RDA vocabularies and concepts Gordon Dunsire Depute Director

RDA vocabularies and concepts Gordon Dunsire Depute Director, Centre for Digital Library Research University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland Presented to staff of the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh 20 Jul 2009

Overview ² Part 1: Introduction to RDA ²Benefits to users and cataloguers ²Collaboration with other communities/standards ² Q/A and break ² Part 2: Introduction to the Semantic Web ²Concepts and methods ²Role of the library community ² Q/A and break ² Part 3: Putting it all together ²A short history of the evolution of the catalogue record

RDA vocabularies and concepts Part 1: Introduction to RDA

RDA ² Resource Description and Access ² A new standard for creating bibliographic metadata ²Based on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules ²In development since 1841 (Panizzi’s rules for the British Museum) ²And FRBR and other more modern stuff ²Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records ²Developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) ²Published 1998

User-centred features of RDA (1) ² Improves the FRBRizability of catalogues ² Covers all types of user ²Those who need to find, identify, select, obtain and use information, and manage and organize information bibliographically ² Covers all media ²Print-based, digital; textual, visual, etc. ²Equal, even treatment gives more control to the user in finding and choosing the most appropriate resources

FRBRisation Work Symphony no. 1 Is realised through Expression 1 Expression 2 LSO performance Is embodied in Manifestation 1. 1 Manifestation 2. 2 DVD-A Is exemplified by Item 1. 1. 1 Item 2. 2. 2 Copy on shelf

User-centred features of RDA (2) ² Clearly distinguishes content from carrier ²E. g. Moving pictures on DVD; text on CD-ROM ²Helpful for users with special needs ²E. g. restrict search to non-visual resources ² Multinational ²Anglo-centricity (and cataloguer-eccentricity) removed ²Abbreviations and acronyms avoided ²Latinisms removed ² Farewell s. n. , s. l. , et al. ²[Still arguing about square brackets!]

User-centred features of RDA (3) ² Independent of technical metadata formats ²Can be used with MARC, DC (Dublin Core) ²And a whole bunch of other acronyms ²Gives user familiar metadata regardless of what system is used ² Designed for the digital environment ²RDA will be published as an online product ²So could be incorporated in user help facilities ² E. g. How a “preferred title for the work” (uniform title) is derived

Cataloguer-centred features of RDA (1) ² Online product designed to interface and integrate with cataloguing modules ²Work-flow integration will give step-by-step and contextual access to content rules ²Possibility of adding local examples ²Possibility of “my. RDA”, removing unwanted rules and unused options ²LMS vendors being kept informed ²Avoidance of repetitive strain injury ²Looking for that rule on corporate body main entry in AARC 2

Cataloguer-centred features of RDA (2) ² More emphasis on cataloguer’s judgment ²Guidelines rather than “rules” ² Rules grouped by bibliographic element rather than format ² Bibliographic elements related to FRBR entities (related to user tasks) ²Why am I recording this information? ² Authority control included ² Generally compatible with AACR

RDA and ONIX ² ONIX (Online Information Exchange ) ²Publishing industry metadata standard ² 2 day workshop, March 2006, British Library, London ²RDA Editor, ONIX reps, facilitator ²Followed up via email and tele-con ² RDA/ONIX framework for resource categorization, August 2006 ²Distinguishes content from carrier (at last!) ² Intention to extend framework ²Status: Resources permitting – now permitted!

RDA and DCMI ² DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) ² 2 day meeting, April/May 2007, British Library, London ²RDA Editor, reps for RDA, DC and related Semantic Web communities ²Established the DCMI RDA Task Group ²Operates via wiki, email, tele-con, meetings at DC annual conferences ²Charter: To define components of the draft standard "RDA - Resource Description and Access" as an RDF vocabulary for use in developing a Dublin Core application profile. ²Status: Ongoing, but nearly complete

RDA and FRBR ² FRBR Review Group, August 2007, WLIC (IFLA), Durban, South Africa ² New project: To define appropriate namespaces for FRBR (entity-relationship) in RDF and other appropriate syntaxes ²Status: Report and recommendations discussed at WLIC, Québec City, Canada ²Delayed by IFLA website re-organisation ² FRBR recently extended to Object-oriented FRBR (FRBRoo) ²Based on CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM)

RDA and FRAD ² Functional Requirements for Authority Data ² Published in May 2009 ² Likely to be included in the FRBR namespace project ² RDA designed to be FRAD-ready ²Generalities already incorporated, with placeholders, etc. ²FRAD “Family” entity used in RDA ²FRBR only defines person and corporate body entities

RDA/ONIX framework ² An ontology developed by RDA and the publishing community to improve metadata interoperability ² Set of low-level attributes for describing the content and carrier of a bibliographic resource ² Controlled vocabularies for some attributes ² Attributes combined to form high-level content and carrier types for RDA

RDA/ONIX framework example ² RDA content type “spoken word” ² High-level label for a framework base content category ² Category attributes ² Character: Language ² Sensory. Mode: Hearing ² Image. Dimensionality: not applicable ² Image. Movement: not applicable ² User: what resources have content I can listen to? ² = OPAC: what content types have Sensory. Mode: Hearing? ² (“Spoken word”; “Performed music”; etc. ) ² then OPAC: list bib records with these content types!

Vocabulary Mapping Framework (1) ² JISC-funded project to extend the RDA/ONIX framework ²Due for completion early November 2009 ²Lead by publishing community ²GD is consultant ² Will develop an ontology/categorisation of relationships between/among bibliographic entities and agent entities (parties) ²E. g. Manifestion is-published-by Publisher; Work is-created-by Author; Work is-derived-from Work ²E. g. “Creator” > “Author”, “Collector”, “Illustrator”; “Author” = “Writer”; etc.

Vocabulary Mapping Framework (2) ² Relationship terms from several standards will be mapped to the ontology ²CIDOC-CRM, RDA, FRBR, FRAD, MARC 21, etc. ² Mappings then provide a hub-and-spoke mapping between any pair of standards ²Efficient, as direct pair mappings not required ²Will improve metadata interoperability in largescale, heterogeneous resource discovery services ² Ontology, terms, mappings compatible with Semantic Web (namespaces, etc. )

RDA vocabularies and concepts Part 2: Introduction to the Semantic Web

A problem ² Humans are very good at processing information ²Creation, analysis, synthesis, communication ²Some say this is what defines us ² We have invented machines to process data ²Faster, globally, non-stop ² The result is the information eruption ²The Web: a continual explosion ² Information professionals cannot keep up ² We need our machines to process metadata

Semantic Web ² “… an evolving extension of the [WWW] in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. ” ²Wikipedia, English, 10. 08 15 Jul 2009 ² The basic building block is Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Resource Description Framework (RDF) ²Simple metadata statements in the form of subject-predicate-object expressions, called triples ²E. g. “This presentation” – “has creator” – “Gordon Dunsire” ²“presentation” and “creator” are metadata structure terms ²Classes and properties ² “this. . . ” and “Gordon Dunsire” are metadata content terms ²Instances or values

Semantic Web applications ² RDF Schema (RDFS) ²Expresses the structure of metadata classes and properties ² Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) ²Expresses the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri and other types of controlled vocabularies ² Web Ontology Language (OWL) ²Explicitly represents the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between them (scope, etc. )

Machine-processing ² RDF is about making machine-processable statements, requiring ²A machine-processable language for representing RDF statements ²Extensible Markup Language (XML) ²A system of machine-processable identifiers for resources (subjects, predicates, objects) ²Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) ²For full machine-processing, an RDF statement is a set of three URIs

Identifiers ² Things requiring identification (a URI): ²Subject “This presentation” ²e. g. its electronic location (URL): http: //cdlr. strath. ac. uk/pubs/dunsireg/NLSRDA. pps ²Predicate “has creator” ²e. g. http: //purl. org/dc/terms/creator ²Object “Gordon Dunsire” ²e. g. URI of entry in Library of Congress Name Authority File: http: //errol. oclc. org/laf/nb 2001 -72552. html ² Declaring vocabularies/values as “namespaces” in Semantic Web applications provides URIs

RDA RDF vocabularies ² Being added to the National Science Digital Library metadata registry ²Stored in a database ²Output as RDF(S)/SKOS ²Automatic creation of a URI for each entry ² Base domain: http: //RDVocab. info ²First part of every RDA vocabulary URI ²Identifies the “namespace” or collection/set of terms

RDA value in SKOS (part 1) <? xml version="1. 0" encoding = "UTF-8"? > <rdf: RDF xmlns="http: //www. w 3. org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns: rdf="http: //www. w 3. org/1999/02/22 -rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns: rdfs="http: //www. w 3. org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns: skos="http: //www. w 3. org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns: dc="http: //purl. org/dc/elements/1. 1/" xmlns: reg="http: //metadataregistry. org/uri/schema/registry/"> :  :  : <skos: Concept. Scheme rdf: about="http: //RDVocab. info/term. List/RDAContent. Type"> : : <dc: title>RDA Content Type</dc: title> : </skos: Concept. Scheme> XML namespaces SKOS NSDL Registry Vocabulary URI

RDA value in SKOS (part 2) Term URI :  : <skos: Concept rdf: about="http: //RDVocab. info/term. List/RDAContent. Type/1013" xml: lang="en"> : : <skos: in. Scheme rdf: resource="http: //RDVocab. info/term. List/RDAContent. Type"/> : : <reg: status rdf: resource="http: //metadataregistry. org/uri/Reg. Status/1002"/> Term : : <skos: pref. Label xml: lang="en">spoken word</skos: pref. Label> : : <skos: definition xml: lang="en">Content expressed through language in an audible form. </skos: definition> : : <skos: scope. Note xml: lang="en">Includes recorded readings, recitations, speeches, interviews, oral histories, etc. , computer-generated speech, Definition etc. </skos: scope. Note> : : <skos: pref. Label xml: lang="de">gesprochene Worte</skos: pref. Label> <skos: scope. Note xml: lang="de">Umfasst aufgezeichnete Lesungen, Rezitationen, Reden, Interviews, mündliche Überlieferungen usw. und maschinell erzeugte Sprache. </skos: scope. Note> : : <skos: definition xml: lang="de">Inhalt, der durch Sprache in einer hörbaren Form ausgedrückt wird. </skos: definition> : </skos: Concept> Registry status Termterm (German) URI

RDA value in SKOS (part 3) :  : <skos: Concept rdf: about="http: //metadataregistry. org/uri/Reg. Status/1002"> : : <skos: pref. Label xml: lang="en">New-Proposed</skos: pref. Label> : </skos: Concept> Registry status term URI </rdf: RDF Registry status term

RDA content type “spoken word” The term “spoken word” can be referenced as the value of the field “content type” in any metadata record using RDF/XML (Semantic Web): … xmlns: rdvct = http: //RDVocab. info/term. List/RDAContentype# … <… rdvct: 1013 …> … The field/attribute/element “content type” can be referenced in a similar way to the RDF Schema for RDA elements being developed by DCMI/RDA

More library namespaces ² IFLA bibliographic control standards ² Discussions during WLIC 2008, Québec City ² RDF Schema for entities and relationships from Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) ² E. g. “Work”, “has Expression” / ”is Expression of” ² Others are likely to follow: ² Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) ² International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) ² ISBD/XML Task Group ² Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) ² UNIMARC ² Library of Congress taking a similar approach with MARC 21

RDA vocabularies and concepts Part 3: Putting it all together

A short history of the evolution of the library catalogue record

In the beginning. . . Lee, T. B. Cataloguing has a future. - Audio disc (Spoken word). - Donated by the author. 1. Metadata . . . the catalogue card

From flat-file record. . . Bibliographic description Name authority Author: Lee, T. B. Title: Cataloguing has a future Content type: Spoken word Carrier type: Audio disc Subject: Metadata Provenance: Donated by the author Name: Biography: . . . Subject authority Term: Definition: . . . to relational record

From flat-file description. . . Bibliographic description Author: Title: Work Content type: Author: type: Carrier Subject: Expression Provenance: Content type: Manifestation Item Cataloguing has a future Spoken word Audio disc Donated by the author Spoken word Name authority Name: Biography: . . . Lee, T. B. Subject authority Term: Definition: . . . Metadata . . . to FRBR record

From FRBR record. . . Work Name authority Author: Subject: Expression Content type: Name: Subject authority Spoken word Manifestation Term: Metadata RDA content type Title: Cataloguing has a future Carrier type: Audio disc Item Provenance: Donor: Lee, T. B. Donated by the author Term: RDA carrier type Term: Amazon/Publisher Title: . . . to extinction!

Where is the record? ² Implicit, not explicit ²Everywhere and nowhere ² A semantic Web will allow machines to create the record just-in-time ²We will not have to maintain records just-in-case ² The user will have control over the presentation ²I want to see an archive or library or museum or Amazon or Google or Flickr or ? display ² And by avoiding duplication, we can all get on with describing new stuff. . .

The hyperdimensional (Tardis) card W 3 C Library Audio shop Lee, T. B. Cataloguing has a future. - Audio disc (Spoken word). - Donated by the author. 1. Metadata Spoken word archive Lee Museum “TARDIS four port USB hub, for office-bound Time Lords: Open a time vortex on your desk” – Pocket-lint