ALA 2007
The 2007 American Library Association conference was on last week. Here are the FRBR-related events I could find out about. If you know of others, please add a comment. On the Saturday program is listed a session called “Informing the Future of MARC: An Empirical Approach,” with William E. Moen, Shawne D. Miksa, and Sally H. McCallum.
Did you know that catalogers use only 10-20% of available MARC fields/subfields? Given evolving search behaviors and the amazoogle effects, do our bibliographic records provide information users need? This program presents findings from a major IMLS-funded research study on catalogers’ use of MARC and an opportunity to discuss future directions for MARC and cataloging practices in the context of FRBR, RDA, and XML. The study’s results provide a needed empirical basis to inform MARC’s future.
At the Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group, Jennifer Lang saw Diane Hillmann talk about Dublin Core and RDA.
This change will help move us from silos around data – for us and other people who are interested in our data and will allow us to incorporate FRBR relationships to provide clarity and help display issues. Extensibility will be much easier (Hillmann said “technically, maybe not socially”).
There were a some posters I’d like to have seen. Judy Jeng did Metadata Usefulness Evaluation, where she examines how well the user tasks serve user needs:
This study evaluates metadata usefulness of the Moving Image Collections using FRBR’s identified four tasks (find, identify, select, and obtain) as a framework. The study involves two online surveys, one experiment, and one formal usability test. A total of 138 subjects participated in this study from April 2003 until July 2004. The study uncovers what metadata fields are useful in different stages of information retrieval. Subject Headings is ranked the most useful field to Find an item, Title is the most useful field to Identify an item, Access Restriction is the most useful field to Select and to Obtain an item. This study found what information is “enough” for each of the user tasks….
Seungmin Lee and Elin Jacob did Construction of a Conceptual Structure as a Mediator between MARC and FRBR:
Currently, both MARC and FRBR have faced with problems in describing information resources. MARC is limited in describing the dynamic nature of information resources because of its rigid and single-layered linear structure. FRBR does not provide sufficient descriptive elements to fully represent bibliographic entities, although it can support the representation of multi-layered characteristics of information resources. This research has constructed a conceptual structure that can connect between the heterogeneous systems of MARC and FRBR to make up for these weaknesses….
Yin Zhang and Athena Salaba did Current FRBR Model Implementation Efforts and Issues in Library Catalogs:
Since its inception, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) has been embraced by library communities and is shaping the direction of future cataloguing rules, standards, and consequently, library practice and system development. In particular, the FRBR model was developed considering user tasks, which offers great opportunities for creating retrieval systems that better support user information seeking. However, FRBR is essentially a conceptual model open to a variety of interpretations and implementations. Current FRBR implementation efforts have been largely exploratory in nature….
(Poster sessions are where people make up big posters, with text and images, describing something they’ve done or are investigating. They stand around in front of them ready to chat with you if you’re interested. You can walk along, giving the posters a quick look, and stop and examine one closely if it strikes your fancy.)