I think Harry has the pertinent points. Most of the session was devoted to Eric Miller of Zepheira’s presentation.
My personal impressions, beyond the more substantive information Harry has provided:
At this stage, not surprisingly, there was a lot of talk about plans and expectations. Given the short 5 week turnaround since the contract was awarded, someone has been very hard
at work learning how to talk intelligently to librarians.
Given the short contract term, the timeline is very aggressive.
The outcome of the current contract appears less on creating THE solution and more on creating some tools to illuminate the way forward. Once I silence the internal Veruca Salt,
(I want it now, I want the whole thing!), the pragmatist in me recognizes the utility of this approach.
John F. Myers, Catalog Librarian
Schaffer Library, Union College
807 Union St.
Schenectady NY 12308
518-388-6623
Harry Gaylord wrote:
A lot was covered for that session, but here's some of the info I came away with:
LC established a contract w/Zepheira to bring w3c standards, library community standards, and other pertinent standards together.
A new committee under ALA has been established to focus on the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BFI) which includes ALCTS, LITA & other committees.
Initial models & tools will be created by Zepheira then various orgs will play around with the tools and models. The tools & models will be tweaked along the way as needed.
Related linked data initiatives like Schema.org and others will be reviewed to weigh certain benefits they present that can be adapted to BFI.
Marc21 will be translated to linked data model to retain the beneficial aspects of the historical format.
Prototypes & tools will be produced for testing purposes.
Reference codes for the initial tools & prototypes will be created to establish a good foundation in the same fashion such codes were established for xml & other formats.
A flexible road map will be outlined for moving forward in the BFI process to measure progress along the way & to meet specific advances by certain time periods.
July/Aug. 2012—prototype codes will be established & their impact on MARC records & linked data initiatives will be considered.
Aug./Sept. 2012—initial software model for the library community will be created to test for linked data.
By Midwinter 2013, ideas of what’s good, what isn’t, will be assessed in initial software model.
New framework will have to account for what’s good from past & mixed with what works for the future that may call for paradigm shift in how librarians conceive their operations in certain instances.
Increased flexibility will be necessary for describing resources.
Reusable links will need to be formed across the various types of records librarians create.
Common characteristics will be sought to bring various linked data initiatives together (initiatives like RDA, FRBR, British Library, Worldcat,
schema.org, etc.)