BSC Chair's Report

Bibliographic Standards Committee ALA Midwinter Conference 2016 Boston, MA Updates from the Chair 1. RDA and Rare Materials seminar took place on 6 November 2015 Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. The seminar was attended by 71 individuals from 13 countries. Below are the titles, names, and abstracts of the papers, followed by short biographies of the presenters. The presentations are available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/CIGScotland/ 2. Audrey Pearson has worked on migrating Latin Place Names to http://rbms.info/lpn/. The next step is for BSC to review the site and each member of BSC will expected to complete this assignment when it is distributed after Midwinter. Once it’s ready, the RBMS Web Team will update the link. 3. There are two similar efforts to create new ways to display and explore rare materials data. One, proposed by Allison O’Dell, will be discussed at the Midwinter meeting (item 13). The other is from Jason Kovari at Cornell University. Jason’s project is independent of the BSC project, but if the proposal is accepted, he would like to work with BSC. The subgroup he mentions is the Task Force to Explore Data Elements for Rare Materials. From Jason: Cornell University Library, as part of Linked Data for Production (LD4P), has proposed to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation work to build an ontology extension for rare materials; this work will be performed in strong collaboration with the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee as well as other LD4P partners, including Princeton and Columbia Universities; the rare materials ontology extension effort is one component of a significantly larger LD4P/LD4L proposal. Legacy environments and legacy standards have not always well supported rare materials descriptive practice. Linked data, with its emphasis on extensibility as well as reusability, offers a highly promising framework for addressing this long-standing need. An ontology extension for rare materials is particularly needed as data relevant to rare materials often pertain to the instance and item level; however, item level data are not well defined by current library linked data models. Indeed, the original BIBFRAME model lacked a true Item class altogether. This effort will build upon work underway by the BSC linked data subgroup to identify concepts important for the description of rare materials thru examination of DCRM and other standards. The ontology extension project proposes taking the conceptual work produced by BSC and creating an extension ontology based on existing namespaces with further development of the ontology as needed. Following the ontology extension development, we will engage catalogers at a variety of institutions to test the model and provide feedback. The proposal is still under consideration at the Mellon Foundation. If this work is funded, we will put out a call for participation to BSC members to join a working group for the ontology extension as well as test the resulting model. For questions, please contact Jason Kovari ([email protected]). ### 1 RDA and Rare Materials Papers: RDA & Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials: Developing Policy Statements for Special Collections Resources – Francis Lapka (Yale Center for British Art) and Audrey Pearson (Yale University Beinecke Library) This presentation will describe the ongoing work of an ACRL/RBMS task force charged to create an RDA-compatible set of guidelines for the descriptive cataloging of rare materials. It will provide a brief background on the existing suite of manuals known as Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials and the planned evolution of those manuals into a set of policy statements for inclusion in the RDA Toolkit. The speakers will address some of the areas in which policy statements for rare materials are likely to prove most useful in the refinement and extension of RDA, and will conclude with a look at the timeline and future development of this project, touching upon the possibility for greater international collaboration. Step Children of Printing: Toward an Integrated Standard for the Description of Single‐sheet Items – Flavia Bruni (Sapienza University of Rome) Abstract: Early printed broadsheets are a specific subset in the large family of rare materials and special collections. Despite their relevance as historical sources and as printed objects as well, access to such resources is still undermined by several issues. In the first place, it is affected by the variety of places of conservation. Single-sheet items can be found in libraries, archives and museums. Cataloguing standards for such institutions have different purposes and follow different rules accordingly. While a standard for a basic book description is shared between different institutions, not the same can be said for single sheets. As a result, the description of such documents in archival inventories or museum catalogues does not usually provide enough information from a bibliographic point of view; on the other hand, bibliographic records for broadsheets might omit what is crucial information to historians, as fundamental as, for instance, a note of content. Furthermore, extensive broadsheet collections are often preserved in historic libraries. A survey of online catalogues reveals bibliographic standards for broadsheet description to be still rather undefined or unattended, resulting in unconventional descriptions, not complying with any standard, even in library catalogues. On top of this, an international agreement on a descriptive standard for broadsheets seems still to come. This paper proposes to provide an overview of descriptive practices for single-sheet items focusing on inconsistencies between libraries and archives and between different countries. This will highlight the need for a new integrated international standard for broadsheet description based on the principles of data sharing and interoperability to promote a wider access to resources. 2 Alignment between Special Material and RDA in German speaking Countries – Christian Aliverti (Swiss National Library) and Renate Behrens (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) Abstract: Austria, Germany and German-speaking Switzerland are about to implement RDA for data cataloguing. The transition has been prepared in an extensive cooperative project in the three countries over the past three years. The experts have already started to consider the cataloguing of special materials such as rare books and have joined together to create new working groups. These already extend beyond the circle of libraries; representatives of other cultural institutions are also taking part. Existing cataloguing codes and standards in the archive and museum fields will be aligned with RDA for the first time. Currently, RDA contains no or not enough rules for the cataloguing of special materials such as rare books and manuscripts, however these are being introduced in the international review process. Representatives from literary archives and libraries have joined forces to form a working group. The aim of the working group is to align the "Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autographen" (RNA, Cataloguing rules for literary estates and autographs) used in the German- speaking world with RDA. The presentation shows how the RDA project is organised in the German speaking countries. It reports on the working groups concerned with the cataloguing of special materials. It also provides an insight into how the cooperation with galleries, archives and museums is organised with respect to RDA. Transcription in Rare Materials Cataloguing – Deborah J. Leslie (Folger Shakespeare Library) Abstract: This paper will explore transcription in rare materials cataloguing: what principles and user needs it can be expected to fulfill, and what it cannot nor should not be expected to fulfill; circumstances requiring cataloger interpretation and intervention; comparison of DCRM's and RDA's approaches to transcription; finishing with a few suggestions for moving forward. Metadata is Catnip to Digital Scholars – Jennifer Schaffner Abstract: Metadata – especially about provenance, context, and other copy-specific information – may come from a variety of sources besides catalogue records, including scholar-created projects, archival and visual materials descriptions, digitized materials, and other one-offs. In this paper I will demonstrate ways in which metadata describing rare, unique, and distinctive collections can be used as the raw material of new forms of digital scholarship. Synthesizing trends from an international spectrum of such research projects, I will select examples to represent research that uses different types of library metadata and different methods of digital scholarship. RDA & Rare Books Cataloguing at Edinburgh University Library – Alasdair Macdonald and Elizabeth Quarmby Lawrence, (University of Edinburgh) Abstract: RDA was adopted as the house standard for modern materials in October 2014, following a 6 month implementation project, with all cataloguing staff trained in the new standard. As part of the build up to RDA implementation, the opportunity was taken to revise local practices for rare books cataloguing. This included establishing clear guidelines for when 3 each standard should be applied; the adoption of RDA Authorised Access Point syntax and MARC structure for authority controlled fields in DCRM(B) records; and careful consideration as to the use of relationship designators for each standard. This paper looks at the impact of adopting RDA as the institutional cataloguing standard for modern

Load more