Please join the ALCTS CRS Holdings Information Committee at ALA Midwinter in
Philadelphia:

Saturday, January 25th from 3:00-4:00 pm in the Pennsylvania Convention
Center, Room 203 B.

BIBFRAME and the future of holdings information

Our first speaker, Rebecca Guenther, will discuss the BIBFRAME initiative
and the effects it will have on the communication of holdings information.
The Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) is an effort to provide a
foundation for the future exchange of bibliographic description. It develops
a model and ontology for describing bibliographic data, addressing both
future data exchange and a transition path for existing MARC 21
bibliographic data. The Framework is a Linked Data Model that defines
information entities - relating to bibliographic description, holdings, and
authority. The intention is to enable the rich metadata available in
libraries and other cultural heritage institutions to be part of the global
web of data. BIBFRAME is in development and at this time the holdings focus
is on the "obtain" function of bibliographic data, rather than prediction.
This presentation will summarize the BIBFRAME Data Model in general and how
holdings information fits into it by using BIBFRAME Annotations and RDF
Classes HeldMaterial and HeldItem.  It will illustrate various common
scenarios and describe the properties in the BIBFRAME vocabulary relevant to
holdings.

Rebecca will be followed by Diane Hillmann, who will discuss her research
and share her thoughts on the future of holdings data.  Of all the MARC 21
formats, Holdings was the one most clearly designed for machine
manipulation. It is granular, flexible, and intended to be used at either a
detailed or summary level. It has sometimes frightened potential users
because it looks complex (even where it isn't), and in its "native" form is
not particularly human friendly. Some of the complexity arises because there
are both display and prediction aspects in the encoding, and not all library
systems have developed predictive serial check-in systems supported by MARC
Holdings. Some of the bibliographic metadata efforts now going forward
ignore the existing MARC Holdings, sometimes in favor of simpler solutions
based on the perception of the waning need for predictive check-in for
digital subscriptions. Not much effort has been expended to bring the MARC
Holdings format forward into the discussions about changing requirements and
re-use of existing standards. As part of this presentation, Diane will
review the effort to put the MARC21 Bibliographic Format into a very
granular RDF expression, creating the possibility of lossless mapping. In
this context, what can be done to follow that model for MARC Holdings, and
what would that look like?"

Rebecca Guenther has 35 years of experience in national libraries, primarily
working on library technology standards related to digital libraries. Most
of her professional life has been at the Library of Congress in the Network
Development and MARC Standards Office developing national and international
standards related to metadata. In addition she is an adjunct professor in
NYU's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program and at Rutgers School
of Communication and Information and consults on metadata issues.

Diane Hillmann is currently Director of Metadata Initiatives for the
Information Institute of Syracuse. She was formerly Research Librarian,
Cornell University Library and Director of Library Services and Operations
of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). She is active in the library
standards community, having served several terms on the MARC Standards
Advisory Committee (MARBI) as a liaison from the law library community and
as a LITA representative. She currently represents the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative on the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access
(CC:DA) discussing the new Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard
[RDA]. In addition, she serves as the Standards Coordinator for the Library
Information Technology Association (a division of the American Library
Association) and was recently appointed to the NISO Content and Collection
Management Topic Committee.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Kevin A. Furniss (Chair, ALCTS CRS Committee on Holdings Information)
Serials & Electronic Resources Catalog Librarian Howard-Tilton Memorial
Library Tulane University
7001 Freret Street
New Orleans, LA 70118-5682

Phone:  (504) 247-1368
Fax:  (504) 862-8556
E-mail:  [email protected]


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