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The importance of bibliographic information as a societal tool in the future is stressed. A definition of and the necessity for bibliographic utilities are presented. After illustrating some operating bibliographic utilities in North America, the history and present situation of bibliographic control in Japan are introduced. Bibliographic activities and library automation at the National Diet Library (NDL) and other libraries in Japan are described. Finally, a developing plan for the establishment of Japanese bibliographic utilities is proposed.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

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.

In this study, the authors want to identify current possible causes for citing and referencing errors in scholarly literature to compare if something changed from the snapshot provided by Sweetland in his 1989 paper.

The authors analysed reference elements, i.e. bibliographic references, mentions, quotations and respective in-text reference pointers, from 729 articles published in 147 journals across the 27 subject areas.

The outcomes of the analysis pointed out that bibliographic errors have been perpetuated for decades and that their possible causes have increased, despite the encouraged use of technological facilities, i.e. the reference managers.

As far as the authors know, the study is the best recent available analysis of errors in referencing and citing practices in the literature since Sweetland (1989).

The purpose of this paper is to create a model for an XML document that will carry information about bibliographic formats. The model will be given in the form of an XML schema describing two bibliographic formats, UNIMARC and MARC 21.

The description of bibliographic formats using the XML schema language may be discussed in two ways. The first one relates to creating an XML schema in a way that all elements of the bibliographic format are described separately. The second way, used in this paper, is creating an XML schema as a set of elements that presents concepts of bibliographic formats. A schema created in the second way is appropriate for use in implementation of cataloguing software.

The result is an XML schema that describes MARC 21 and UNIMARC formats. The instance of that schema is an XML document describing a bibliographic format that will be used in software systems for cataloguing. An XML document that is an instance of the proposed XML schema is applied in the development of the editor for cataloguing in the BISIS library information system. This XML document represents input information for that editor. In this way, the implementation of the editor becomes independent of the bibliographic format.

The created XML schema cannot serve as an electronic manual because there is some information about the format that is not included in it. In order to overcome this shortcoming an additional XML schema that will contain remaining format data may be provided.

The originality lies in the idea of creating one XML schema for two bibliographic formats. The schema contains elements that are models for data used in cataloguing tools. On the basis of that XML schema, the object model of bibliographic formats is implemented as well as software component for manipulating format data. This component can be used in development of library software systems.

The origins of librarianship in Uganda are indicated and the legislation affecting bibliographic control in the country described. Issues are discussed including publishing, a national library and national bibliographic agency, information technology, education and standards. Factors affecting the current state of bibliographic control in Uganda are examined and relevant agencies and publications listed. Strategies for further development are put forward and recommendations made.