a consideration of library holdings in the world beyond marc

A Consideration of Library Holdings in the World Beyond MARC

ALCTS/CRS Holdings Information Committee, 2014 ALA Midwinter,

Philadelphia

Why Holdings?

• Is there still a need for the functionality the standards were designed for?

• How do we balance needs for complexity (detail) with perceived value of simplicity (summary)?

• Who’s working on this and what are they doing?

• Can we predict the future of holdings?

Functionality

• Traditional functional needs– Communication between libraries and

vendors/publishers about subscriptions, payments and issuances

– Communication between libraries about specific availability for access (including ILL)

– Management of materials internally (e.g., predictive checkin, remote storage, preservation, etc.

– Support for users with specific (and sometimes problematic) citations

Holdings Standards in the Analog World

• MARC 21 Holdings: http://loc.gov/marc/holdings/echdhome.html

• NISO Z39.71 http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-71-2006/

• ISO 10324:1997 (available for purchase from ISO)

List of Ongoing Efforts

• https://wiki.dnb.de/display/DINIAGKIM/Collection+of+Holdings+Ontologies%2C+Vocabularies%2C+Standards– Compliments of the DNB (German National

Library)

Ongoing Efforts: DNB

• https://wiki.dnb.de/display/DINIAGKIM/Scope+of+Holdings – Work in progress, further information on their wiki

Ongoing Efforts: ONIX

• ONIX for Serials Coverage Statement - Version 1.0 (Published March 2012) http://www.editeur.org/123/Serials-Coverage-Statement/

• Used primarily for messaging between publishers, vendors, and libraries

• Based to some extent on MFHD

Ongoing Efforts: schema.org

• Schema.org “provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yanex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier to find the right web pages.”

Proposed property Comment

Library = seller Will be treated be schema.org processors as the organization or individual offering the item; the fact that it may be a loan instead of a sale can be handled as part of the Offer.

Call #/Shelf # = sku As an inventory identifier and physical locator for a specific organization [sku] is a reasonable match for a call number

Barcode = serial number

A unique identifier for a single item, serialNumber is a good match for barcodes

Shelving location = availableAtOrFrom

In practice most sites will likely supply a simple text value like "Stacks" or "Reference"

Item status = availability

Using terms from schema.org and Good Relations (mostly sale oriented)

http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Holdings_via_Offer

Current Proposal for Library Holdings in schema.org

Ongoing Efforts: MMA

• Work based on MARC 21 Bib format: http://marc21rdf.info – Goal: Enabling use of MARC holdings for mapping

or re-use in a different environment– Using cataloger-readable URIs:

http://marc21rdf.info/elements/3XX/M300__a

Is There One Answer?

• Not likely, we’re no longer living in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ world

• The functional requirements vary greatly based on needs of particular communities– As digital materials and technology proliferate further,

this gap may increase• Holdings approaches change as their ‘parent’

schemas do – Decisions on schema usage generally not made on

basis of holdings needs

Contact InformationDiane Hillmannmetadata.maven@gmail.com

Gordon Dunsiregordon@gordondunsire.com

Jon Phippsjonphipps@gmail.com

The First MetadataMobile[Thanks to Richard Wallis forUpdated schema.org link]