OCLC was recently asked to provide an estimate of the number of books held by US libraries that were published outside of the United States. Our answer? Approximately 200 million. We thought readers would be interested in learning the details of how the estimate was obtained.
In MARC records, the 260 field is the most obvious 'place of publication' field. Specifically, the 'a' and 'e' subfields are designed to record "place of publication, distribution, etc." and "place of manufacture", respectively. The problem is that these fields are filled with names - strings of characters - rather than codes, which are much more reliable and easy to parse.*
Such codes are found in the 008 header field. Using those as the focus, we made the following assumptions to answer the question at hand:
Given these assumptions, we found the following:
Book titles published in the US: 26,710,400
Book titles published outside the US ("Foreign"): 78,017,300
Foreign book titles, held by US libraries: 22,801,900
Copies of foreign book titles ("holdings") worldwide: 461,596,000
US libraries' holdings of foreign book titles: 203,953,200
Notes:
* In addition, while 260 ‡a (Place of publication) is common, the ‡e (Place of manufacture) only appears in less than 3% of records, making any combined analysis of these fields statistically shaky.
**If the pre-1923 cutoff is ignored, the number of foreign book titles increases by roughly 25%.
The image not only identifies and classifies 105 standards - it also evaluates them on "strength of application" in multiple axes. This judgment is based on level of adoption, design intent, and overall appropriateness. Outside of the massive labor that the research and analysis must have taken, the visual presentation is stunning. The work of Devin Becker on the graphic design should be commended.
The graphic is a useful addition to the literature and an excellent way to brush up on some standards in unfamiliar domains. The timing is excellent as well, as the American Library Association Annual Conference this week kicks off a season of acronym-filled meetings.
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Speaking to a webinar audience of publishers and book industry organizations, IT specialists, and librarians, Ms. Dawson emphasized the growing value of metadata for marketing. She made the point that "metadata is your marketing," explaining that as more purchasing is done online, a searcher's first and possibly only encounter with a publication is through its metadata. Underinvesting in metadata can not only impede or prevent an item's discovery and sale--it can also negatively impact the perceived quality of the resource and its publisher. Ms. Dawson suggested that successful discovery and sales rest particularly on accurate titles and author names, BISAC codes and keywords, and "descriptive descriptions" -an interesting set of priorities to compare to recent library community studies of what makes good metadata.*
Ms. Dawson's described e-commerce, often ONIX-based "metadata trails"--which proceed from basic metadata produced by the publisher, to a metadata aggregator (e.g., Bowker, Ingram, Baker & Taylor), thence to online retail giants such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and finally to Google and other popular sites.
It's a useful thought exercise to compare publishers' metadata trails to libraries'. In the U.S., with the exception of the Library of Congress' CIP program, the library community's metadata trail has traditionally begun with the creation of metadata based on a cataloging expert's examination of a publication in hand. The metadata is produced according to library-specific, generally MARC-based practices. This library-specific metadata is then shared via a national library or bibliographic utility (like OCLC), then re-aggregated for end-user discovery in a variety of local, group, or global catalogs (like WorldCat.org). The final step is (increasingly) syndication to other sites, including search engines.
It is intersting to consider whether for both publishers and libraries, maximum discoverability is achieved where the publisher and library metadata trails end--with search engines. This possibility is consistent with the findings of Discoverability, a 2009 University of Minnesota Libraries study, whose examination of the origins of search requests for library resources led them to conclude "users are successfully discovering relevant resources through non-library environments (e.g., general web searches, e-commerce sites, and social networking applications). We need to ensure that items in our collections and licensed resources are discoverable in non-library environments." (p. 3).
Readers may be aware of a variety of recent efforts to assess the feasibility of systematizing the library and publisher communities' metadata trails to create metadata cost savings and improve discoverability of both library and publisher materials. In a post last week, we reported on one such effort by Carol Jean Godby , an OCLC research scientist working with a team on mapping ONIX to MARC.
--Karen Calhoun and John Chapman
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* A partial list of studies from the library metadata community come readily to mind: Data Driven Evidence for Core MARC Records (see p. 12-15); Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want; and Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata Practices.
Before either of those outcomes are attainable for the publishing and library communities, both need to learn more about the other's metadata practices, what standards are in place, how these standards are structurally and semantically the same and different, and how the metadata produced using these standards support desired outcomes (such as connecting information seekers with published works at the point of need; showing what is available in a given collection; or assisting in the choice or delivery of a particular item).
The recently released report "Mapping ONIX to MARC," from OCLC research scientist Carol Jean Godby, makes impressive progress in answering these questions. In this report, Dr. Godby shares what she and a team at OCLC learned in the process of implementing Metadata Services for Publishers, which was introduced in 2009. Metadata Services for Publishers' main activity consists of OCLC's receiving records for new items directly from publishers in the form of ONIX, enriching the metadata using WorldCat data elements, returning the enriched metadata to publishers, and then adding the blended metadata to WorldCat.
Dr. Godby provides the metadata specialist with an informative, detailed look at the work of converting and using ONIX data in the context of library bibliographic databases. Particularly helpful is the considerable detail about crosswalking ONIX to MARC. Dr. Godby is skillful in describing some of the structural and syntactical peculiarities of MARC. These issues directly inform current discussion in the library data world about a wholesale transitioning from MARC to other formats.
The report also represents an advance in conceptualizing the crosswalking process at a useful level of abstraction. Godby describes a "crosswalk" as a set of self-contained "maps" which each describe "a source, a target, and, optionally, some conditional logic." Several related maps (i.e., those handling publication identifiers) can be treated together as a "mapping." A crosswalk, in this conception, is a human-readable document which must be made into a machine-readable set of instructions for the task at hand.
A further, in-depth description of some of the mappings will be of particular value, and perhaps comfort, to anyone who has wrestled with MARC metadata. Another point of interest to many will be the fact that the crosswalk developed for the program is publicly available from the OCLC Web site and EdItEUR for comment and further development.
--Karen Calhoun and John Chapman
The findings presented in Chapter 1 of the 2009 Survey, "Discovery and the Evolving Role of the Library" promise to be of keen interest to those building and maintaining library online catalogs. The headline of this blog entry is taken from page 7 of the report. Throughout the report, the reader will also find interesting evidence about faculty preferences and behaviors, particularly those related to scholarly communications.
Building on a great level of community interest, the Ithaka S+R team have announced a series of webinars to flesh out and further explore specific sections of the report. OCLC staff will be attending, and we recommend you do so as well.
Further information about the webinars is available at http://www.ithaka.org/about-ithaka/announcements/ithaka-s-r-upcoming-webinars-2009-faculty-survey-findings.
]]>As an update on this post, we have made available recordings of the ALA session on the sustainability and economics of the collaborative national bibliographic framework. The recordings are linked from this page:http://www.oclc.org/us/en/multimedia/2010/alamw_techservices.htm
A short intro by Karen Calhoun highlights the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control report as an impetus for a new look at the role of cooperatives and national libraries in the descriptive environment.
Alisdair Ball's presentation provides useful information on the scale and profit/non-profit service mix of the British library. The description of the overall national framework provides a useful contrast to the US model, while retaining crucial environmental similarities. Ball also points out the SCONUL Shared Services Survey [Summary here: http://sconulss.blogspot.com/2009/06/shared-services-survey-headlines.html], which may be unfamiliar to some, which surveys the appetite among UK libraries for shared services.
Ruth Fischer of R2 Consulting provided an overview of the report they prepared on behalf of LC on the MARC record marketplace [Original report, our commentary]. While stressing the limited scope of R2's assignment from LC, she highlights the report's most important points: the high cataloging capacity that remains underused due to insufficient incentives, the distorting market effect of LC's record supply subsidy, and the disjunction between community and commercial values in the information market.
Brian Schottlaender of UC San Diego begins with a useful set of references to seminal reports and studies in the area. He asserts that environmental conditions have moved to a point where changes in cataloging practice are desirable and feasible. His presentation describes the steps that UC libraries have taken to determine the best and most efficient ways to take collaborative cataloging to a new level.
In the question and answer session, an attendee from Lyrasis offers personal anecdotes about the difficulties in shifting cataloging priorities. Jay Schaefer of University of Massachusetts Amherst, reacting to Schottlaender, discusses frankly the difficulties in large organizations with multiple employee classifications, leading to a valuable discussion of training. Diane Hillmann of Information Institute of Syracuse and Metadata Management Associates asks about the interplay between the trend toward making government information more open and possible moves toward cost-recovery for its production. Bob Wolven of Columbia University points out some areas in which catchphrases are emerging, leading to a discussion about unpacking the concept of "uniquely adding value." Kevin Randall cautions that the difference between "metadata work" and "cataloging" is overplayed, and separating the two is a false dichotomy. Robin Wendler of Harvard brings up points relating to the distribution and re-distribution of MARC records and the cost and restrictions engendered.
"Increase the efficiency of bibliographic production for all libraries through increased cooperation and increased sharing of bibliographic records, and by maximizing the use of data produced through the entire "supply chain" for information resources."
Recently, LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries) published new strategy documents outlining a vision for 2009-2012. The Strategic Plan identifies five priorities for this time period:
Scholarly communication
Digitisation and resource discovery
Heritage collections and preservation
Organisation and human resources
LIBER services
Last month, staff from OCLC and LIBER met in London to discuss how OCLC--a LIBER Gold Sponsor--can best support LIBER's plans. The group identified three of the above LIBER priorities as opportunities for fruitful collaboration.
Digitisation and resource discovery
EuropeanaTravel is an EU-funded project that will channel digital content from European national libraries and LIBER institutions into Europeana.eu, the portal providing access to Europe's digital cultural heritage. The project, described in an English-language fact sheet available from http://www.europeanatravel.eu/multilingual-resources.php started on 1 May 2009 and will run for two years. A joint LIBER-OCLC pilot study was suggested and is being explored. The purpose would be to look at technical and operational issues related to making EuropeanaTravel metadata visible in WorldCat as well.
Heritage collections and preservation
Building from OCLC's role as a service provider for CERL's HPB (Heritage of the Printed Book) database and existing cooperation between CERL and LIBER on the Heritage Collections and Preservation steering committee, a working group with members from CERL, LIBER and OCLC was suggested. The working group would initially focus on improving the HPB through better data synchronisation techniques.
Organisation and human resources
Due to mutual interest in the evolving roles of librarians in research libraries, it was suggested that LIBER and OCLC examine opportunities for collaborative investigation in this area, perhaps taking advantage of work done or underway in OCLC Research. Topics of possible interest include information literacy, librarians as liaisons, librarians in data-centric environments, bibliometrics, and library publishing roles.
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