile), a modified FRBR model. This model’s entity and relationship labels are based on FRBR model but have been modified to make them more intuitive to eprints, such as “ScholarlyWork” “isFundedBy” “Agent” and “ScholarlyWork” “isExpressedAs” “Expression”.

She addressed the importance of data modeling in making application profiles, and at the same time, we are not modelers (We are librarians but shouldn’t feel daunted by xml and RDF stuff). She talked about quality assessment, open tools and templates, conformance measurement and profile maintenance. She indicated that it is vital to create the application profile in light of the semantic web standard and the RDF development.

* Some issues raised and questions answered from the Q&A session after the presentations:
- DC Conference on Metadata, Sept. 22-26, 2008
(solely on metadata, good for social networking)
“It’ll change your life...” (Diane Hillmann) :)

- Maintenance of Application Profiles
Eric Childress from OCLC asked whether the application profiles presented were being maintained. The answer from all three presenters was "no." Jennifer is no longer in MU, Arwen commented that registered application profiles cannot be revised. Diane replied that Aps can be available in different versions and the conformance can be made to different versions. She commented later, “this is a really important reason to try and move APs ‘up the stack’ to the community or domain level, instead of just at the project level.”

- What to Document?
Aps are declarations of functional requirements (for/and) a domain. We don’t need to document general stuff. For example, for documentation of the education profile, the education component is much more important such as audience and media (Diane).
Arwen added that to document those required content, those derived from standards and usage guidelines.

- The Singapore framework will solicit for comments soon.

- Machine Validation against Application Profiles
Louise Ratliff from UCLA asked whether there are some effort going on in terms of validation implementations on behalf of the standards community in the same way as OCLC validates our marc records (not the same words, but similar idea here). Diane answered that it is still in its infancy (conceptual stage now).

- Terminology services
It is not suggested to develop vocabulary inside an application profile, Diane said, there are some vocabulary registry (such as metadataregistry.org) which can provide terminology services.

If you have things to add on or to modify, please reply to this post or to me at sai.deng@wichita.edu. I will be very glad to make changes or add amendments.

Saturday, June 28, 1:30-3:00

The Single-Record Approach for E-books
Philip Young
Catalog Librarian, University Libraries at Virginia Tech
Link to presentation: http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Image:singleRecord.ppt

Adding links to print records is often the practical course taken by libraries when batch records are unavailable and a large number of ebooks (either from vendors or locally digitized) must be cataloged. Such a project occurred at Virginia Tech for a set of ebooks in which links were globally added to print records, after careful consideration of the alternatives (no batch records were available).

He cited some cataloging rules which allow this practice. Institutions such as GPO, NLM, UC, Brown have been using the single record option. The advantages include that it's expedient, preferred by patrons and many librarians, improved access points on collection-level records. However, the disadvantages are that a mixed practice exists in the catalog with record loads, difficulty with standard # matching, and FRBR incompatibility.

He listed factors to be considered in decision-making, such as:
* Equivalent manifestations
* Same publisher
* No batches of MARC records available
* ILS capability (includes consortial considerations)
* Time of staff (if originals needed)

Impact of Vendor Records on the Catalog
Lai-Ying Hsiung
Head of Technical Services, University Library
University of California, Santa Cruz

The speaker started out the talk asking whether we feel in control with these record loads. She then went on to give a presentation dense with information (selected highlights follow).

Why do we load vendor records? To do more with less (due to shrinking budgets), provide timely access to patrons, avoid redundancy in catalog management, and the changing bib control landscape. With the advent of one stop shopping, many of these records might provide good-enough cataloging. The LCWG recommended we make use of bibliographic data earlier in the supply chain (e.g., publishers).

She then described some possible reasons for problems and quality issues of these records. They include incomplete or inaccurate data, lack of authority control, and different cataloging standards.

There is a current problem with duplicate records in OCLC as brief MARC is mixed with full, and also proliferation of multiple separate records for different platforms. All this slows down identification, hinders retrieval, and complicates copy cataloging workflow.

Waiting for another library to catalog or upgrade a title also slows down access and processing. Similarly, if a record upgrades locally, beneficial changes may not be reflected in Worldcat.

She covered ways that OCLC can help, such as by facilitating easier upgrading by member libraries and providing incentives to vendors to contribute full MARC records. Vendors can be helped by providing cataloging training and encouraging them to enrich their records with value-added services, such as table of contents. Finally, libraries can be helped by granting more of them enhance status and allowing re-loads of vendor records into OCLC.

Many record loads are problematic because they are not in Worldcat, and Worldcat Local only searches the holdings in Worldcat. The contract with many ebook vendors prevent libraries from loading their records in Worldcat. UCSC is planning to move to a network level and implement Worldcat Local.

Aggregator-neutral records have already been approved for serials, and most recently, for integrating resources. Discussions of aggregator-neutral ebooks are already occurring and will likely become a standard.

Temporary Employees: Managing Practicum, Internship and Volunteer Experiences in Technical Services Unit
Margaret Mauer
Associate Professor, Head, Catalog & Metadata
Kent State University Libraries and Media Services
Link to presentation: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~mbmaurer

Kent State has been hosting practicum, graduate student assistants, and volunteers for 10 years. National trends that support the use of students include diminishing financial support for libraries (and thus technical services), less "junior" cataloging positions, and decreasing availability of cataloging courses. The students' often enthusiastic presence does change the tone of the workplace.

It helps to think of them as very temporary employees. You have to consider how to maximize the benefit while minimizing the cost to your department. For example, even though the standard practicum only requires 100 hours, the Cataloging Department requires 150 hours to recover the investment in training. Also, they used to assign them special projects, but have found that works best is to separate the opportunities into 2 tracks: copy cataloging and original cataloging. They write job descriptions for each position. Training material is re-used from semester to semester. They also establish a limit of face-to-face training (for example, 25 hours for copy cat), since constantly answering questions can become a real time-sink. They've found it's best to have a standard workspace as well as a webpage of resources just for the students.

They conduct exit interviews with the students and also provide them with a survey to evaluate the program with 5 or 6 questions. This procedure has provided some valuable feedback that has been used to improve the program.

The benefits include opportunity to do quality control and freeing staff from repetitive work, as well as the additional manpower. In the long run, they are also helping the cataloging profession since some of the students have begun to make professional contributions.

Notes by Mary Aycock

The first half of the Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group meeting was a discussion of competencies for metadata librarians, which was generated by Erin Stahlberg earlier in the year. The full discussion questions are listed here.

Leading the Discussion
Erin Stalberg, Head of Metadata and Cataloging, North Carolina State University
Christopher Cronin, Head of Digital Resources and Cataloging at University of Colorado, Boulder
Elaine Westbrooks,, Head of Metadata Services, Cornell University
MJ Han, Metadata Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Moderated by Louise Ratliff, Librarian, Cataloging and Metadata Center, University of Calafornia-Los Angeles

Christopher performed a demographic survey of the room:
• Almost all academic librarians, mostly with the title of metadata librarian, but also some catalogers and IT people
• One person from EBSCO publishing

Below are a list of questions that were asked in the course of discussion with answers from participants. If specific to an institution, the answer includes the name of that institution.

Question 1: What are the IT competencies for metadata librarians?
• Metadata librarians should know XML.
• Relational database design: may not have to be an Oracle programmer, but should understand the structure, and be able to form queries
• Be able to do data modeling
• Have traditional cataloging skills as well as database, XML, XSLT skills
• Maybe cannot do all of the computer programming, but should be able to read programs and know what they do. Basically, have the ability to speak the language.
• Perl scripting
• Cataloging background no longer as important, but need to help catalogers move from the MARC environment to the non-MARC environment

Question 2: Is it possible to find all of these things in a single person?
• Every institution has different needs: might need to hire a metadata librarian, a digital projects librarian and systems librarian.
• Have guidelines for competencies but having hard and fast rules would be too limiting.
• Metadata librarians have to specialized, but not insular. Having background in cataloging and description is very important, as well as understanding programming, but maybe not be hardcore programmers.
• Need to justify what a metadata librarian is, sometimes job descriptions are just changes of names, not really changes in position descriptions. Metadata librarian description seems to be more theoretical than tangible.
• At the same time, there’s an importance in name change from the administrative point of view. "Cataloging" may end up disappearing from department names. In terms of changing the organizational culture, changing a name may be the first step. Names have power.

Question 3: How do we teach IT competencies in library school?
• It’s hard to keep up with changing technologies so having people willing to learn becomes extremely important.
• Library schools don’t train people in cataloging competencies either.
• It’s not easy to find clear set of competencies, but determining them will push learning opportunities and skill sets to the forefront. There should be more opportunities to get such teaching into library school programs and give people more opportunities to learn and take advantages of their capabilities.
• Need to set up good practical applications and experiences, to give people some perspective.

Question 4: How do institutions handle this the need for technical support if they don’t have the luxury of programming in metadata services?
• Even if you have have tech support in your unit, it may not be enough. Have your programmer train people in specific programs: XSLT, Perl, take advantage of skills and spread them around.
• At Cornell: programmers originally in the Metadata Services unit went to the Digital Library Group. Now Metadata Services uses graduate students and interested undergraduate students for support. To keep these positions, they have written grants, but then are stuck in grant/soft money model. If grant money were to dry up, it would be a challenge to keep the position. Grants come from:
o Mellon Grant
o Also looking for NSF money, IMLS
• At Wichita State (University Libraries), a project transforming metadata from DSpace to Voyager and OCLC used CS students to help modify the stylesheet and used MarcEdit toolkit to do the transformation. Understanding database foundations was beneficial to know how data works to be able to work with the programmer.
• Univ. of Minnesota: hidden source of soft IT support: the database team for the ILS. Able to talk to them about the large scale processes of scripting. They negotiate with central IT for some things, library IT for others.

Question 5: Should a metadata librarian be in tech services, special collections/archives, IT, digital projects, or somewhere else?
• Most discussion participants were in tech services.
• At Johns Hopkins, former metadata librarian lobbied to move metadata librarian position out of tech services, but failed in effort. However, the digital libraries program is hiring its own metadata librarian. Maybe there’s a feeling from the systems side that metadata librarians don’t know as much about systems because they are in tech services.
• At Brown: position is a half time music cataloger and half time metadata librarian. Metadata librarian is also part of Center for Digital Initiatives. A lot of programming is from other people in the Center for Digital Initiatives.
• Where to place metadata librarian probably depends on what the specific responsibilities are of that person. If the library wants to separate metadata from the catalog, maybe it's fine to separate metadata librarian.
• Clarmount Colleges Digital Library: duties are creating metadata for digital projects, but also creating MARC records to go into the catalog, so there is training within tech services to have more people to take on to metadata.
• If metadata is removed from cataloging, a lot of experience and expertise can be lost. Metadata work is an excellent opportunity to stretch catalogers with additional intellectual work.
• Metadata coordinators can be in any department as their job is to make sure that people are talking to each other.
• UC-Santa Barbara is hiring a new metadata library and is looking for a feral professional: someone who crosses all lines and can move across the structure of the library.
• UCLA: have Digital Library and Cataloging and Metadata Center. Digital library does programming, scopes the projects, writes the grants, catalogers will advise on kinds of metadata elements, so there is a lot of coordination between them.
• Cornell: politically it was important for metadata librarian to be located in Tech Services. Metadata Services has more opportunities for collaboration when in Tech Services. For example, the institutional repository was able to work with catalogers to learn how to harvest from the institutional repository.
• Univ. of Kansas: want to see metadata in Cataloging, and the more involvement across the libraries, the better. The libraries must rely on central campus IT for all technical support, and don’t have a single person to work with, so it's absolutely imperative that people in the libraries have technical skills.
• Wichita State: Metadata Cataloger position is in Tech Services, where it works closely with Special Collections, institutional repositories, and also traditional cataloging. It is an evolving position. Has also worked closed with computer science students for some project programming.
• Administration has to support no matter where located, to know that its okay across boundaries.

Question 6: How do we avoid turning people off from the jobs, if they’re not comfortable with some of the terminology in the position description?
• Put things in the preferred qualifications that would be nice for candidates to have, but don't put them in the required to leave more flexibility.
• Maybe not require MLS to broaden the pool.
• "Demonstrated interest in" – keep the candidate pool broad by encouraging people with interest but not necessarily lots of experience to apply.

Notes by Kristin Martin