RDA in Norway / RDA in Swedan

Resource Description and Access is a new standard for cataloguing that will replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2). RDA has been developed by the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) with representatives from library organizations and libraries in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany. On 31 March 2013 the Library of Congress switched to RDA, and several other libraries around the world have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, this new standard for cataloguing.

Adapted to digital development

When Libris, the Swedish university and research libraries’ search service for books, dissertations, periodicals and journals, printed music et cetera, is developing new system architecture and a new cataloguing tool, the National Library in Sweden is developing a format-independent system that uses related information elements instead of posts, and incorporates the basic principles that constitute the web.

Toward multidimensional descriptions

With the arrival of new metadata models, vocabularies and tools, cataloguing in libraries will step into a more multidimensional metadata world in the upcoming years. Record-based cataloguing will be replaced with the linking of metadata, which means creating relationships between entities. Through these relationships, the metadata are linked to each other resulting in a metadata network extending across organisational, sector or national borders.

Linked data as a tool for attractive user services

In connection with the 250th anniversary of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (BFO) in 2015, the Bergen Public Library has entered into a collaboration with the orchestra on scanning and cataloguing their concert programme from 1765 until the present day, for the purposes of historical documentation.

Automated metadata

Using standardised metadata delivered continuously from broadcasting companies, media files can be connected to searchable metadata through an automated process. To manually input the metadata that TV and radio broadcasters provide in their programme listings, the Swedish Media Database (SMDB) would need almost 300 full-time employees. Fortunately, however, the metadata can be automatically collected.

Genre and form

An exciting collection of Nordic noir or a rich literary critical review of the genre’s international advance by storm over the last decade? Never, perhaps, has the difference between these two expressions been as distinct as under the first week of vacation in the hammock.

More than just MARC

Metadata are usually defined as data on data. Although ‘data on data’ is a rather narrow definition, it is nevertheless the definition in an IT context. Generally speaking, metadata are data on data and objects (incl. analogue books and pictures). In a broader context, metadata have over the past few years come to be a familiar concept in connection with intelligence service organisations such as USA’s NSA collection of data on individual persons’ use of digital services.

Editorial: Moving into the foreground
Lots of library offers and services exist without receiving particular attention from the users simply because the end users have absolutely no knowledge of them.

Viewpoint: In search of something like ReCAPTCHA

In this viewpoint I will share how the Cultural Heritage Project worked with ‘production’ of metadata as a process generated through our collaborations and dissemination lab.