Apologies for cross-posting; feel free to forward to other lists
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*Library of Congress Announces Modeling Initiative*
The Library of Congress is pleased to announce that it has contracted
with Zepheira to help accelerate the launch of the Bibliographic
Framework Initiative. A major focus of the project is to translate the
MARC 21 format to a Linked Data (LD) model while retaining as much as
possible the robust and beneficial aspects of the historical format.
Zepheira brings to the project extensive experience in LD technology for
library applications.
Eric Miller, who was a leader in the Semantic Web Initiative in its
early days for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and who has also
worked in the library and information science field, leads the Zepheira
team. The company, under Mr. Miller's leadership, has been active in
the development of Semantic Web and Library standards as well as open
source tools to support LD technologies and library applications. These
activities represent knowledge and experience that are instrumental for
constructing a core data model and to support prototype services that
will serve as a basis for a new bibliographic framework and related
services.
The Library of Congress has asked Zepheira to provide a model (or
models) that can serve as a strong starting point for discussion, and an
analysis of related initiatives underway that will be useful to this
effort. LC expects that the proposed model(s) will change and be
further tuned based on valuable feedback from the community and a
natural progression of requirements as they are addressed. The initial
model(s) will serve as a basis for work focused on a demonstration
system/service which will then, in turn, be used to further refine the
model(s). The expectation is that such iterative feedback loops will
eventually ensure a flexible bibliographic framework, a robust reference
code, a supporting infrastructure for deployment, and an effective
migration plan to support the community in making a transition from MARC
to a new framework.
The Library of Congress will now proceed to organize various scenarios
to enable community participation that will be broad and include
international users and partners, various types of information agencies
and libraries, and library suppliers. We will be posting information as
it emerges from this initial work, especially relating to projected
milestones at the Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative website
(www.loc.gov/marc/transition <http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition>).
The Library intends to offer its plan of action for discussion and
community input at the American Library Association Annual Conference in
Anaheim, California. Eric Miller will join the Library in this update
session. (LC Bibliographic Framework Transition Update Forum, Sunday,
June 22, 10:30am-12:00 noon, Anaheim Marriott Grand Salon A-C.)
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Sally H. McCallum
Chief, Network Development and Standards Office
Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540 USA
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Tel. 1-202-707-5119 -- Fax 1.202-707-0115
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