ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition
June 26 – July 2, 2014
Las Vegas
Report by Robert Cunningham, Technical Services, Boston Public Library
Executive Summary
20,000 librarians descended upon Las Vegas trying to avoid the casinos and slot machines, which were
visible at every turn, to try to concentrate on the big issues facing librarianship today.
My emphasis for attending meetings this year was Big Heads (ALCTS Technical Services Directors of
Large Research Libraries Interest Group) and cataloging.
I was honored to be the alternate for Catherine Willis at the Big Heads meetings where discussion
included acquisitions, technical services organization, BIBFRAME (the replacement for the MARC
format used in cataloging and Polaris), and authority work.
The Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) held a meeting to discuss cataloging DVDs with RDA.
General sessions featuring the ALA president and others included Jane McGonigal speaking of the mental
improvement to health in playing video games, Jane Fonda speaking of her new book on teenaged
adolescents, Stan Lee speaking of his comic book characters like the Hulk, Lois Lowry and Jeff Bridges
speaking about their book and movie The Giver, and finally B.J. Novak speaking of his new children’s
book and his role in the TV program The Office.
The biggest news for me was BIBFRAME from the Library of Congress. Many new acronyms and
concepts were presented by innovative professionals. It’s refreshing to leave behind for a while the nuts
and bolts of daily library work to try to envision future trends with the movers and shakers. It was a week
well spent.
Thursday, June 26 – 6:30 p.m. Big Heads Meeting with OCLC Management
Authorities-related topics: Ted Fons, OCLC, began the discussion. “OCLC wants to control everything in
the cataloging record.” If “OCLC has a control issue it is a good thing.” Use of VIAF (the virtual
international authority file) is part of the future. Controlling local digital objects and journal article
authors is another goal of authority control. International control has its problems like the fact that the
French have four different authorized authority files. (Bibliographic Notification Services is now
incorporated in OCLC WorldShare Metadata Collection Manager—David Whitehair, OCLC).
Metadata creation: Bob Wolfen, Columbia University, spoke about looking for a set of elements that
could be used to create metadata for brief records by non-librarians, vendors, and language specialists.
Brief records are better than no records. (Sounds like our “stub” records in Polaris). How about sending a
part timer into the stacks with a tablet to enter metadata for uncataloged items? What’s OCLC’s role? Full
cataloging is OK but short non-cataloger metadata input is better because it is cheaper. (This is the
opposite view of the Music Library Association.)
Linked data: Ted Fons, OCLC, talked about entities. The full cataloging record is being broken into
entities. Work entities are OCLC’s first project. Person entities are in the future and manifestation entities
will be next. We are moving from the gilded, perfect, MARC record (and other legacy formats) to
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matching work entities to enrich discovery environments. This is evangelism work. It is entity-based data
management vs. RDA. Or, Schema/Web uses/OCLC vs. BIBFRAME/MARC uses/LC. These are the
opposing systems for linked data. In its simplest terms it is OCLC vs. LC. Entity management [good] vs.
cataloging [bad]. There is a revolution in description to bring together works, expressions, manifestations,
and items (WEMI). Aside: Harvard, Cornell, and Stanford are working together after receiving a Mellon
grant called “Linked Data for Libraries” or LD4L.
WorldCat Discovery Services: This system adds 1.5 billion articles to your catalog. Therefore, it is
important to maintain and update you holdings in WorldCat. FirstSearch (FS) end-of-life will be in about
2015. FS is moving to WorldCat Discovery, a knowledge base including e-collections. The recent
announcement that the University of Delaware was the first large research library to implement
WorldShare Management System was not all that big since Delaware merely added circulation and
acquisitions to their existing WMS. Stanford announced that they are now using the OCLC master record
in their catalog, not local information.
Friday, June 27 – 8:30 a.m. Technical Services Directors of Large Research
Libraries Interest Group (Big Heads)
Big Heads consists of the following institutions:
- ARL Research Libraries: Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Harvard
University, Indiana University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State
University, Princeton University, University of Alberta, University of California at Berkeley,
University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, University of Toronto,
University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale
University
- Non-ARL Research Library: Stanford University
- National Libraries: Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library, National Library of
Medicine
- Public Libraries: Boston Public, New York Public
The Boston Public Library is in good company.
There was no list of attendees from each institution but I noted a few of them: Scott Wicks, Harvard;
Andy Hart, UNC; University of British Columbia; Catherine (Cath) Tierney, Stanford.
Update of 2CUL Technical Services Integration: Jim LeBlanc, Cornell, and Bob Wolven, Columbia.
2CUL is pronounced “too cool.” Columbia and Cornell are combining their technical services
departments into one department: acquisitions and cataloging. Administration, management, and funding
needed extra time to develop. There was a recent article in Collaborative Librarianship about 2CUL. This
project was a middle-out approach. Mid-level people, the people who know what they’re doing, began the
planning process. Serials Solutions and Calisto software are used. A future cloud-based ILS is being
planned for both libraries together. See: http://2cul.org/
Acquisitions from non-traditional sources: Bob Wolven. Badland Unlimited, Amazon, Apple iTunes are
examples. If you purchase PDFs online, can you distribute? How can we serve this stuff to our users?
“Serving is OK, but scalable is not”—Wicks.
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Moving data from one system to another: Lisa German. Hathi Trust, CIC (Committee on Institutional
Cooperation) and DPLA (Digital Public Library of America) were mentioned. Libraries have metadata in
various systems: OCLC, ILS, etc. Is the catalog, the database of record, dead? Maintaining metadata with
updates is difficult. “Linked data will solve our problems” is both a joke and a solution.
Transforming Technical Services: Jee Davis interviewed 19 of the libraries represented in Big Heads and
found these trends. Batch cataloging is being performed by acquisitions staff. New functions are mostly eitems. New skills required in technical services: Flexibility, Collaboration, Problem solving, Proactivity,
Communication, Linked data knowledge, Project management skills, Knowledge of intellectual property,
along with traditional skills such as Language skills. Conclusion: New skills are a positive result. If
money is available new e-resources positions need to be created. However, restructuring should be done
realizing that new positions will never be approved.
BIBFRAME (BF) status and opportunities: Catherine Tierney and Phil Schreur, Stanford. Converting
from MARC to BIBFRAME was described. The goal is linked data on the Web. There needs to be
concrete projects to make BIBFRAME real. The Library of Congress will begin BF in fiscal year 2015.
How will it be distributed? Will BF be placed somewhere for download? Will there be a database for BF?
How does RDA fit with BF? More questions than answers at this point. The evangelists are the early
testers of BF.
New ideas on authority work from a PCC committee: Marty Kurth and John Riemer. Name authorities
and in transition for PCC. Noted: “statement-based identity management.”
Future agenda items:
- BIBFRAME updates,
- ILS and BF
- OLE and ALMA
- “Leading through ambiguity” or changing the skill set of existing staff
- How will ACQ work in BF?
New vice-chair elected: Mary Koskowski, U. Illinois.
Friday, June 27 – 12:00 noon Big Heads Luncheon
One must eat, so Big Heads gathered at Chang’s China Bistro down the street for lunch for about 15 of
the Big Heads. Conversation was of course about technical services.
Friday, June 27 – 2:30 p.m. Online Audio visual Catalogers (OLAC) Membership
Meeting
Liz Miller, outgoing chair, and Stacy Traill, incoming chair were present.
Best practices for cataloging DVD/Blue-Ray on RDA is awaiting CAPC (Cataloging Policy Committee)
approval and will be complete by September. A streaming video presentation followed.
Friday, June 27 – 4:00 p.m. Opening General Session – Featuring: Jane McGonigal.
Jane McGonigal spoke about her book: “Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can
change the world.” Especially interesting was her project: “100 ways to make history: May 20th, 2011,
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Volume 1” when she invited young people into the NYPL to write a book together. Quite interesting. Play
games to improve your brain. I might try it.
Saturday, June 28 – 8:30 a.m. Auditorium Speaker Series Featuring Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda, at age 76½ described her new book “Being a teen : everything teen girls and boys should
know about relationships, sex, love, health, identity & more.” Interesting ideas with a book signing
following.
Saturday, June 28 – 8:30 a.m. MARC Advisory Committee I
After Jane was through speaking I headed over to see MAC, the former MARBI Committee. Does that
date me? They were having a heated discussion about field 037, Source of Acquisition. The debate was
about whether the field was local or applicable to all as it applied especially to e-journals. Regina
Reynolds and Sally McCallum from LC were at the table as was Rich Greene, OCLC. Jay Weitz, OCLC
was in the audience. Since MARC is being replaced by BIBFRAME it seems that this committee’s days
are numbered.
Saturday, June 28 – 10:30 a.m. International Developments in Library Linked Data:
Think Globally, Act Globally – Part Two
Gordon Dunsire, Independent Consultant, spoke of entities in relation to RDA (Work, Expression,
Manifestation, and Item) and BIBFRAME (Work and Instance). Resource Description Framework (RDF)
may be the answer to the 12+ international standards. The question is how do we fit everything together?
Reinhold Heuvelmann, German National Library, described BIBFRAME, a carrier standard, as rule
agnostic. Read: BF Use Case: http://bibframe.org/documentation/bibframe-usecases/ There are now users
who are getting their hands dirty with BF: LC, Colorado, Princeton, Cornell, U. Cuba, and many others.
Check out: http://www.libhub.org/ Recommended for further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
Where is BR in the Hype Cycle by Jackie Fenn http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/05/dohype-cycles-show-up-in-books.html :
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Projected future developments were projected: the death of MARC; in 2047 BIBFRAME must die.
Spotted in the audience: Scott Wicks and Robin Wendler, Harvard; and Beacher Wiggins, LC.
Saturday, June 28 – 12:00 noon Auditorium Speaker Series Featuring Stan Lee
“Reading is good and you can quote me.” What else can you say to a room packed with librarians? Stan
Lee revealed that he started as Stanley Martin Lieber but shortened his name to make it easier to
remember. He described his comic book career, Marvel Comics, The Hulk, and POW! (Purveyors of
Wonder) Entertainment. He has a new book coming out next year called Zodiac, not a comic but
extensively illustrated.
Saturday, June 28 – 3:00 p.m. OCLC, The Power of Shared Data: What’s New and
What’s Next?
Ted Fons and Richard Wallis, OCLC Technology Evangelist. Entities, entities, and more entities. Entities
are used in order to make library data usable on the Web, improved Web exposure. The future will be
upgrading entities (works and authors) rather than upgrading individual MARC records. Another buzz
phrase: Entity-Based Data Architecture. A semantic search is more engaging. A 1997 report described the
Web 3.0 to 4.0 and we’re only on Web 2.0. 80% of the searches at the national library of France come
from the Web. We have to join the Web if we want to survive. Schema.org is the vocabulary used by the
Web and will be used by BF. Library systems need to enable Web access; get your catalog on the Web.
(Aside: OCLC has a product that will accomplish this.)
Saturday, June 28 – 4:30 p.m. Faceted Subject Access Interest Group
Steven Folsom and Chew Chiat Naun, Cornell, described their use of FAST. Question: will FAST replace
LCSH? Answer: not yet. UX = User Experience. FAST is more of a linked system concept and may be
important in a while for linked data. FAST heading are not as detailed as LSCH and are basically a
dumbed down LCSH with one term unrelated to other terms, unlike LCSH, which requires a careful
thought process to complete. Eric Childress, OCLC, was in the audience.
Saturday, June 28 – 7:45 p.m. Dinner with Library of Congress Staff
A fine expensive dinner was consumed at Bouchon in the Venetian Hotel. Even though the table was
filled with librarians the talk was mostly about Justin Bieber and Arnold Schwarzenegger—we were all
off duty. Also at the table were Ana Cristan, Jasmine Farrow, Eric Rivenbark, David Williamson, Dave
Reser, Beacher Wiggins, and Paul Frank.
Sunday, June 29 – 8:30 a.m. Linked Library Data Interest Group
Jon Phipps, Metadata Management Associates, spoke on RDA, FTW or WTF (For the win – What the
fheck)
BF, schema.org, and RDA are working together. There is no RDA record. It is a collection of entities.
Semantics = meanings. Therefore the Semantic Web is the Web with Meaning. LOD = Linked Open
Data. Check out the LITA LOD SIG. DCAM = Dublin Core Abstract Model. Git is a version control
system (github.com). OMI = Open Metadata Interface. You need this vocabulary to keep up with the
teckies. Jon explains that there is no answer:
- BR isn’t the answer – it discards some MARC semantics and redefines FRBR work.
- Schema isn’t the answer – too GOOGLE and OCLC proprietary.
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RDA isn’t the answer – lots of cruft from AACR2 & MARC21; minimal community
involvement; and a strong commitment to FRBR.
MARC21 isn’t the answer – hard to extend, without global pain; semantics tied to syntax; 11,078
things that can be said 0xx-7xx
Sunday, June 29 – 10:30 a.m. Library of Congress BIBFRAME Update Forum
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Welcome and introduction by Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic
Access, Library of Congress. Paul Frank announced that BF will soon be published in the Web.
Overview of BIBFRAME work sponsored by the Library of Congress: Sally McCallum, Chief,
Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress: See
www.loc.gov/bibframe for general information. PREMIS (Preservation Metadata Maintenance
Activity) with BF for audio visual resources. Metaproxy is used for searching.
BIBFRAME editor tool: Kevin Ford, Digital Projects Coordinator, Network Development and
MARC Standards Office, LC, suggested for more technical information: http://bibframe.org.
Also used are SRU (Search/Retrieval via URL) and Z39.50. A fill in the blanks demo of BF
showed that the form searched the authority file, LSCH, etc. to find the correct answer for
cataloging. Cataloging individual items can now be done by support staff.
Stanford’s investigations of BIBFRAME: Philip Schreur, Head, Metadata Department, Stanford
University reviewed LD4L (Linked Data for Libraries), a project of Cornell, Harvard, and
Stanford. Mentioned VIVO, creating an ontology (an ontology formally represents knowledge as
a hierarchy of concepts within a domain, using a shared vocabulary to denote the types, properties
and interrelationships of those concepts -- Wikipedia), and chucking data.
Results from a study of audiovisual material: Andrea Leigh, Head, Moving Image Processing
Unit, LC, spoke of Eric Miller’s Zepheira (which provides solutions to effectively integrate,
navigate and manage information across boundaries of person, group and enterprise -http://zepheira.com/about/people/eric-miller/).
The following is a model of BIBFRAME:
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Another important visual comparing RDA with BIBFRAME:
Sunday, June 29 – 1:00 p.m. CaMMS Forum: Translating BIBFRAME
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Dorothea Salo, University of Wisconsin, Madison, presented: Libraries Storming Linked Data.
Google engineers say that MARC data is not compatible. ISBD punctuation makes computers
sad. The big kahuna is VIAF. Find microdata in schema.org.
Philip Schreur, Stanford, described LC’s MARC to BF converter. It’s practical, fast, and fun.
Mentioned GitHub and the Blacklight catalog at Stanford.
Nannette Naught, Vice President Strategy & Implementation, Information Management Team
(IMT), Inc. discussed FISO (Find, Identify, Select, and Obtain)
Sunday, June 29 – 1:00 p.m. Authority Control Interest Group
I dropped into this meeting and found them discussing field 382, Medium of Performance. This is a field
that is new to music cataloging that some on the cutting edge of music RDA cataloging are using. In
actuality it is still rare to add detailed accounting of instrumentation here. In the past fields 048, 511, 505
(and sometimes others) covered this information.
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Sunday, June 29 – 2:00 p.m. Meet the Authors: Cantor Mitch (Scarletta / Publisher
Group West)
As a relief from the acronyms I swung over to the What’s Cooking @ ALA Stage to watch the end of
Cantor Mitch whipping up a little Kosher Cuisine. I was too late to get his book but later I found him at a
booth and he autographed a copy for me.
Sunday, June 29 – 4:00 p.m. ALA President’s Program featuring Lois Lowry and
Jeff Bridges
Bob Wolven, Columbia, won the Dewey Medal. Robert Maxwell received a book award for Maxwell’s
Guide to RDA (good bedtime reading). Lois Lowry, author, and Jeff Bridges, actor, promoted their work
on The Giver, soon a major motion picture. I saw an ad for Jeff performing elsewhere in a Vegas show.
How convenient for ALA.
Sunday, June 29 – 7:00 p.m. Music Library Association Dinner
The Grand Lux Cafe in the Venetian Hotel was the setting for meeting with music librarians at ALA
organized by Michael Colby, U. California, Davis. A few old friends were present (Beth Iseminger,
Harvard; Jay Weitz, OCLC) and a few new friends were made.
Monday, June 30 – 10:30 a.m. Stonewall Book Awards Brunch (GLBTRT)
A very tasty brunch preceded the annual awards ceremony. I found myself at a table with e.E. CharltonTrujillo (yes, that’s her name), winner for her book, Fat Angie. Sitting next to me was a young woman
from a publishing company with red (RED!) hair. I should have taken a selfie with her but didn’t.
Tuesday, July 1 – 9:30 a.m. Closing General Session featuring B.J. Novak
B.J. has written a children’s book. He was raised in Newton, Mass. And he and his father can
occasionally be seen at events there. His fame is being part of TV’s The Office. Now he’s moving on. He
promised the enthusiastic audience that he would be a library promoter.
Tuesday, July 1 – 11:00 a.m. Inaugural Brunch
This was the first time in my ALA attending that I stayed until the bitter end. Actually not so bitter brunch
was served. I sat with some Canadians from Wetaskiwin, Alberta, who asked for a refill after the
Champaign toast. They were enjoying Vegas for sure. I admit that I left before the inaugural address. My
speechifying tolerance had filled.
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