Bibliographic record

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A bibliographic record is an entry in a bibliographic index (or a library catalog) which represents and describes a specific resource. A bibliographic record contains the data elements necessary to help users identify and retrieve that resource, as well as additional supporting information, presented in a formalized bibliographic format. Additional information may support particular database functions such as search, or browse (e.g., by keywords), or may provide fuller presentation of the content item (e.g., the article's abstract).

Contents

Bibliographic records are usually retrievable from bibliographic indexes (e.g., contemporary bibliographic databases) by author, title, index term, or keyword. [1] Bibliographic records can also be referred to as surrogate records or metadata. [2] Bibliographic records can represent a wide variety of published contents, including traditional paper, digitized, or born-digital publications. The process of creation, exchange, and preservation of bibliographic records are parts of a larger process, called bibliographic control.

History

The earliest known bibliographic records come from the catalogues (written in cuneiform script on clay tablets) of religious texts from 2000 B.C., that were identified by what appear to be key words in Sumerian. [3] In ancient Greece, Callimachus of Cyrene [4] recorded bibliographic records on 120 scrolls using a system called pinakes. [4]

Early American library catalogs in the colonial period were typically made available in book form, either manuscript or printed. [5] In modern America, the title and author of a work were enough to distinguish it among others and order its record within a collection. However, as more and different kinds of resources arose, it became necessary to collect more information to distinguish them from one another. This conceptual framework of the bibliographic record as a collection of data elements served American librarianship well in its first one-hundred years. Challenges to the current method have arisen in the form of new and different distribution methods, especially of the digital variety, and raise questions about whether the traditional conceptual model is still relevant and applicable. [5]

Formats

Today's bibliographic record formats originate from the times of the traditional paper-based isolated libraries, their self-contained collections and their corresponding library cataloguing systems. [6] The modern formats, while reflecting this heritage in their structure, are machine-readable and most commonly conform to the MARC standards. [7] The subject bibliography databases (such as Chemical Abstracts, Medline, PsycInfo, or Web of Science) do not use the same kinds of bibliographical standards as does the library community. In this context, the Common Communication Format is the best known standard.

The Library of Congress is currently developing BIBFRAME, a new RDF schema for expressing bibliographic data. [8] BIBFRAME is still in draft form, but several libraries are already testing cataloging under the new format. [9] BIBFRAME is particularly noteworthy because it describes resources using a number of different entities and relationships, unlike standard library records, which aggregate many types of information into a single independently understandable record. [8]

The digital catalog of the National Library of France has the peculiarity to report notes about access and restrictions as well as the physical collocation of any single paper copy of each title, that exists in one of the libraries associated to their keeping system. [10] This set of metadata allows to enforce the long-term digital preservation and content availability. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Archives Initiative</span> Informal organisation

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was an informal organization, in the circle around the colleagues Herbert Van de Sompel, Carl Lagoze, Michael L. Nelson and Simeon Warner, to develop and apply technical interoperability standards for archives to share catalogue information (metadata). The group got together in the late late 1990s and was active for around twenty years. OAI coordinated in particular three specification activities: OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE and ResourceSync. All along the group worked towards building a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for archives containing digital content to allow people harvest metadata. Such sets of metadata are since then harvested to provide "value-added services", often by combining different data sets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Library catalog</span> Register of bibliographic items

A library catalog is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also called a union catalog. A bibliographic item can be any information entity that is considered library material, or a group of library materials, or linked from the catalog as far as it is relevant to the catalog and to the users (patrons) of the library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of library and information science</span>

This page is a glossary of library and information science.

MARC is a standard set of digital formats for the machine-readable description of items catalogued by libraries, such as books, DVDs, and digital resources. Computerized library catalogs and library management software need to structure their catalog records as per an industry-wide standard, which is MARC, so that bibliographic information can be shared freely between computers. The structure of bibliographic records almost universally follows the MARC standard. Other standards work in conjunction with MARC, for example, Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR)/Resource Description and Access (RDA) provide guidelines on formulating bibliographic data into the MARC record structure, while the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) provides guidelines for displaying MARC records in a standard, human-readable form.

In information science, authority control is a process that organizes information, for example in library catalogs, by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or an identifier for each topic or concept. The word authority in authority control derives from the idea that the names of people, places, things, and concepts are authorized, i.e., they are established in one particular form. These one-of-a-kind headings or identifiers are applied consistently throughout catalogs which make use of the respective authority file, and are applied for other methods of organizing data such as linkages and cross references. Each controlled entry is described in an authority record in terms of its scope and usage, and this organization helps the library staff maintain the catalog and make it user-friendly for researchers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tag (metadata)</span> Keyword assigned to information

In information systems, a tag is a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information. This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system, although they may also be chosen from a controlled vocabulary.

An integrated library system (ILS), also known as a library management system (LMS), is an enterprise resource planning system for a library, used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cataloging (library science)</span> Process of creating meta-data for information resources to include in a catalog database

In library and information science, cataloging (US) or cataloguing (UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as author's names, titles, and subject terms that describe resources, typically through the creation of bibliographic records. The records serve as surrogates for the stored information resources. Since the 1970s these metadata are in machine-readable form and are indexed by information retrieval tools, such as bibliographic databases or search engines. While typically the cataloging process results in the production of library catalogs, it also produces other types of discovery tools for documents and collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of library and information science</span> Overview of and topical guide to library science

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library and information science:

A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents and books. In contrast to library catalogue entries, a majority of the records in bibliographic databases describe articles and conference papers rather than complete monographs, and they generally contain very rich subject descriptions in the form of keywords, subject classification terms, or abstracts.

Library technical services are the ongoing maintenance activities of a library's collection, including the three broad areas of collection development, cataloging, and processing. Technical services are the infrastructure that enable the user's experience of many library services and are typically performed "behind the scenes."

Library instruction, also called bibliographic instruction, user education and library orientation, consists of "instructional programs designed to teach library users how to locate the information they need quickly and effectively. [It] usually covers the library's system of organizing materials, the structure of the literature of the field, research methodologies appropriate to the academic discipline, and specific resources and finding tools " It prepares individuals to make immediate and lifelong use of information effectively by teaching the concepts and logic of information access and evaluation, and by fostering information independence and critical thinking. Above all they are aimed at equipping library users with skills to locate library sources and use them effectively to satisfy their information needs.

Preservation metadata is item level information that describes the context and structure of a digital object. It provides background details pertaining to a digital object's provenance, authenticity, and environment. Preservation metadata, is a specific type of metadata that works to maintain a digital object's viability while ensuring continued access by providing contextual information, usage details, and rights.

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a standard for descriptive cataloging initially released in June 2010, providing instructions and guidelines on formulating bibliographic data. Intended for use by libraries and other cultural organizations such as museums and archives, RDA is the successor to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2).

A schema crosswalk is a table that shows equivalent elements in more than one database schema. It maps the elements in one schema to the equivalent elements in another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metadata</span> Data about data

Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:

A metadata standard is a requirement which is intended to establish a common understanding of the meaning or semantics of the data, to ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users. To achieve this common understanding, a number of characteristics, or attributes of the data have to be defined, also known as metadata.

A bibliographic index is a bibliography intended to help find a publication. Citations are usually listed by author and subject in separate sections, or in a single alphabetical sequence under a system of authorized headings collectively known as controlled vocabulary, developed over time by the indexing service. Indexes of this kind are issued in print periodical form, online, or both. Since the 1970s, they are typically generated as output from bibliographic databases.

BIBFRAME is a data model for bibliographic description. BIBFRAME was designed to replace the MARC standards, and to use linked data principles to make bibliographic data more useful both within and outside the library community.

References

  1. ↑ Reitz, Joan M. (2004). "bibliographic database". Dictionary for Library and Information Science. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited. p. 70. ISBN   1-59158-075-7.
  2. ↑ Joudrey, Daniel N., and Arlene G. Taylor (2018). The Organization of Information. Santa Barbara, CT: Libraries Unlimited. p. 7. ISBN   9781598848588.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Carpenter, Michael (1994). "Catalogs and Cataloging". In Wiegand, Wayne A.; Davis, Donald G. Jr. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Library History. New York: Garland. pp. 107–108. ISBN   0-8240-5787-2.
  4. 1 2 Cowell, Stephanie (May 1998). "The legendary library at Alexandria". Biblio. 16.
  5. 1 2 Rachel Ivy Clarke (2014) Breaking Records: The History of Bibliographic Records and Their Influence in Conceptualizing Bibliographic Data, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53:3-4, 286-302, DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2014.960988
  6. ↑ Hagler, Ronald (1997). The Bibliographic Record and Information Technology (Third ed.). American Library Association. p.  17. ISBN   0-8389-0707-5.
  7. ↑ Reitz, Joan M. (2004). "bibliographic record". Dictionary for Library and Information Science. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited. p. 71. ISBN   1-59158-075-7.
  8. 1 2 Miller, Eric; Uche Ogbuji; Victoria Mueller; Kathy MacDougall (21 November 2012). Bibliographic Framework as a Web of Data: Linked Data Model and Supporting Services (PDF) (Report). Library of Congress. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  9. ↑ "BIBFRAME Implementation Register". Library of Congress . Archived from the original on 5 June 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
  10. ↑ "Example of bibliographic record of the National Library of France".
  11. ↑ Nancy Mackay (June 16, 2016). Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive. Practicing Oral History. Routledge. p. 42. ISBN   9781315430799. OCLC   994229515. Archived from the original on August 24, 2019. Retrieved August 24, 2019.
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