The Research Information Network (RIN) has released a new report titled 'Creating Catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world'. The report is projected as a timely overview of the process of producing and disseminating bibliographic data for scholarly journals, journal articles and for printed and e-books. According to the report, there are considerable benefits to be gained if libraries, along with other organisations in the data supply chain, were to operate more at the network level. However, there are currently significant barriers to making effective moves in that direction, says the report.
Within the Web 2.0 environment, there are increasing opportunities for innovative use of datasets - including the metadata that are used to make up catalogues - that are freely available to all. Open data is an increasingly hot topic, and there is growing interest from governments and others in making information created by public sector organisations more widely available for re-use, in order to generate greater economic benefit, social gain and improvements to public services.
The report explains how bibliographic data are created and used from publishers through a range of intermediaries (including libraries), to the end users. It points out that there are pressures to make these data more freely available. However, each player in the process has its own motivations and business models in creating, adding to, using or re-using bibliographic data, many of which hinder moves to open up this data. Creating catalogues identifies key issues in the process and aims to stimulate the debate on possible ways forward, both to eliminate wasteful duplication of effort, and to make the data more freely available for re-use and innovation. The report provides a number of recommendations for all involved in the process.
RIN will work with the academic library community and others in the supply chain to raise awareness and understanding of the issues in this report; of the benefits to be achieved by moving to new models; and to identify ways in which we might work towards achieving them. The report and supplementary notes are available at www.rin.ac.uk/creating-catalogues
It has been observed that Web 2.0 developments are creating a complex landscape for the creation and use of the traditional bibliographical data. Last year, the Library of Congress Working Group on the future of bibliographic control issued a report which indicated that cataloguing activity must be shared more broadly and equitably among all libraries. In January 2009, LibLime announced an open source web-based cataloguing tool called biblios.net and proposes that the records catalogued using it will go into 'The world's largest database of freely licensed library records'.
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