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This chapter helps us to understand the staffing and workflow ramifications of Linked Data. A survey of the current state of metadata work, compared to the possibilities and intentions of Linked Data modeling and technology, allows us to make a needs assessment for future planning. Findings are that current trends in metadata work – distributed production alongside centralized management, iterative and collaborative resource description – are appropriate in a Linked Data environment, and should be further cultivated. A plan for training staff on the conceptual modeling of Linked Data is also outlined, together providing a launching pad to begin organizational planning for Linked Data.

As the demand for new services strains library resources, directors of research libraries must practice efficient cost management and demonstrate alignment with institutional objectives. For technical services, this requires managing the effective cost of metadata services, assessing core functions, and evaluating operational performance. This paper uses Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs) as a framework to expose the network of local and global dependencies that currently define the field of operation for technical services. Comparative analyses using a CASs framework were conducted on reports by the Library of Congress, the Heads of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries Interest Group, and the British Library. Each report addresses financial pressures placed on bibliographic control services in response to the 2008 recession. Statements within the reports were assigned to one of three dominant systems: bibliographic control, institutional identification, and distributive networks. The statements were then mapped to the CASs characteristics to determine environmental pressures and areas of adaptation. The reports exposed long-standing dependencies that tie local bibliographic control to a complex network of external agencies. Institutional shifts toward user-centered services coupled with growing fiscal restraint has disrupted the stability of these networks. The analyses found that in all cases network instability led to localized institutional adaptation to existing economic pressures. The paper recommends applying a CASs model to assess the alignment of distributed metadata standards and systems development to local institutional objectives.

The library metadata of the twenty-first century is moving toward a linked data model. BIBFRAME, which stands for Bibliographic Framework Initiative, was launched in 2011 with the goal to make bibliographic descriptions sharable and interoperable on the web. Since its inception, BIBFRAME development has made remarkable progress. The focus of BIBFRAME discussions has now shifted from experimentation to implementation. The library community is collaborating with all stakeholders to build the infrastructure for BIBFRAME production in order to provide the environment where BIBFRAME data can be easily created, reused, and shared. This chapter addresses library community's BIBFRAME endeavors, with the focus on Library of Congress, Program for Cooperative Program, Linked Data for Production Phase 2, and OCLC. This chapter discusses BIBFRAME's major differences from the MARC standard with the hope of helping metadata practitioners get a general understanding of the future metadata activity. While the BIBFRAME landscape is beginning to take shape and its practical implications are beginning to develop, it is anticipated that MARC records will continue to be circulated for the foreseeable future. Upcoming multistandard metadata environments will bring new challenges to metadata practitioners, and this chapter addresses the required knowledge and skills for this transitional and multistandard metadata landscape. Finally, this chapter explores BIBFRAME's remaining challenges to realize the BIBFRAME production environment and asserts that BIBFRAME's ultimate goal is to deliver a value-added next-web search experience to our users.

Quality, an abstract concept, requires concrete definition in order to be actionable. This chapter moves the quality discussion from the theoretical to the workplace, building steps needed to manage quality issues.

The chapter reviews general data studies, web quality studies, and metadata quality studies to identify and define dimensions of data quality and quantitative measures for each concept. The chapter reviews preferred communication methods which make findings meaningful to administrators.

The chapter describes how quality dimensions are practically applied. It suggests criteria necessary to identify high priority populations, and resources in core subject areas or formats, as quality does not have to be completely uniform. The author emphasizes examining the information environment, documenting practice, and developing measurement standards. The author stresses that quality procedures must rapidly evolve to reflect local expectations, the local information environment, technology capabilities, and national standards.

This chapter combines theory with practical application. It stresses the importance of metadata and recognizes quality as a cyclical process which balances the necessity of national standards, the needs of the user, and the work realities of the metadata staff. This chapter identifies decision points, outlines future action, and explains communication options.

On August 26, 1971, OCLC introduced the online union catalog and shared cataloging system. During the 1970s, OCLC focused its efforts on creating and expanding the online cataloging system and telecommunications network. It added an online interlibrary loan system in 1979. In the 1980s, OCLC began adapting distributed computing and microcomputing technologies as its product and service lines expanded to some 60 offerings. The organization also began looking at ways to move beyond bibliography by furnishing information not only to library staffs, but also to library patrons. In the 1990s, OCLC launched a new core business in reference services. (Smith, 1998, pp. 251–252). Now, in the 21st century, OCLC is introducing tools, services and infrastructure to manage the life cycle of digital content in libraries.

This essay demonstrates how information systems — collections of documents, data, or other information-bearing objects — function internally as sites for creative manipulation of genre resources. In the information systems context, these textual activities are not clearly traced to the purposeful actions of specific writers.

Genre development for information systems can result from actions that may appear individually to be rote, repetitive, passive, and uninteresting. But as these actions are aggregated at increasing scales, genre components interact and shift, even if change is limited to one element of the larger assemblage. Although these changes may not be initiated by writers in accordance with targeted work activities and associated rhetorical goals, the composite texts thus produced are nonetheless powerful documents that come to partially constitute the broader activities they appear to merely support.

In demonstrating “writerless” phenomena of genre change in distributed, regulated systems, this essay complements and extends the strong body of existing work in genre studies that emphasizes the writer’s perspective and agency in its accounts of genre development. By showing how continually evolving compound documents such as digital libraries constitute such sites of unacknowledged genre change, this essay demonstrates how the social actions that these composite documents facilitate for their users also change.

Satellite images can be a powerful source of data for analyses of conflict dynamics and social movements, but sociology has been slow to develop methods and metadata standards for transforming those images into data. We ask: How can satellite images become useful data? What are the key methodological and ethical considerations for incorporating high-resolution satellite images into conflict research? Why are metadata important in this work? We begin with a review of recent developments in satellite-based social scientific work on conflict, then discuss the technical and epistemological issues raised by machine processing of satellite information into user-ready images. We argue that high-resolution images can be useful analytical tools provided they are used with full awareness of their ethical and technical parameters. To support our analysis, we draw on two novel studies of satellite data research practices during the Syrian war. We conclude with a discussion of specific methodological procedures tried and tested in our ongoing work.