MARC Export filters March 10, 2009
Posted by Mia in metadata.comments closed
Spent quite a bit of time having a look today at the marc export filter for the bibliographic management software that we’re using, and wow, this is sorely in need of some attention. That is, assuming anyone is actually using this to extract records from CLUES. Perhaps that’s an assumption that needs testing.
Anyway,when I extracted a handful of records today and imported them, I was dismayed at the way some of the data was mapping to the required tagged format. In some cases so much of the bib data was not being mapped to the appropriate, or even approximate, fields where they belong, that it’s rather surprising this has been in place for as long as it has.
Well, I guess usage must be extremely low, and whatever usage there is, must be a source of frustration for users. Confusion, at a minimum.
More on Name Identification December 4, 2008
Posted by Mia in Collections, Frontiers, metadata.comments closed
To continue on my name thread, I think it’s reasonable for an academic library to make a commitment to establish and contribute the names of the faculty at their home institution to NACO, and at least have the institution’s faculty names represented in LAF authority files and consequently incorporated into VIAF and/or other initiatives as one more step in the road to author identification. Granted the marc authority record structure and format may not be optimal, but at least these are well-understood mechanisms in academic libraries which are widely in place.
Many academic libraries have already created or downloaded name authority records as part of the normal cataloguing process for their own faculty when published material has been acquired for the collection, though it may not have been policy to create an authority record for faculty members in every instance (for example, when there isn’t a name variation at hand).
It is not impossible to envision an expanded library role with respect to author identification for unpublished material typically deposited in IRs into the workflow. There would be significant overlap between the national authority files and author names present in IRs (cf DAI project; and Van Spanje’s presentation given at UK Serials Group 2007). As with the Netherlands project, existing name authority structures can be put to work while we wait for other or additional mechanisms to emerge.
Author identification can be further augmented by repository players, including the library, as things mutate and move along. With repositories workflows now coming more into play, libraries should be poised to start making some active contributions regarding the author identification issue.
In the service of names December 4, 2008
Posted by Mia in Collections, Frontiers, metadata.comments closed
We need to be cognizant of the huge importance that author identification, including personal and corporate names, has for repositories, and to take a more pro-active role in this area.
One contribution that an academic library can make to general institutional repository workflows is in the area of author identification — a.k.a. name verification or authority control — for faculty members. Start with theses. Where theses are part of the IR, faculty names are generally represented as theses supervisors. Libraries generally add theses to their own catalogued collections, so minimally, author identification for the IR can start at the thesis deposit stage and move along in a yet-to-be-determined workflow.
Why would we not want to control for variations likely to start quickly populating themselves in repositories? In the UK, where repositories are well-established, the JISC-funded Names Project is focusing on just such a problem. (With some irony, not the only initiative which goes by the name of The Names Project).
From the JISC commissioned Report of the Subject and Institutional Repositories Interactions Study (Nov. 28, 2008), the first recommendation is:
- Clear identification of authors, funders and higher education institutions
Being able to locate with authority and consistency the identity of a person or corporate body attached to a research output is vital for any repository data exchange process and is hugely important for any service running over the top of repositories. Although different stakeholders may need this information at different levels of detail, it is an acknowledged issue.
Indeed.
ISSN-L November 21, 2008
Posted by Mia in ERM Module, Frontiers, metadata.comments closed
My radar has starting picking up some blips on the ISSN-L frequency these days. I wonder if anyone is doing anything with the mapping table at the ISSN center.
I’ve just checked and we don’t yet have any instances of the |l subfield in any of our 022’s. I’m waiting to see how things are going to play out with ERM. For a terrific overview on the ISSN including its foibles, get a hold of the presentation by Regina Reynolds, Head, U.S. ISSN Center, at LC’s National Serials Data Program, entitled: ISSN: Linking data and metadata.
The presentation was given at the Metadata in a digital age NASIG preconference, sponsored by NISO.
Subject terms are insufficient May 3, 2008
Posted by Mia in cataloguing, Frontiers, metadata.Tags: facets, genre
comments closed
There is plenty of evidence that users will respond to concept clusters that represent something other than the subject of the thing: and by that I mean the genre of the thing. Although it may be a term that is somewhat oblique, genre represents facets that are based on the functionality, purpose, presentation, or use of the resource.
Humans have commonly-held concepts that turn out to be recognizable groupings of things which aren’t subjects, that is, they are groupings which are not concerned with the aboutness of the thing.
The commonly-held and shared conception of the utility of a ‘telephone book’ does not include reading such a thing from beginning to end, since this type of collection of words/numbers isn’t intended to be used in such a fashion. That doesn’t mean that a telephone book cannot be used in that fashion (i.e., read front to back) to alleviate wakefulness, or for the purposes of a filibuster, and so on, but those are instances of atypical uses.
User domain is important, though. There can be multiple commonly-shared views of the thing, e.g., telephone books can be recognizable members of other genres, for example “booster seats” or “height extenders.” Different purpose, different genre, different domain.
We should be increasingly concerned to expose genre, since it allows the user to focus on things that groups of words do other than be read narratively as strings.
Particularly when there is a surfeit of words (for example, massive retrieval results), the way those words are grouped or presented, their purpose and functionality, rises to the forefront and provides an extremely useful handle. The grouping of words is fundamentally how language is acquired in the first place, so it’s particularly important to make note of that resonance.
Genre can be a superior filter because it can more closely associate the intention of the searcher/viewer with a group of found information objects.