Linked Data, BIBFRAME, and search

This week's reading included several interesting articles on linked data and libraries, including this Library Journal blog post by Enis, this post by Owens, this post by O'Dell, and this article by Gonzales. All of these articles contained similar themes regarding the need to move away from the inflexible MARC format and toward something more amenable to web searching.  Some of the problems with current library catalogs include archaic search interfaces, record formats unfriendly to web-based and other "non-print" resources, and their invisibility to search engines.

The hope for BIBFRAME is that it would provide a way forward from MARC and allow library collections to be linked in intuitive and useful ways, so that authors, for example, might be linked not just to their works but perhaps also to members of their social group and events of the time and place where they lived. Perhaps a Google search would be able to easily connect potential users to the nearest available copies of a given book.

All of this is very exciting, and every indication is that this concept, or some aspect of it, will become a Real Thing in the next several years. However, I confess to a little skepticism as to how this will play out in actual practice.  For a shared catalog system, among libraries in a system, consortium, regional area, perhaps the world, this could solve a lot of "shared collection" needs.  Doing a Google search for something and getting a book from your local library in the top results would be pretty cool.

However, for general web searching, I worry about electronic resources and the issue of authentication and restricted, licensed access. Getting inaccessible results in a Google search quickly dilutes its usefulness, so how, then, does the search handle this?  Are the library's results pushed down in relevance or relegated to a "library" silo or special search (like Google Books, perhaps)? Does frustration with licensed access increase the push for Open Access?  Or will most of the licensed resources be sufficiently obscure that the main recipients of those results likely be academics with ways of attaining access? Google already includes some licensed content in its regular search results, with some ways of authenticating users by IP address (I believe it does this with Elsevier ScienceDirect content), but it doesn't yet do this on the scale proposed by BIBFRAME. It will be interesting follow this over the next several years!

What do libraries want? It's the metadata, ALL the metadata.

This post was inspired by a suggestion from Damen:

"As I thought about metadata, reclined in my seat at the Intercontinental Chicago, watching the cars and people hurry about on Michigan Avenue, I realized that this had a lot to do with metadata, and ordered another steak from room service."

As I thought about metadata, slumped in my seat at the Hilton, after yet another full day of library software demonstrations from vendors I'm not allowed to name, I realized that this had a lot to do with metadata, and wished I could order a new set of vendors from room service.

For three days, I paid close attention, took good notes, and dutifully listened as the vendors demonstrated their systems according to our requested scenarios.  They tried their best.  They sent their biggest guns.  Their systems all looked fantastic ... if it was 2005.

They all had workable models for dealing with print.  They had terrific print circulation statistics, which they wasted far too much time in demonstrating.  But the closer to present needs they got, and the more they had been called upon to serve our future needs, the less they had, and the less they even seemed to grasp what we wanted. So many things were still in development, or on some vague roadmap, or minimally coming "in 2016," and we're talking functionality we need RIGHT NOW TODAY. One even prefaced his recitation of potentially supported COUNTER usage reports with the word "NISObabble."  I can't even conceive of a professional situation in which that kind of snark would be appropriate, but in my mind it absolutely summed up where their development priorities lay. In sum, those three days were more dispiriting than I could ever have imagined when we began this process well over a year ago. Maybe this process will end in a deal, and maybe it won't--I'm not in a position to vote--but whatever happens, I can see it will be a long road before we have the system we actually need.

So what do our campus libraries want?  And why do we want it?  Maybe we didn't make it clear. This is my view and only my view, informed by what our system discussed, but I do not speak for that system. I also won't speak to which vendors may or may not meet these needs, or in what way.  One thing is obvious in looking at our needs: it does indeed have a lot to do with metadata.

• Tools for working with the print collection must reflect the reality of shrinking holdings. They must support shared collection management, robust resource sharing, and easy flagging of last print copy. Special collections and digital libraries must be supported and foregrounded. This means shared, standardized metadata for bibliographic holdings, patron information, and loan rules; the system must support ways to ingest and/or discover metadata related to digital libraries, institutional repositories, and other locally-held content.
• Tools for acquiring new materials must support a high degree of automation and have the flexibility to handle individual and package purchases and subscriptions, as well as titles and packages procured through multiple consortia or demand-driven programs.  This means support for EDI, KBART, and other major standards, and metadata exchange partnerships with vendors, aggregators and publishers, especially in scholarly fields.
• Tools for electronic resources must recognize the scale and complexity of academic collections.  Many campuses are adopting "e-preferred" collection policies, and purchasing e-books on a scale unheard of in the days of print. The "million volume" e-book collection is already attainable. This means that systems must be able to handle the tasks of activation, linking, authentication, and collection maintenance with minimal intervention from library staff. Ideally, consortial purchases should be maintainable at the consortial level, while still allowing for local additions and control.  Electronic collections should be easily compared to existing print collections. Vendors should work with publishers to ensure that metadata standards and codes of practice such as KBART, TRANSFER and PIE-J are followed by all parties, and holdings data exchange should happen at the vendor-publisher level. Holdings metadata for both e-journals and e-books must be exportable in a useful format for use in 3rd-party applications such as RapidILL; direct partnerships would be even better.  Finally, easy linking and authentication through course reserves and course management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle are a must.
• Tools for analysis and assessment must privilege electronic usage. As collections trend ever more toward electronic, development priorities need to emphasize more than print circulation statistics. While e-book usage and print book circulation are not directly comparable, each reflects a valid and important aspect of library usage; however, as libraries purchase more of their new materials in electronic formats, print usage moves to the "long tail" where it reflects niche collections and older volumes, and often becomes a tool for weeding rather than guiding new purchases.  Usage for electronic resources is the new circulation count, informing purchases through a variety of evaluations--overall usage, cost-per-use, use by discipline, use by publication date, and attempted use ("turnaways").  Academic libraries spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on e-resources, pushing evaluation beyond collection development practice into important discussions regarding budgets and justification to campus stakeholders. This means at minimum that library management systems must support all reports designated standard under COUNTER release 4, for e-journals, e-books, databases, and multimedia, for all forms of usage including attempted usage.  They must allow for those reports to be combined with cost data and discipline for thoughtful analysis, and they must be flexible enough to take advantage of the additional information present in reports showing usage of older or open access content.

Bottom line, libraries need to manage, share, and assess their entire collections.  In the current state, and in the foreseeable future, no system can call itself a complete solution if it doesn't support all three of these needs.