2011 has in a sense been the year of library linked data. Not that libraries of all kinds are now publishing and consuming linked data in great numbers. No. But we have witnessed the publication of the final report of the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group, the Library of Congress announcement of the new Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age based on Linked Data and RDF, the release by a number of large libraries and library consortia of their bibliographic metadata, many publications, sessions and presentations on the subject.

All these events focus mainly on publishing library bibliographic metadata as linked open data. Personally I am not convinced that this is the most interesting type of data that libraries can provide. Bibliographic metadata as such describe publications, in the broadest sense, providing information about title, authors, subjects, editions, dates, urls, but also physical attributes like dimensions, number of pages, formats, etc. This type of information, in FRBR terms: Work, Expression and Manifestation metadata, is typically shared among a large number of libraries, publishers, booksellers, etc. ‘Shared’ in this case means ‘multiplied and redundantly stored in many different local systems‘. It doesn’t really make sense if all libraries in the world publish identical metadata side by side, does it?

In essence only really unique data is worth publishing. You link to the rest.

Currently, library data that is really unique and interesting is administrative information about holdings and circulation. After having found metadata about a potentially relevant publication it is very useful for someone to know how and where to get access to it, if it’s not freely available online. Do you need to go to a specific library location to get the physical item, or to have access to the online article? Do you have to be affiliated to a specific institution to be entitled to borrow or access it?

Usage data about publications, both print and digital, can be very useful in establishing relevance and impact. This way information seekers can be supported in finding the best possible publications for their specific circumstances. There are some interesting projects dealing with circulation data already, such as the research project by Magnus Pfeffer and Kai Eckert as presented at the SWIB 11 conference, and the JISC funded Library Impact Data project at the University of Huddersfield. The Ex Libris bX service presents article recommendations based on SFX usage log analysis.

The consequence of this assertion is that if libraries want to publish linked open data, they should focus on holdings and circulation data, and for the rest link to available bibliographic metadata as much as possible. It is to be expected that the Library of Congress’ New Bibliographic Framework will take care of that part one way or another.

In order to achieve this libraries should join forces with each other and with publishers and aggregators to put their efforts into establishing shared global bibliographic metadata pools accessible through linked open data. We can think of already existing data sources like WorldCat, OpenLibrary, Summon, Primo Central and the like. We can only hope that commercial bibliographic metadata aggregators like OCLC, SerialsSolutions and Ex Libris will come to realise that it’s in everybody’s interest to contribute to the realisation of the new Bibliographic Framework. The recent disagreement between OCLC and the Swedish National Library seems to indicate that this may take some time. For a detailed analysis of this see the blog post ‘Can linked library data disrupt OCLC? Part one’.

 

An interesting initiative in this respect is LibraryCloud, an open, multi-library data service that aggregates and delivers library metadata. And there is the HBZ LOBID project, which is targeted at ‘the conversion of existing bibliographic data and associated data to Linked Open Data‘.

So what would the new bibliographic framework look like? If we take the FRBR model as a starting point, the new framework could look something like this. See also my slideshow “Linked Open Data for libraries”, slides 39-42.

The basic metadata about a publication or a unit of content, on the FRBR Work level, would be an entry in a global datastore identified by a URI ( Uniform Resource Identifier). This datastore could for instance be WorldCat, or OpenLibrary, or even a publisher’s datastore. It doesn’t really matter. We don’t even have to assume it’s only one central datastore that contains all Work entries.

The thing identified by the URI would have a text string field associated with it containing the original title, let’s say “The Da Vinci Code” as an example of a book. But also articles can and should be identified this way. The basic information we need to know about the Work would be attached to it using URIs to other things in the linked data web. A set of two things linked by a URI is called a ‘triple’. ‘Author’ could for instance be a link to OCLC’s VIAF (http://viaf.org/viaf/102403515 = Dan Brown), which would then constitute a triple. If there are more authors, you simply add a URI for every person or institution. Subjects could be links to DBPedia/Wikipedia, Freebase, the Library of Congress Authority files, etc. There could be some more basic information, maybe a year, or a URI to a source describing the background of the work.

At the Expression level, a Dutch translation would have it’s own URI, stored in the same or another datastore. I could imagine that the publisher who commissioned the translation would maintain a datastore with this information. Attached to the Expression there would be the URI of the original Work, a URI pointing to the language, a URI identifying the translator and a text string contaning the Dutch title, among others.

Every individual edition of the work could have it’s own Manifestation level URI, with a link to the Expression (in this case the Dutch translation), a publisher URI, a year, etc. For articles published according to the long standing tradition of peer reviewed journals, there would also be information about the journal. On this level there should also be URIs to the actual content when dealing with digital objects like articles, ebooks, etc., no matter if access is free or restricted.

So far we have everything we need to know about publications “in the cloud”, or better: in a number of datastores available on a number of servers connected to the world wide web. This is more or less the situation described by OCLC’s Lorcan Dempsey in his recent post ‘Linking not typing … knowledge organization at the network level’. The only thing we need now is software to present all linked information to the user.

No libraries in sight yet. For accessing freely available digital content on the web you actually don’t need a library, unless you need professional assistance finding the correct and relevant information. Here we have identified a possible role of librarians in this new networked information model.

Now we have reached the interesting part: how to link local library data to this global shared model? We immediately discover that the original FRBR model is inadequate in this networked environment, because it implies a specific local library situation. Individual copies of a work (the Items) are directly linked to the Manifestation, because FRBR refers to the old local catalogue which describes only the works/publications one library actually owns.

In the global shared library linked data network we need an extra explicit level to link physical Items owned by the library or online subscriptions of the library to the appropriate shared network level. I suggest to use the “Holding” level. A Holding would have it’s own URI and contain URIs of the Manifestation and of the Library. A specific Holding in this way would indicate that a specific library has one or more copies (Items) of a specific edition of a work (Manifestation), or offers access to an online digital article by way of a subscription.

 

If a Holding refers to physical copies (print books or journal issues for instance) then we also need the Item level. An Item would have it’s own URI and the URI of the Holding. For each Item, extra information can be provided, for instance ‘availability’, ‘location’, etc. Local circulation administration data can be registered for all Holdings and Items. For online digital content we don’t need Items, only subscription information directly attached to the Holding.

Local Holding and Item information can reside on local servers within the library’s domain or just as well on some external server ‘in the cloud’.

It’s on the level of the Holding that usage statistics per library can be collected and aggregated, both for physical items and for digital material.

Now, this networked linked library data model still allows libraries to present a local traditional catalogue type interface, showing only information about the library’s own print and digital holdings. What’s needed is software to do this using the local Holdings as entry level.

But the nice thing about the model is that there will also be a lot of other options. It will also be possible to start at the other end and search all bibliographic metadata available in the shared global network, and then find the most appropriate library to get access to a specific publication, much like WorldCat does, but on an even larger scale.

Another nice thing of using triples, URIs and linked data, is that it allows for adding all kinds of other, non-traditional bibliographic links to the old inward looking library world, making it into a flexible and open model, ready for future developments. It will for instance be possible for people to discover links to publications and library holdings from any other location on the web, for instance a Wikipedia page or a museum website. And the other way around, from an item in local library holdings to let’s say a recorded theatre performance on YouTube.

When this new data and metadata framework will be in place, there will be two important issues to be solved:

• Getting new software, systems and tools for both back end administrative functions and front end information finding needs. For this we need efforts from traditional library systems vendors but also from developers in libraries.
• Establishing future roles for libraries, librarians and information professionals in the new framework. This may turn out to be the most important issue.

Library catalogues have traditionally been used to describe and register books and journals and other physical objects that together constitute the holdings of a library. In an integrated library system (ILS), the public catalogue is combined with acquisition and circulation modules to administer the purchases of book copies and journal subscriptions on one side, and the loans to customers on the other side. The “I” for “Integrated” in ILS stands for an internal integration of traditional library workflows. Integration from a back end view, not from a customer perspective.

Because of the very nature of such a catalogue, namely the description of physical objects and the administration of processing them, there are no explicit relations between the different editions and translations of the same book, nor are there descriptions of individual journal articles. If you do a search on a specific person’s name, you may end up with a large number of result records, written by that person or someone with a similar name, or about that person, even with identical titles, without knowing if there is a relationship between them, and what that relationship might be. What’s certain is that you will not find journal articles written by or about that person. The same applies to a search on title. There is no way of telling if there is any relation between identical titles. A library catalogue user would have to look at specific metadata in the records (like MARC 76X-78X – Linking Entries, 534 – Original Version Note or 580 – Linking Entry Complexity Note), if available, to reach their own conclusions.

Most libraries nowadays also purchase electronic versions of books and journals (ebooks and ejournals) and have free or paid subscriptions to online databases. Sometimes these digital items (ebooks, ejournals and databases) are also entered into the traditional library catalogues, but they are sometimes also made available through other library systems, like federated search tools, integrated discovery tools, A-Z lists, etc. All kinds of combinations occur.

In traditional library catalogues digital items are treated exactly the same as their physical counterparts. They are all isolated individual items without relations. As Karen Coyle put it November 2010 at the SWIB10 conference: “The main goal of cataloguing today is to keep things apart” .
Basically, integrated library systems and traditional catalogues are nothing more than inventory and logistics systems for physical objects, mainly focused on internal workflows. Unfortunately in newer end user interfaces like federated search and integrated discovery tools the user experience in this respect has in general been similar to that of traditional public catalogues.

At some point in time during the rise of electronic online catalogues, apparently the lack of relations between different versions of the same original work became a problem. I’m not sure if it was library customers or librarians who started feeling the need to see these implicit connections made explicit. The fact is that IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) started developing FRBR in 1998.

FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) is an attempt to provide a model for describing the relations between physical publications, editions, copies and their common denominator, the Work.

FRBR Group 1 describes publications in terms of the entities Work, Expression, Manifestation and Item (WEMI).
FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data – ‘authors’) and FRSAD (Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data – ‘subjects’) have been developed later on as alternatives for the FRBR Group 2 and 3 entities.

As an example let’s have a look at The Diary of Anne Frank. The original handwritten diary may be regarded as the Work. There are numerous adaptations and translations (Expressions) of the original unfinished and unedited Work. Each of these Expressions can be published in the form of one or more prints, editions, etc. These are the Manifestations, especially if they have different ISBN’s. Finally a library can have one or more physical copies of a Manifestation, the Items.

Some might even say the actual physical diary is the only existing Item embodying one specific (the first) Expression of the Work (Anne’s thoughts) and/or the only Manifestation of that Expression.

Of course, this model, if implemented, would be an enormous improvement to the old public  catalogue situation. It makes it possible for library customers to have an automatic overview of all editions, translations, adaptations of one specific original work through the mechanism of Expressions and Manifestations. RDA (Resource Description and Access) is exactly doing this.
However there are some significant drawbacks, because the FRBR model is an old model, based on the traditional way of library cataloguing of physical items (books, journals, and cd’s, dvd’s), etc. (Karen Coyle at SWIB10).

• In the first place the FRBR model only shows the Works and related Manifestations and Expressions of physical copies (Items) that the library in question owns. Editions not in the possession of the library are ignored. This would be a bit different in a union catalogue of course, but then the model still only describes the holdings of the participating libraries.
• Secondly, the focus on physical copies is also the reason that the original FRBR model does not have a place for journal titles as such, only for journal issues. So there will be as many entries for one journal as the library has issues of it.
• Thirdly, it’s a hierarchical model, which incorporates only relations from the Work top down. There is no room for relations like: ‘similar works’, ‘other material on the same subject’, ‘influenced by’, etc.
• In the fourth place, FRBR still does not look at content. It is document centric, instead of information centric. It does however have the option for describing parts of a Work, if they are considered separate entities/works, like journal articles or volumes of a trilogy.
• Finally, the FRBR Item entity is only interesting in a storage and logistics environment for physical copies, such as the Circulation function in libraries, or the Sales function in bookstores. It has no relation to content whatsoever.

FRBR definitely is a positive and necessary development, but it is just not good enough. Basically it still focuses on information carriers instead of information (it’s a set of rules for managing Bibliographic Records, not for describing Information). It is an introverted view of the world. This was OK as long as it was dictated by the prevailing technological, economical and social conditions.
In a new networked digital information world libraries should shift their focus back to their original objective: being gateways to information as such. This entails replacing an introverted hierarchical model with an extroverted networked one, and moving away from describing static information aggregates in favour of units of content as primary objects.

The linked data concept provides the framework of such a networked model. In this model anything can be related to anything, with explicit declarations of the nature of the relationship. In the example of the Diary of Anne Frank one could identify relations with movies and theater plays that are based on the diary, with people connected to the diary or with the background of World War 2, antisemitism, Amsterdam, etc.

In traditional library catalogues defining relations with movies or theater plays is not possible from the description of the book. They could however be entered as a textual reference in the description of a movie, if for instance a DVD of that movie is catalogued. Relations to people, World War 2, antisemitism and Amsterdam would be described as textual or coded references to a short concept description, which in turn could provide lists of other catalogue items indexed with these subjects.
In a networked linked data model these links could connect to information entities in their own right outside the local catalogue, containing descriptions and other material about the subject, and providing links to other related information entities.

FRBR would still be a valuable part of such a universal networked model, as a subset for a specific purpose. In the context of physical information carriers it is a useful model, although with some missing features, as described above. It could be used in isolation, as originally designed, but if it’s an open model, it would also provide the missing links and options to describe and find related information.

Also, the FRBR model is essential as a minimal condition for enabling links from library catalogue items to other entity types through the Work common denominator.

In a completely digital information environment, the model could be simplified by getting rid of the Item entity. Nobody needs to keep track of available copies of online digital information, unless publishers want to enforce the old business models they have been using in order to keep making a profit. Ebooks for instance are essentially Expressions or Manifestations, depending on their nature, as I stated in my post ’Is an e-book a book?’.

The FRBR model can be used and is used also in other subject areas, like music, theater performances, etc. The Work – Expression – Manifestation – Item hierarchy is applicable to a number of creative professions.

The networked model provides the option of describing all traditional library objects, but also other and new ones and even objects that currently don’t exist, because it is an open and adaptable model.
In the traditional library models it is for instance impossible, or at least very hard, to describe a story that continues through all volumes of a trilogy as a central thread, apart from and related to the descriptions of the three separate physical books and their own stories. In the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander’s life story is the central thread, but it can’t be described as a separate “Work” in MARC/FRBR/RDA because it is not the main subject of one physical content carrier (unless we are dealing with an edition in one physical multi part volume). The three volumes will be described with the subjects ‘Missing girl mystery‘, ‘Sex trafficking‘ and ‘Illegal secret service unit‘ respectively.

In an open networked information model on the contrary it would be entirely possible to describe such a ‘roaming story’.

New forms of information objects could appear in the form of new types of aggregates, other than books or journal articles, for instance consisting of text, images, statistics and video, optionally of a flexible nature (dynamic instead of static information objects).

Existing library systems (ILS’s and Integrated Discovery tools  alike), using bibliographic metadata formats and frameworks like MARC, FRBR and RDA, can’t easily deal with new developments without some sort of workaround. Obviously this means that if libraries want to continue playing a role in the information gateway world, they need completely different systems and technology. Library system vendors should take note of this.

Finally, instead of only describing information objects, libraries could take up a new role in creating new objects, in the form of subject based virtual information aggregates, like for instance the Anne Frank Timeline, or Qwiki.This would put libraries back in the center of the information access business.

See also
http://dynamicorange.com/2009/11/11/bringing-frbr-down-to-earth/
http://www.slideshare.net/SarahBartlett/what-place-for-libraries-in-a-linked-data-world
http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2011/08/models-of-bibliographic-data.html

Only the Heritage and Special Collections departments will still have lots of physical books, journals and other objects, and become a separate museum-like entity. I think they should have a look at Michael Edson‘s UgameUlearn slides about the efforts that are being done at the Smithsonian Institute to engage their audience.

The “digital branch” concept was not identified as a separate development in the future of the library discussion, probably because effectively we will see separate branches developing per subject area. Currently, at the Library of the University of Amsterdam, managing the Library’s web presence is the shared responsibility of the three main central divisions: Acquisition and Metadata Services, Public Services and Electronic Services, and a number of Faculty/Departmental Libraries. Still, the digital branch idea is an interesting concept to investigate, at least for the short term. But at university libraries a digital branch should extend its tasks beyond user experience alone.

Anyway, the day after UgameUlearn Helene Blowers, David Lee King and Michael Stephens were guests in the live stream show “This week in libraries”, organised by Jaap van de Geer and Erik Boekesteijn, both DOK, and also two of the four UgameUlearn organisers.

I took my chance and asked them the question: “What should a digital branch in an academic library look like? Different from public library?” If you’re interested, you will find the question and answers towards the very end of the stream.
Helene, David and Michael agreed more or less that there probably isn’t much difference, that you should ask your community what they want, and that, just like with public libraries, every community has different needs. A clear distinction is that in universities there are three groups of customers: students, faculty and staff, with somewhat different needs. University libraries should at least support the learning process, for instance by creating spaces for collaboration.

Since then I had the chance of giving this some more thought, and I came to the conclusion that there are probably more differences than similarities between public and academic libraries. Not in the least because Aad Janson of the Peace Palace Library commented (in Dutch) that their library is an academic library too but without students and scientists. This made me realise that there are several different types of libraries, distinguished by a number of important characteristics (audience, subscription, collection type, funding) that influence their position in digital developments. I have tried to compose a, definitely not complete, summary of these library types in a table. I guess the Peace Palace Library would qualify as a “research/scientific library” in this classification scheme.

Library type	Audience	Subscription	Collection	Funding
Public	local community	voluntary	local, mostly physical	subscriptions, public (local)
National	national, global	voluntary	national physical + digital	public (national)
Research/scientific	specific professions, students	voluntary	local physical, remote digital	pubic, private
Museums/archives	global community	voluntary	local physical + digital	public, private
Special	explicitly defined	voluntary, automatic	local physical + digital	public, private
Company	staff	automatic	local physical + digital, remote digital	private
Governmental bodies	staff	automatic	local physical + digital, remote digital	public
International organisations	staff	automatic	local physical + digital, remote digital	public, private
University/higher education	students, faculty, staff	automatic	local physical + digital, remote digital	public, private

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I presume that libraries that are dependent on voluntary subscriptions, like public and research/scientific libraries, will put more effort into improving “user experience”. This will be reinforced if the library’s collection is not a unique selling point, and funding is partly based on patron fees. Public libraries have to compete for customers (and not with their collections) and at the same time satisfy local city councils.

On the other end of the scale we see university libraries that get there customers “into the bargain”, customers who need their affiliation to get access to restricted databases and e-journal articles. Contrary to public libraries, the collections of university/higher education libraries consist of more than the local catalogue: numerous local and remote repositories, databases, e-journals, etc. Consequently, these libraries will put relatively more effort into consolidating and linking all these databases, especially when they have the technical staff to do so. The contributions by academic libraries, and also some national and museum libraries, to linked data and mashup developments for instance seem to confirm this.

Libraries between these two extremes will probably merge both approaches in various ways, depending on the actual mix of audience, subscription, collection and funding type.

This is not to say that academic libraries are not interested in improving user experience at all. But it’s just different. Unlike public libraries, academic libraries don’t have to attract new customers with staff recommendations, themes of the month, etc., because students, teachers and researchers each have their own fairly well described subject areas. They just have to provide them with the right finding aids. And these finding aids do not necessarily have to be provided by the libraries themselves, as long as they do offer their patrons efficient delivery mechanisms.

Of course all types of libraries can learn and benefit from each other’s work and even cooperate. After all, good data structures and relations are indispensable for an optimal user experience.