The Library of Congress BIBFRAME (Bibliographic Framework Initiative) Update Forum was held on Sunday, June 25, 2017, at McCormick Place in Chicago. Five speakers from the Library of Congress, OCLC, Stanford University, and Zepheira gave attendees an update on the progress made in developing and implementing BIBFRAME.
Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, Library of Congress, gave an update on the Library of Congress Pilot 2 project. The project has two phases: retraining and reorienting continuing participants, and training new participants. New features of this second pilot include cataloging rare materials and a greater focus on non-roman scripts. The training will be complete by the end of July 2017, then adding records will begin. Training materials will be freely available and posted soon. Pilot participants will create metadata in BIBFRAME and MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging), for a minimum of six months, and the Library of Congress will release a report when the pilot is complete.
Sally McCallum, Chief of Network Development and Standards Office, Library of Congress, provided more details on the Pilot 2 project. Its goal is creating a more realistic cataloging environment than the first pilot was able to provide. Participants will create descriptions of resources in BIBFRAME first, and they will have access to a file of converted MARC records to catalog against. 17 million MARC bibliographic records have been converted to BIBFRAME Works, Instances, and Items, and 1.2 million uniform title authority records have been converted to BIBFRAME Works. This enabled the input of new name authorities in the BIBFRAME system, which join NAF (Name Authority File), LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings), and TGM (Thesaurus for Graphic Materials) terms which are already in the BIBFRAME environment via the Library of Congress’ Linked Data Service. Links for MARC to BIBFRAME conversion tools are available in the presentation slides.
Jean Godby, Senior Research Scientist, OCLC, presented “BIBFRAME and OCLC Works: Defining Models and Discovering Evidence,” a companion to Roy Tennant’s presentation at this forum at ALA Midwinter 2017. She discussed OCLC’s efforts to align OCLC Works with BIBFRAME Works. OCLC is pursuing a data-driven approach to modeling with the goal of library data that is more machine-understandable than it is today. Ms. Godby demonstrated WorldCat Cookbook Finder, an experimental, works-based application that provides access to thousands of cookbooks and other works about food. This project applies principles of the FRBR model to aggregate bibliographic information above the manifestation level. Records are clustered into OCLC Research-generated work sets using author and title information from bibliographic and authority records. Bibliographic descriptions that reference BIBFRAME relationships would make it easier to do what OCLC is trying to do: aggregate the world’s descriptions of library resources to improve the connection between users to the information they seek, and provide a backbone to the library operations that support this goal. OCLC’s “work on Works” is in synch with BIBFRAME because OCLC’s goal is to discover evidence for standards, not propose new ones.
Philip Schreur, Assistant University Librarian for Technical and Access Services, Stanford University, presented “LD4P Tracer Bullet1: an RDF-Based Copy-Cataloging Pipeline,” describing Stanford’s project to incorporate copy cataloging into their Linked Data work stream. Mr. Schreur described the record enhancement workflow in great detail using colorful flowcharts. Their workflow involves a combination of automated steps as well as human intervention. Next steps include an automated pipeline, reconciliation of their data on conversion, updating, versioning, and sharing.
Eric Miller, President and CEO of Zepheira and the Library.Link Network, delivered the presentation “Becoming Data Native: How BIBFRAME Extensibility Delivers Libraries a Path to Scalable, Revolutionary Evolution.” Using a common set of standards, the Library.Link Network is exposing library data to the web in ever greater amounts. Linked Data is about connections and transforming the way data works. Library catalogs are not just dumped on the Internet, but the underlying data is able to be connected in limitless new ways. Through the Library.Link Network, the Internet Archive can funnel open access e-books through public libraries. Mr. Miller also talked about Data.World, a data platform (not a library platform) that delivers modern data tools and data sets for local and comparative analysis of libraries, collections, coverage, and communities.
Presentation files are available on the Library of Congress website.
