A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age: My Take

At one of my committee meetings at the University of Arkansas this week, I was asked to give a brief overview of the document shared by the Library of Congress, titled A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age. I begin this post with my cover note, and then pick up with the thoughts I shared with the committee and want to share with you, reader. If you have any comments about the report, or my opinions about it, I would love to hear from you!



"Based on comments from the 26 test partners of RDA, the Library of Congress is initiating the process to create a new bibliographic framework to replace MARC. The comments indicated that:

…Were the limitations of the MARC standard lifted, the full capabilities of RDA would be more useful to the library community. Many of the libraries indicated that they had little confidence RDA changes would yield significant benefits without a change to the underlying MARC carrier. Several of the test organizations were especially concerned that the MARC structure would hinder the separation of elements and ability to use URLs in a linked data environment.

The attached document states that the work of this process will be done by two committees: an advisory and a technical committee. P. [2] of the document has an email address for committee member nominations. The duties of the current working group are not stated.

The working group establishes eight basic guidelines in the document. Key among them are the accommodation of linked data, broader compatibility with other (non-library) metadata schema, and the compatibility with and continuance of MARC for as long as required. No real specifics are given for the implementation of these guidelines, work which presumably will be done in the two aforementioned committees. In addition, on p. [4], the document directs the committees to focus on the “Web environment, Linked Data principles and mechanisms, and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a basic data model.”

In p. [6] of the document, the working group describes a timeline for this initiative that covers the next two years after grant funding for the committees, et cetera, is received. The timeline mentions creating consultative groups, as well as creating some of the very basic foundations for a new bibliographic framework. In the meantime, there is a listserv for this initiative where discussions and comments are welcome.

Listserv: http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/bibframe.html
Website: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/
Document: http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-103111.html"

My initial reaction is that libraries should delay full RDA implementation and adoption until this new bibliographic framework is in place. AACR2 and MARC are designed to complement each other, and based on what I know, RDA and MARC do not work particularly well together. I suppose this is to be expected (in a way) as MARC is roughly 50 years old, and RDA is attempting to describe items in formats that were not even in existence at the birth of MARC. Libraries should wait to implement RDA in a format that fully utilizes all of the functionality of these new rules. To do so sooner seems to be a bit premature. Furthermore, the document seems to imply that the application of RDA to items will change as this new framework is implemented, so it seems to me that it might be best to wait for both RDA and this new framework to be in place before moving to RDA so that catalogers will not have to retrain on RDA in the new format, after training on RDA in MARC. Beyond just library adoption, vendors will be resistant to having to foot the bill to accommodate two major changes - and (I think) will want to incorporate both standards together to reduce their costs. This would be true not only for vendors of bibliographic data, but also for major ILS vendors who will not want to adjust their products twice.

This seems to beg the question - Why didn’t they do this in the first place? Why not wait for a framework that takes RDA to its full potential? If they initially intended to use RDA in MARC, why didn’t they write RDA to be complimentary with MARC, rather than assuming that RDA operates in some kind of fictional bibliographic universe? This troubles me, so much so that I don’t really like dwelling on it. But, how could they miss the fact that RDA does not play really well with MARC, when that is the meta data format in the library world?

At the meeting, one of my colleagues mentioned that the new framework would be created and ready to implement with MARC. Can the work really be done, and done well in two years? I think not, honestly. Its taken RDA 13 years (or so) to be ready thus far, and they really expect the creation and implementation of a format that underlies all meta data in our catalogs (well, most) to be done in two years?

I suppose that it’s a bit early to make all these assumptions and predictions, but I thought you all might appreciate some opinions from that document. Please let me know your thoughts as well!!