Author: Diane Hillmann

I was really looking forward to watching the webcast this afternoon of the recommendations of the Library of Congress’s Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (their website is at: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/). It turned out that a lot of other people were planning on tuning in as well, and, from what I can determine, hardly anybody got to see much. I tried in vain for 30 minutes to get the streaming video to start, and finally watched a few minutes of Janet Swan Hill (most of which had her mouth totally out of sync with the audio). Then it died, and that was it. I saw some list postings that indicated that I saw as much as anyone, and more than some. There is some success in this: LC is attempting to keep people involved in the process, and webcasting is a good way to do that, given the way…

Betty Landesman, ALA Representative to NISO, sent a recent email around with some information about ISO/NP 27730, the International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI). This is a new project proposal to develop an international standard identifier for collections in libraries and related organizations such as archives, museums, and publishers, and is directly related to NISO’s draft standard Z39.91, Collection Description Specification. Unfortunately, the proposal is behind ISO’s pay-to-view firewall, which is a real impediment for those of us who’d like to look before jumping in. She sent a copy of it around with her email, so it would be available from her, or from me, if you’d like to take a look. (Betty is at: landesb@ors.od.nih.gov, and I can be found at: dih1@cornell.edu) The proposal is at http://www.niso.org/pdfs/ISO_NP_27730ISCIandWD.pdf. From the Introduction, the need for this standard is succinctly stated: “ISO TC46 has developed standard identifiers for a wide variety of entities….

As part of my work life (not to mention in my role as LITA Standards Coordinator) I subscribe to a lot of discussion lists. Many of you do the same, and I’m betting you’re like me—you don’t read everything, but the posts of particular people always get noticed. The “Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries (NGC4LIB@listserv.nd.edu) list is always a good one for useful discussion, and Karen Coyle is often up to her eyeballs in the discussion. One recent post of hers on standards (May 11, for those of you who want to check the archives) was so good and thought provoking I wanted to make sure more people saw it—particularly LITA people who have a strong interest in standards. Karen starts out by quoting a previous comment by Casey Bisson: “OpenSearch creator DeWitt Clinton spoke of it along these lines: standards bodies are good at formalizing what’s become standard practice….

The last speaker was Jennifer Bowen from the University of Rochester. Jennifer’s most recent claim to fame is as the ALA representative to the Joint Steering Committee for RDA development, but she explicitly preceded her remarks by commenting on the pleasure of speaking for herself at this meeting. She began by explaining the RDA development structure, including the small paid staff supporting the effort. She described the reasons behind RDA’s development, and expressed a teensy bit of regret that she has stepped down as ALA rep just as things got really interesting. She pointed out some of the things that hampered RDA’s development: • too much hype, too many hard to achieve goals • need for backwards compatibility interfered with looking forward • tight funding and time line • success of the standard tied to the success of the product • consultation process needed improvement Consulting with other communities has…

This second in a series of ‘hearings’ under the aegis of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control occurred at ALA Headquarters in Chicago, in a large spare room that Keith Michael Fiels, ALA Executive Direction, quipped reflected the “opulence of the organization.” But there was juice, coffee, and high-end pastries, so few complained. The room was packed full (around a hundred, based on number of full chairs), with both locals and out-of-towners. Deanna Marcum welcomed the group, introduced its task and expectations and mentioned the group’s website: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/. She mentioned LC’s strategic planning process (38 working groups—whoa!), and in particular a report that is in process on the history of bibliographic control, from 2000 B.C. forward. She promised that this report would be made available when completed. José-Marie Griffiths emphasized that the group welcomes feedback from the community, and invited the participants to engage…

The latest NISO Newsline arrived in my email mailbox last week, and provided its usual brisk overview of the standards landscape. I’d like to recommend to other LITA members that a subscription to the Newsline is an excellent way to keep track of what’s going on in standards. Each month, there are a number of reports on NISO activities, an overview of new specifications and standards, and a gathering of media stories about standards of interest. This month’s highlights for me were: “NISO Forms New Education Committee” –an announcement of a newly formed Education Committee (which includes some librarian members) charged with developing training programs. Several are already scheduled, covering the themes of licensing issues (June 11), e-resource management (September 24-25), usage statistics (November 2), and institutional repositories (December 3). The Committee has a webpage at: http://www.niso.org/committees/education/index.html “EDitEUR, ONIX for Licensing Terms – Publications License message format (ONIX-PL), Draft 0.9.26”…

I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to an important podcast interview by Scott Mace of Open Source Conversations with Karen Coyle. The interview is linked from Karen’s blog, “Coyle’s InFormation” at http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2007/03/podcast-on-libraries-and-standards.html. Like all of us who do most of our communication in writing, she found things to criticize in what she said during the interview, and the itch to edit her own words took hold. But don’t pay attention to Karen’s second thoughts—the interview ranges across an astounding number of topics: cataloging history and standards, ebooks, DRM, etc., and frankly I don’t know anyone else who can comment intelligently on all those topics. Karen reminds us in the interview that libraries and librarians have been deeply involved in creating and using standards for more than a century. The world is certainly a lot more confusing than it was in Dewey’s day, and the standards development going on around us…