‘‘ T


HESE are the words of Dr Lars G. Svensson during a discussion at the German National Library back in 20151


. But translating


his vision into the nuts and bolts of the modern library is not straightforward.


Driving the LMS


The library has gone about its mission of getting the right book to the right reader through a tireless intellectual and technological­effort.­The­library­catalogue­ is the way the public get what they want. It drives the library management system (LMS), works with the librarian, the books on the shelves or stored digitally, and the public. The catalogue is metadata and it is governed by rules. Without it you have a Tower of Babel, chaos that renders all the other elements of the library meaningless.


But the creation of metadata and the nature of the catalogue has changed dramatically over the past 100 years, notably as it has embraced digitisation.


The Changing Catalogue In a recently published interview2


, Lesley


Whyte, Managing Director of Bibliographic Data Services, (BDS), covered the changes she has witnessed and, in some cases, instigated since she started her career as a cataloguer 40 years ago.


“At Glasgow University Library… we had three forms of catalogue. The guard book catalogue was a series of huge books with catalogue entries written or typed onto slips of paper that were glued onto the pages. This had been superseded by


Today’s metadata must prove reliable even in circumstances difficult or impossible to anticipate.


Giving the public what they want


“We are moving towards a global database integrating seamlessly and accessible to everyone, with no single point or source but as many sources as wish to participate each with their own vision of their own data and each, by and large, interoperable.”


the sheaf catalogue, a variant of the card catalogue, which allowed multiple access points,­but­dominated­the­ground­floor­ of the library... The third catalogue was a­microfiche­catalogue...­Even­though­ microfiche­entries­were­necessarily­short,­ my imagination couldn’t help racing ahead, for the prospect of describing works in much greater detail was there, offering­so­many­possibilities­for­resource­ discovery. And a new and exciting factor had come into the mix – computers… cataloguing was changing before my eyes...” Not just cataloguing. The very concept of what knowledge means in a society, locally and globally, was changing. As Gordon Dunsire, RDA Technical Team Leader­Liaison­Officer,­pointed­out­when­ I interviewed him in 20193


:


“Traditional classical cataloguing has as part of its function to act as a surrogate for the collection itself… That is no longer necessary and that’s completely subsumed by machines. Where it gets interesting is going beyond that, onto a new way of looking at the world and, in particular, a new way of looking at information and how it is stored and disseminated.”


New Ways to Access Knowledge So how can metadata help enable this radical change? In truth, it is the vital component. The­early­twenty-first­century­is­one­of­ virtual exploration. The result is a much greater reliance on metadata to navigate effectively.­Creating­that­metadata­ for books, and other media, making it responsive,­ future,­


­fit­for­purpose,­fit­for­the­


­super-fit­to­be­used­in­diverse­ library management systems while at the­same­time­making­it­affordable,­is­


the challenge that faces a bibliographic metadata agency such as BDS4


. Today’s metadata must prove reliable


even­in­circumstances­difficult­or­impossible­ to anticipate. It must enable interrogation from diverse points of entry. The metadata must be machine-readable and readable by the public. The way this is achieved is not by anticipating every circumstance – that is simply impossible – but by adhering to rules and standards.


The Demands of RDA In an article entitled RDA: Moving into a new era of metadata management5 Jenny­Wright,­Chief­Metadata­Officer­ at­BDS­and­one­of­the­key­figures­in­the­ introduction of RDA to the UK, describes the latest version of the standard that “takes­us­firmly­into­the­future­of­metadata­ requirements.”


19


John Hudson is a freelance writer and consultant on information and the arts.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44