Whither Bibliographic Data?

Designing a roadmap

to a new bibliographic information

ecosystem

Todd A. Carpenter, Executive Director, NISO ALA Annual Meeting – AVIAC Session

July 1, 2013

Our Dear Old Friend, MARC

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/capproved January 15, 1988 by American National Standards Institute ; developed by the National Information Standards Organization. aNew Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. :bTransaction

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Our Dear Old Friend, MARC (formatted for your viewing

pleasure)

MARC ComponentsEncoding Structure

Z39.2ISO 2709:2008 -- Format for information exchange

Format structure

Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (2nd Edition) AACR2

Resource Description & Access

Exchange SystemZ39.50

SRU/SRW

Photo: Minneapolis Collegeof Art and Design Library

Why is MARC so efficient? It had to be.

$2,642,412

per MBin

1965Photo: Computer History Museum Data: Memory Prices (1957-2013)

How much computer technology pre-dates this?

Unfortunately, quite a bit...

Why?

We avoid improving infrastructure

Billions and billions of records

Photo: dfulmer

Photo:from I Love Libraries

MARC’s Massive installed base

If you were building a network today

would you string copper everywhere?

If you building a metadata ecosystem,would you start here?

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(U.S.)10aInformation retrieval service and protocol :bAmerican national standard for information retrieval service definition and protocol specification for library applications

/capproved January 15, 1988 by American National Standards Institute ; developed by the National Information Standards Organization. aNew Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. :bTransaction

Publishers,cc1989. axii, 50 p. ;c26 cm. 0aNational information standards series,x1041-5653 a"ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1988." 0aLibrary information networksxStandardszUnited States.

0aComputer network protocolsxStandardszUnited States. 0aInformation storage and retrieval systemsxStandardszUnited States.2 aAmerican National Standards Institute. bc-

GenCollhZ674.8i.N44 1989tCopy 1wBOOKS

“MARC Must Die!”-Roy Tennant (2002)

Mmmmmm, Brains!

MARC is useful.It is efficient.

It is our lingua franca.

There are many reasons to retain it.

But wait.....

Movement toward linked data

datahub.io - 5107 data storesid.loc.gov

British National Bibliography (BNB)VIAF

OCLC WorldCat Linked Data Store Deutsche Nationalbibliografie (DNB) (Germany)

datos.bne.es (Spain)W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group

Many, many more...

But is it sufficient?

Organizations will not move away from a legacy system unless the new system:

a) Is demonstrably cheaperb) Is demonstrably more effective in producing results (discovery, use, etc.)c) Will make the organization demonstrably more efficient (staff, management, sales, etc.) ORd) The legacy system becomes entirely non-interoperable with other, more important systems ORe) The legacy system breaks and cannot be repaired

Can we say a new metadata management

system based on linked data will be/do one of those

things?

It is in…. Adoption

(or rather, in its absence)

The point at which most standards fail is not prior to consensus

“You would be a fool to design a

system based on an interchange

protocol.”

- Mark Bide, EDItEUR

Next generation library systems are

already in production

Just a few...

How can we assure that we are doing the

right things?For everyone?

That will save resources?That will improve services?

That will be adopted?

NISO’s Bibliographic

Roadmap Initiative

With gracious thanks toThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Initiative coordination

Gap identificationEconomic analysis

Engage diverse players

Open process

Some issues:Semantics

InteroperabilityEconomics

RulesProvenance/Authority

Staffing/TrainingUsers

What have we done?

In-person meeting on April 15-16in Baltimore

An unconference on bibliographic data exchange

45 in-personmore than 40 more online

more than 200 subsequent viewers

What we are trying to avoid

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is

going. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you don't know where you're going, you might not get

there.”- Yogi Berra

Thank you!

Todd Carpenter, Executive Directortcarpenter@niso.org

National Information Standards Organization (NISO)3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302

Baltimore, MD 21211 USA+1 (301) 654-2512

www.niso.org