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The aim of this paper is to highlight the relationship between cataloging data and reference service and the importance of including reference librarians, in general resource description and access (RDA) training.

A literature review and the author’s experiences related to implementing RDA are presented with minimal cataloging jargon to help librarians better understand the effects of cataloging standards on reference service.

There is a noticeable lack of research and training related to RDA for audiences beyond technical services. More research is needed to determine how users are interacting with the catalog, how bibliographic data is supporting their discovery and access, what, if any, obstacles reference librarians encounter as a result of RDA and how future iterations of RDA may open bibliographic data to communities beyond the library.

This paper is one the few that discuss how RDA may affect reference service. It will be useful for providing librarians with a general understanding of the relationship between cataloging and reference and may serve as a starting point for further research.

Within standards for bibliographic description, common usage has served as a prominent design principle, guiding the choice and form of certain names and titles. In practice, however, the determination of common usage is difficult and lends itself to varying interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and role of common usage in bibliographic description through an examination of previously unexplored connections between common usage and the concept of warrant.

A brief historical review of the concept of common usage was conducted, followed by a case study of the current bibliographic standard Resource Description and Access (RDA) employing qualitative content analysis to examine the appearances, delineations and functions of common usage. Findings were then compared to the existing literature on warrant in knowledge organization.

Multiple interpretations of common usage coexist within RDA and its predecessors, and the current prioritization of these interpretations tends to render user perspectives secondary to those of creators, scholars and publishers. These varying common usages and their overall reliance on concrete sources of evidence reveal a mixture of underlying warrants, with literary warrant playing a more prominent role in comparison to the also present scientific/philosophical, use and autonomous warrants.

This paper offers new understanding of the concept of common usage, and adds to the body of work examining warrant in knowledge organization practices beyond classification. It sheds light on the design of the influential standard RDA while revealing the implications of naming and labeling in widely shared bibliographic data.

Article provides an overview (as of September 2006) of the genesis, history, and processes involved in creating the new cataloging rules, a work‐in‐progress, under the working title, RDA: Resource Description and Access. Also discusses structure and content, as well as possible uses outside of the library community.

Describes the history of the new rules and how they are currently organized, as well as where to go to keep informed of the new rules.

RDA will likely be adopted by libraries; because of its flexibility, there is a possibility that other non‐library and non‐MARC information communities will also be able to make use of this tool.

Article is of great benefit to librarians who want an overview of RDA in a nutshell. Provokes thought on flexibility of the new rules, using them for other communications standards than MARC and for other metadata schemas.

The purpose of this paper is to validate the usefulness of resource description and access (RDA) from user perspectives by implementing an RDA-based bibliographic retrieval system, and comparing it against two retrieval systems.

Surveys and interviews were conducted to gather responses from 20 subjects who used the systems. Usability was measured according to the following metrics: search usefulness from search process and results; search efficiency, measured in time and the number of steps involved; general satisfaction for search results and process, and for information need; satisfaction for search functionalities, with five sub-measures (usability of functions of search tool, appropriateness of search results, usability of additional information, usability of associative relations, and appropriateness of search categories); and system convenience in terms of understandability and ease.

The survey results indicate that all but the satisfaction for appropriateness of search categories showed significant differences between the systems. The interviews show that the RDA system received from the subjects a more positive evaluation compared to the counterpart systems, in search usefulness, search efficiency, general search satisfaction, satisfaction for search functionalities.

Though a few organizations such as the Library of Congress in the USA have implemented RDA, no such endeavors have been undertaken in the context of Korean bibliography, and especially for the systematic validation of usability of such a system from user perspectives.

This is the first published study that validates the usefulness perceived by users of RDA in the context of Korean bibliography.

The 1998 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) document “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” (FRBR) has inspired a family of models that view bibliographic resources in terms of multiple entities differentiated with regard to meaning, expression, and physicality. The purpose of this paper is to compare how three FRBR and FRBR-like models have been expressed as Semantic Web vocabularies based on Resource Description Framework (RDF). The paper focusses on IFLA’s own vocabulary for FRBR; RDF vocabularies for Resource Description and Access (RDA), an emergent FRBR-based standard for library cataloging; and BIBFRAME, an emergent FRBR-like, native-RDF standard for bibliographic data.

Simple test records using the RDF vocabularies were analyzed using software that supports inferencing.

In some cases, what the data actually means appears to differ from what the vocabulary developers presumably intended to mean. Data based on the FRBR vocabulary appears particularly difficult to integrate with data based on different models.

Some of the RDF vocabularies reviewed in the paper could usefully be simplified, enabling libraries to integrate their data more easily into the wider information ecosystem on the Web. Requirements for data consistency and quality control could be met by emergent standards of the World Wide Web Consortium for validating RDF data according to integrity constraints.

There are few such comparisons of the RDF expressions of these models, which are widely assumed to represent the future of library cataloging.

This study aims to investigate Malaysian catalogers’ awareness, familiarity and understanding of the new bibliographic content standard, i.e. Resource Description and Access (RDA).

The survey method was adopted in this study. Questionnaires were used to gather data from respondents. The study included catalogers from higher education institutions in the area of Klang Valley, Malaysia. Purposive sampling method was used to identify the respondents.

The results revealed that, in general, though Malaysian catalogers were aware of the RDA, they were only familiar with the basics of RDA and its related topics. They were mainly aware of topics regarding the overview and development of RDA, and indicated low understanding of other topics, such as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), related to RDA. The study found that respondents acknowledged the inadequacy of their basic understanding of RDA. The study also identified the catalogers’ needs and preference for RDA training. Most of the catalogers favored learning more about RDA context topics which include FRBR, Functional Requirements for Authority Data and International Cataloging Principles. They indicated willingness to undergo a two- to three-day intensive workshop to learn more about RDA.

Like in other countries, catalogers in Malaysia may also encounter problems when implementing the new RDA. Findings of this study would be useful in designing RDA trainings for catalogers.

No study has been done to investigate Malaysian catalogers’ awareness and understanding of RDA.

There has been a significant increase in activity over the past few years to integrate library metadata with the Semantic Web. While much of this has involved the development of controlled vocabularies as “linked data”, there have recently been concerted attempts to represent standard library models for bibliographic metadata in forms that are compatible with Semantic Web technologies. This paper aims to give an overview of these initiatives, describing relationships between them in the context of the Semantic Web.

The paper focusses on standards created and maintained by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, including Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, Functional Requirements for Authority Data, and International Standard Bibliographic Description. It also covers related standards and models such as RDA – Resource Description and Access, REICAT (the new Italian cataloguing rules) and CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, and the technical infrastructure for supporting relationships between them, including the RDA/ONIX framework for resource categorization, and Vocabulary Mapping Framework.

The paper discusses the importance of these developments for releasing the rich metadata held by libraries as linked data, addressing semantic and statistical inferencing, integration with user‐ and machine‐generated metadata, and authenticity, veracity and trust. It also discusses the representation of controlled vocabularies, including subject classifications and headings, name authorities, and terminologies for descriptive content, in a multilingual environment.

Finally, the paper discusses the potential collective impact of these initiatives on metadata workflows and management systems.

The paper provides a general review of recent activity for those interested in the development of library standards, the Semantic Web, and universal bibliographic control.

The nature of information retrieval applications, the Z39.50 protocol, and its relationship to other OSI protocols are described. Through Z39.50 a client system views a remote server's database as an information resource, not merely a collection of data. Z39.50 allows a client to build queries in terms of logical information elements supported by the server. It also provides a framework for transmitting queries, managing results, and controlling resources. Sidebars describe the Z39.50 Implementors Group, the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency, and international standards for OSI library application protocols.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential strengths and weaknesses of the BIBFRAME bibliographic model and outline its purpose and key features. In addition, it discusses specific aspects of the model with respect to the pre-existing models of bibliographic description.

A review of source and secondary materials regarding BIBFRAME was undertaken, and a comparison of the conclusions derived from this literature was made to the pre-existing models of bibliographic description.

If the BIBFRAME Initiative can overcome what will likely be some significant challenges to the development and implementation of the model, BIBFRAME appears to be poised to become the next standard of bibliographic description and exchange for the library community.

The findings and conclusions of this paper are based upon an in-depth literature review, not on theoretical or empirical derivations or examples. As a result, further research of both theoretical and empirical natures need to be developed.

BIBFRAME may well become the next standard of bibliographic description and exchange for the library community, leading to significant changes in cataloging practices over the years.

To the extent that BIBFRAME can expand discovery mechanisms, the vast array of information currently available to information seekers will open up in previously unthought of ways.

This paper synthesizes a literature that was developed during a more preliminary design of the bibliographic model BIBFRAME and adds to the literature by discussing newer capabilities that have been designed into BIBFRAME 2.0.

The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations for making a conceptual shift from current document‐centric to data‐centric metadata. The importance of adjusting current library models such as Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) to models based on Linked Data principles is discussed. In relation to technical formats, the paper suggests the need to leapfrog from machine readable cataloguing (MARC) to Resource Description Framework (RDF), without disrupting current library metadata operations.

This paper identified and reviewed relevant works on overarching topics that include standards‐based metadata, Web 2.0 and Linked Data. The review of these works is contextualised to inform the recommendations identified in this paper. Articles were retrieved from databases such as Emerald and D‐Lib Magazine. Books, electronic articles and relevant blog posts were also used to support the arguments put forward in this paper.

Contemporary library standards and models carried forward some of the constraints from the traditional card catalogue system. The resultant metadata are mainly attuned to human consumption rather than machine processing. In view of current user needs and technological development such as the interest in Linked Data, it is found important that current metadata models such as FRBR and RDA are re‐conceptualised.

This paper discusses the implications of re‐conceptualising current metadata models in light of Linked Data principles, with emphasis on metadata sharing, facilitation of serendipity, identification of Zeitgeist and emergent metadata, provision of faceted navigation, and enriching metadata with links.

Most of the literature on Linked Data for libraries focus on answering the “how to” questions of using RDF/XML and SPARQL technologies, however, this paper focuses mainly on answering “why” Linked Data questions, thus providing an underlying rationale for using Linked Data. The discussion on mixed‐metadata approaches, serendipity, Zeitgeist and emergent metadata is considered to provide an important rationale to the role of Linked Data for libraries.