2024 BIBFRAME Workshop
I recently attended the 2024 BIBFRAME Workshop in Europe (BFWE), hosted by the National Library of Finland in Helsinki. It was an excellent conference in a great city! Having attended several BFWEs over the years, it’s gratifying to witness the continued progress toward making BIBFRAME the de facto standard for linked data in bibliographic metadata. BIBFRAME was developed and is maintained by the Library of Congress to eventually replace the flat record-based metadata format utilised by the vast majority of libraries – MARC (a standard in use since 1968). This year, Sally McCallum from the Library of Congress shared significant insights about the challenges and opportunities libraries face.
My recent presentations at SWIB23 (YouTube), and the Bibframe Workshop in Europe, attracted many questions; regarding the how, what, and most importantly the why, of the unique cloud-based Linked Data Management & Discovery System (LDMS) we developed, in partnership with metaphacts and Kewmann, in a two-year project for the National Library Board of Singapore (NLB). Several of the answers were technical in nature. However, somewhat surprisingly they were mostly grounded in what could best be described as business needs, such as:
- Seamless Knowledge Graph integration of records stored and managed in separate systems.
The MARC ingestion pipeline is one of four pipelines that keep the Knowledge Graph, underpinning the LDMS, synchronised with additions, updates, and deletions from the many source systems that NLB curate and host.
When Schema.org arrived on the scene I thought we might have arrived at the point where library metadata could finally blossom; adding value outside of library systems to help library curated resources become first class citizens, and hence results, in the global web we all inhabit. But as yet it has not happened.
The recent release of the Schema.org vocabulary (version 3.5) includes new types and properties, proposed by the W3C Schema Architypes Community Group, specifically target at facilitating the web sharing of archives data to aid discovery. When the Group, which I have the privilege to chair, approached the challenge of building a proposal to make Schema.org useful for archives, it was identified that the vocabulary could be already used to describe the things & collections that you find in archives. What was missing was the ability to identify the archive holding organisation, and the fact that an item is being held.
In a session at the IFLA WLIC in Kuala Lumpur – my core theme being that there is a need to use two linked data vocabularies when describing library resources — Bibframe for cataloguing and linked metadata interchange — Schema.org for sharing on the web for discovery.
Do you have a list of terms relevant to your data? Things such as subjects, topics, job titles, a glossary or dictionary of terms, blog post categories, ‘official names’ for things/people/organisations, material types, forms of technology, etc.
The latest release of Schema.org (3.4) includes some significant enhancements for those interested in marking up tourism and trips in general. For tourism markup two new types, TouristDestination and TouristTrip, have joined the already useful TouristAttraction.
We are finally on the cusp of establishing a de facto Linked Data approach for libraries and their system suppliers – not there yet but getting there. We have a choice between BIBFRAME 2.0, Schema.org, Linky MARC and doing nothing.
Add Schema.org structured data to your pages because during indexing, we will be able to better understand what your site is about.