The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced the publication of a special themed issue of Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) on the topic of the Evolution of Bibliographic Data Exchange.
Libraries are in the midst of moving away from AACR2 and MARC 21 to the new world of the semantic web, linked data, FRBR, and RDA. As noted by Ted Fons, Executive Director, Data Services & WorldCat Quality at OCLC and the guest content editor for this ISQ issue, "the success of the web as a research tool has dramatically changed the library's role in the exposure of library catalogs....The rise of new metadata initiatives reflects the need to respond to this change and to increase our effectiveness in the exchange and management of library metadata." Fons has gathered together in the Winter 2013 issue of ISQ a set of thoughtful and informative articles about the work that is underway in this bibliographic data evolution.
In the feature article, Are Current Bibliographic Models Suitable for Integration with the Web?, Lars Svensson from the German National Library discusses why it is important for libraries to make their metadata an integral part of the web and why libraries need (but don't yet have) an agreed-upon model that can draw in entities across the cultural heritage sector. Paul Moss (OCLC) in his opinion piece, Replacing MARC: Where to Start, further emphasizes the need to step away from thinking solely about a single library interchange format and instead consider that "each function MARC serves should be examined independently and may be replaced by a different technology."
The Library of Congress initiated a Bibliographic Framework project (BIBFRAME) in 2011 to define a replacement for MARC 21. The George Washington University is one of the early experimenters for BIBFRAME and Jackie Shieh in the first in-practice article reviews how their participation was a "transformative opportunity" for their staff "to contribute and establish a new standard that would benefit researchers navigating the information sphere."
ISQ is available in open access in electronic format on the NISO website. Both the entire Winter 2013 Evolution of Bibliographic Data Exchange issue and the individual articles may be freely downloaded. Print copies are available by subscription and as print on demand.
