ALA 2015: RDA Governance Changes and BIBFRAME Update

There are two sessions in particular I would like to highlight from the American Library Association Annual Conference:  Engaging with RDA-The Way Forward and the BIBFRAME Update Forum.

BIBFRAME Update Forum
This year the BIBFRAME Update Forum speakers were a bit different from previous years. Although Beacher Wiggins and Sally McCallum from the Library of Congress kicked off the session with a short update, the majority of the session featured a panel of vendors who were invited to speak about how linked data and BIBFRAME will impact the services they provide, and their plans for development in those areas. The vendors participating included Innovative Interfaces, Ex Libris, SirsiDynix, Atlas, and OCLC Research.

The Library of Congress speakers discussed the process of getting their cataloging staff ready for the BIBFRAME pilot, set to take place this year. Relating to input of descriptions, they will be evaluating the current BIBFRAME editor and asking the following questions:

• Is the Work/Instance dichotomy clear and useful for catalogers?
• Are type ahead and drop down functions efficient for their tasks? Are they designed for ease of use?
• Is the labeling of the editor entities appropriate? Are links to cataloging rules useful?

The BIBFRAME file that the cataloging staff will be working with contains 19 million former MARC descriptions remodeled as BIBFRAME Works and Instances. They will be looking for feedback on whether or not the searching of the file supports the finding of the information needed by catalogers, and if the MARC data transform is adequate for cataloger use. They were very clear that the pilot will not explore end user access issues, acquisitions processing, record distribution concerns, holdings, or circulation connections.

Beacher Wiggins (Director for Acquisition and Bibliographic Access) reported that they have developed training modules for LC cataloging staff to go through. These will eventually be available for anyone to view, although they were not available when this article was published. The training modules include:

• Module 1: Intro to the Semantic web
• Module 2: Intro to the BIBFRAME editor
• Module 3: Using the BIBFRAME editor for bibliographic description

Georgia Fugikawa from Innovative Interfaces presented next. He described how they are heavily invested in Libhub. Libhub is an initiative that is putting into action the promise that BIBFRAME and the Linked Data in Libraries movement makes—more visibility of library content on the web. Innovative is a sponsor of Libhub (along with Atlas Systems and SirsiDynix, also on the panel), and about 52 staff have gone through Zepheira’s linked data and BIBFRAME practical practitioner training. They have launched a service for their customers who want to join Libhub, to help them transform their MARC data into BIBFRAME. In the future, they will be holding focus groups with customers at ALA conferences and will continue to work closely with Zepheira to raise their own level of background knowledge about linked data. Recently, they released a report “We Love the Library, But We Live on the Web.” The report authors surveyed over 4,000 library users at seven academic libraries in the UK and the data collected gives evidence as to why libraries should be exposing more of their data on the web. 

Ido Peled, Vice President, Solutions and Marketing from Ex Libris reported that their Primo central index is already in RDF, a specification for representing data as web resources. Ex Libris also has an interest group with customers that meet regularly. 

Dan Specht, CFO of Atlas Systems discussed the linked data sessions and presenters that they hosted at their last annual meeting, and they are looking at getting involved in the following initiatives: training cohorts, discussion forums, other beta activities such as the Libhub initiative, the visible library beta program, and the EAD to BIBFRAME Project.

The Vice President of Product Management and Software Development from Sirsi Dynix, Sheridan Richey, presented on BLUE (Best Library User Experience), their next generation library system that is in active development.

Roy Tennant from OCLC Research spoke about how their staff actively participate in BIBFRAME listserv discussions, are already collaborating with Library of Congress staff, and are participating in the BIBFLOW project, an IMLS funded project of the UC Davis library and Zepheira.

Eric Miller, President of Zepheira ended the panel portion of the session by reporting that they have had discussions with over 70 providers, 1000s of library professionals, and have hosted five webinars on linked data for libraries. Over 350 professionals have taken their linked data and BIBFRAME practical practitioner course and around 100 organizations are active in their alumni group, meeting on a regular basis. Zepheira has transformed millions of records into BIBFRAME, and is the founding sponsor of the Libhub initiative.

Engaging with RDA-The Way Forward
“Together we can make RDA a global standard for discovery of our data.” This was the summary statement from Gordon Dunsire, the current Chair of the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for the development of RDA. In this session Dunsire presented a detailed overview of the major governance changes that will impact the development of RDA as an international standard. He began by providing a nice summary timeline of how RDA came to be, starting with 2005 and ending with the present:

• 2005: JSC begins development of RDA
• 2007: JSC changes name to replace AACR with “RDA”
• 2010: RDA terminologies published in RDA Toolkit
• 2011: German National Library joins governance structure, RDA terminologies are published in linked data format
• 2013- RDA translated into French and German
• 2014: RDA entities and elements published in linked data format and RDA Registry is launched
• 2014: CoP (Committee of Principals) begin review of RDA governance and strategy
• 2015: Spanish translations added, coming soon: Italian and Finnish: CoP agrees outcome of governance and strategy review

The CoP (Committee of Principals) proposes a new governance structure so RDA can have a greater level of international and wider community representation. The transition to the new structure will begin this year and is expected to be completed by 2020. Flexibility, limits on committee size, various communities reflected within working groups, and adequate succession planning are among a few of the principles behind the new governance model.

The model places a new RDA board at the top level that will include representation from North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America & the Caribbean, Africa, and Oceana (United Nations regions), among other members. There will also be two branches of the RDA board; an RDA Steering Committee, and RDA Board Working Groups.  

The RDA Steering Committee will include the six regional members mentioned above, a Chair, Secretary, Examples Editor, Technical Team Liaison, Translations Team Liaison, a Wider Community Engagement member, an ALA Publishing representative, and the Chair of the RDA Board. The Steering Committee will also have both “Task and Finish” working groups and standing, permanent working groups. Standing working groups will include a Technical and Translations group. The “Task and Finish” working groups will be:

• Aggregates
• Archives
• Capitalization 
• Fictitious Entities
• Music
• Places
• RDA/ONIX Framework
• Relationship Designators

The Governance structure is there to support a new five year strategy for RDA, currently being developed by the CoP/RDA Board. Strategic priorities include developing the recognition and adoption of RDA internationally, and developing a sustainable business model. The key strategies for new markets mentioned are to make RDA truly international, expand use by the wider cultural sector, and to expand use by those working with linked data.

To my mind, most exciting was to see the mention of an archives working group and standing groups working on development of RDA and linked data. The Archives Working Group will be set up to address specific issues in the archives community. Dunsire noted "The R in RDA is for resources after all." RDA is intended to be used for describing resources beyond bibliographic resources.  

Lastly, Dunsire spoke about how they hope the new governance structure will improve engagement and listed these opportunities for library staff:

• Membership in RDA working groups (most opportunities here)
• Membership in RDA Toolkit Technical Committee
• Community representation on RDA Steering committee
• Community representation on RDA Board
• Email and issue discussion on RDA-L and RDA vocabularies github project
• Jane-athons, which are hackathons for creating metadata about Jane Austen and her works