Staff Papers

Integrating Digital Resources into the Library Information Infrastructure

A paper presented by Peter Haddad, Director Technical Services Branch, National Library of Australia, at the 14th National Cataloguing Conference, Geelong Waterfront Campus, Deakin University, 7-9 November 2001


Is there any scope for applying traditional library techniques to the discovery, description and delivery of digital resources? While the digital era is one of uncertainty and change, efforts are being made to reshape cataloguing standards to meet the challenge of describing digital resources. Some changes are so fundamental that they will alter cataloguing forever. The most important task at hand for libraries is to ensure that old models of cooperation are not lost in the transition to the digital environment, and that a firm and robust national information infrastructure is put in place for the future.

The emergence of the World Wide Web and the appearance of digital resources have subjected libraries to a period of unprecedented change. We have moved out of a long period of stability into a transition period characterised by uncertainty and volatility.

Being in the midst of this change, it can be hazardous to speculate on what the digital future holds. Many who have tried to predict the future of technological innovations have come to grief, as the following examples show:

Everything that can be invented has been invented. (Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899)

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. (Western Union internal memo, 1876)

I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year. (Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957)

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. (Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977)

640K ought to be enough for anybody. (Bill Gates, 1981)(1)

Nevertheless, we do have to make some assumptions about the way the digital future will develop, so as to position our libraries, and our cataloguing sections in such a way that they can meet the challenges of the digital era. We also need to have a clear vision of how we would like the library and information infrastructure of the future to work for us, and to put in place the building blocks that will take us towards this goal.

Extending the Model

We have moved out of a period of stability where libraries have been highly successful in sharing their resources through union catalogues, indexing and abstracting services and inter-library loan systems. For print and physical format materials, a fully developed, functional and stable library and information infrastructure has evolved to carry out resource discovery, description, and delivery. This development has been based largely on collaboration and cooperation among libraries.

The electronic or digital world lacks stability, standards and order, but it would be a pity if the existing resource-sharing model built up over so many years could not be extended to electronic resources. Of course, it would need to be different in many respects, and the challenges it presents are more numerous and greater, but wherever costs and significant effort are involved, as they are in dealing with digital resources, cooperation must have a valid role. This cooperation must be between libraries themselves, and between libraries and a range of other players such as publishers, creators of resources and others.

Integrating digital resources

We need to begin by asking whether we really do want to integrate digital resources into the existing library information infrastructure. After all, it is highly likely that search engines will develop to provide much more efficient Internet search capabilities. In the future they will allow users to locate the information they require more easily and with greater precision. The so-called “deep web” will be trawled for information not currently accessible. Documents on the web will become better indexed as search engines become metadata aware. Portals will increasingly provide easy access to a range of selected electronic information organised to meet individual requirements. Web users will increasingly be able to access information resources without intermediation by libraries or librarians.

There is a strong argument to be made for providing access to a range of information resources regardless of format. From the user’s viewpoint, the ideal is access to a coherent collection of material including both electronic and traditional information resources. This is not merely anecdotal evidence. Surveys of readers at the National Library of Australia have recorded a strong preference for this outcome. This is the so-called “hybrid library” where the traditional library functions are combined with those of electronic, digital or virtual library services.(2)

Early studies that concentrated on the impossibility of cataloguing Internet resources(3), or the possible irrelevance of cataloguing due to automated indexing and other tools(4), have given way to a contrary opinion based on the fact that users more and more expect to have access to these resources, so the option of leaving them undescribed and thus excluding them from the catalog is becoming indefensible.(5)

Cataloguing digital resources

Having decided that it is desirable to catalogue digital resources, and to integrate them into the catalogue for the sake of our users, we are faced with a number of immediate questions. Which resources should we catalogue? Are the existing cataloguing rules adequate? Does cataloguing mean the traditional and familiar MARC cataloguing, or something else?

For most libraries digital resources should be selected using the same collection development criteria used for other library materials. That is, they should be selected for their informational content to further the learning, teaching, research or recreational goals of the library.

Whether the cataloguing rules are adequate is a more complex question and the issue of cataloguing web sites and electronic resources continues to be the single most important issue facing the cataloguing world.(6) The cataloguing rules are inadequate, but they are changing to accommodate digital resources, and librarians, being the ultimate pragmatists in many ways, have devised ways of cataloguing and continuing to catalogue a variety of online and digital publications.

Revising the rules

Cataloguing of electronic resources is nothing new and cataloguers have been doing it for more than two decades, following AACR2 Chapter 9. But the cataloguing of digital resources available by remote access has highlighted several shortcomings in the code. The chief source of information, the title screen can change with time and the method of viewing. Publication and edition data are rarely given, while the physical description becomes irrelevant when there is no physical item. File characteristics designations were originally too limited. The electronic location and access information of the resource, the URL, had to be provided for in the cataloguing record.

All of these shortcomings have prompted a major revision of Chapter 9 of AACR that has taken a long time to come to fruition. Along the way the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a major revision of the International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources ISBD(ER), formerly ISBD(CF). AACR2 Chapter 9 was then “harmonised” with ISBD(ER), and the final revision is about to be published.

Similarly, the advent of online remote resources has highlighted problems with the cataloguing rules and their concept of seriality. Websites and databases are not serials in the sense of being issued in successive parts or bearing numeric or chronological designations, but they do exhibit other serial attributes. Because of their continuing nature, they cannot be satisfactorily treated as monographs. Nor is their content permanently fixed within a physical object. The process to make AACR2 relevant to this class of material has been a long one, and is based largely on the work carried out by Jean Hirons. After much consultation and discussion, Jean Hirons and others produced the 1999 report Revising AACR2 to Accommodate Seriality with its distinctions between “finite” and “continuing” publications. A new type of publication, “integrating resources”, was defined. Hirons’s work went much further into the changes to AACR2 that might be required, and resulted in a series of proposed changes to handle the fact that continuing resources are in a state of constant change over time. The Joint Steering Committee for AACR (JSC) endorsed much of this work, and the revisions to Chapter 12 are expected soon. Again, an important aim for JSC has been the harmonisation of these changes with the ISBD(S) and ISSN international standards.

Radically restructuring the rules

The revision process for Chapter 9 and Chapter 12 has taken time, but two far more fundamental problems with the rules are going to take much longer to resolve, and look like changing the face of cataloguing forever. These are the multiple characteristics problem, and the format variation problem.

The multiple characteristics problem arises from the fact that in addition to its physical format documents also have other characteristics such as being published or unpublished, type of publication, and relationship to other expressions of the same work. AACR2 currently makes the assumption that each physical carrier is restricted to only one of the class of materials chapters. This means that a relevant rule cannot be applied when it is not part of the class of material chapter being used to catalogue the document. Further confusion arises from the fact that many different types of content can be put on the same carrier. For example, text, maps and music can all be digital.

Suggestions on how to deal with this problem include the idea that AACR2 should be restructured along the lines of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) so that all the rules concerning the title area are brought together, all the rules on the edition area are brought together, and so on. This arrangement would allow the cataloguer to use every rule relevant to the resource being catalogued. This radical reorganisation is probably the longer-term solution. A more immediate “fix” is the suggestion that Rule 0.24, which appears to give primacy to the physical carrier, be rewritten so that all aspects of a document are brought out, and the physical carrier no longer given primacy. This second approach has been endorsed by JSC, with the development of a prototype to test the feasibility of re-organising AACR2 by ISBD area.

The format variation problem is also related to Rule 0.24, but this time because it is the only place in AACR2 that addresses the question of whether to create a new record if a record for a similar item already exists. At the moment, the rule implies that a new record should be created whenever there is any variation in the physical carrier, or format, even if the intellectual or artistic content is the same. Thus separate records are created for film and video version of the same motion picture. Electronic resources have exacerbated the problem, as they can carry so many different types of content.

The format variation problem is being addressed in the long term by a fundamental re-examination of the purpose of bibliographic records. At the moment they represent particular manifestations, or physical embodiments of a work, but could they, or should they represent particular expressions of a work instead? As the rules stand a new record must be created for any new manifestation of a work, but perhaps this should happen only when the expression changes. JSC has appointed a small group, the Format Variation Working Group to determine whether expression-based cataloguing is viable, and whether the records resulting from this type of cataloguing would be intelligible to catalogue users.

Wandering between two worlds

Faced with the knowledge that improvements and solutions are on the way, but will be some considerable time in coming, the question of what to do in the interim is an interesting one. If your library is anything like mine, it is also a difficult one in which short-term solutions may need to be discarded in favour of others that better fit the long-term scenario.

Like many libraries we have faced the format variation problem by taking the single record approach. When we did this, it seemed to have a lot to recommend it. There was less work for the cataloguers, and a more efficient workflow in just adding the URL to the record for the print version. The catalogue users are also spared from having to plough through many catalogue records that represent essentially the same thing. We felt that we had some authority in taking the approach. CONSER had made it part of their guidelines. We have been uneasily aware that our approach has not always been very consistent. Australian ‘born digital’ items are given individual catalogue records, while Australian digital items with print equivalents are represented on the record for the print version. Anything we digitise through the National Library’s digitisation program is given the single record approach. This seems reasonable as most of the items digitised to date have been original materials, but in time we will digitise maps and other publications. We are also very aware of the problems that the single record approach poses for library operations such as inter-library loan.

With one eye on the future and its possible outcomes, we are beginning to ask questions. If we change over from print to electronic serials offered through an aggregator service, will we be content if the record for the electronic title is merely an add-on to the print record? For updating and maintenance purposes separate records are going to be essential, all the more so if the updating and maintenance can be done centrally rather than in each holding library. We know that the single record practice distorts the extent and size of collection statistics that we extract from our library management system. Are we building up for ourselves a legacy of single records representing more than one manifestation, which will eventually have to be disaggregated, taking time and money sometime in the future?

I strongly suspect that cataloguers will continue to catalogue at the manifestation level, and that it will be the newly developed library management systems of the future that will solve the problem of confusion with too many similar records at the user end.

The ultimate goal

The challenge lies in developing the national infrastructure to facilitate integrated access to physical and online resources.(7) The local hybrid library system has a large role to play in national information services. For instance, the full extent of a local library’s holdings needs to be represented in union catalogues. The local library’s digital collections need to be accessible as part of national digital library services. Significant holdings in given subject areas or formats need to be declared in directories, union lists, subject gateways multimedia publications and online exhibitions.

Does this mean traditional MARC cataloguing for digital resources? While many libraries will be cataloguing their prime online electronic resources in this way, and reporting them to the National Bibliographic Database, there is also a role for incorporating all kinds of metadata relating to electronic resources into the national infrastructure. At present the National Library is conducting a feasibility study into ways of extending access to electronic resources while improving resource sharing within the library community, via an electronic resources repository. The study is intended to gather information on how an electronic resources repository might work. Several possible architectures will be examined including a fully distributed service based on Z39.50 and other protocols, a virtual view of the National Bibliographic Database, and a hybrid service that combines both distributed and centralised elements of service.

In this paper I have tried to give some idea of a few of the wider issues surrounding the cataloguing of digital resources. Significant changes are underway, and we are witnessing exciting developments, the like of which have not been seen since the cataloguing codes were first formulated and developed. These changes will take time. Standards take a long time to evolve, and the library systems industry takes even longer to adopt and implement them. In the meantime, what should we do? My advice would be to continue to create the data that outlives changing rules and transient library management systems and lasts forever. Where there are choices, work these out with one eye open to the future, and avoid taking the path of short-term gain without considerable thought. It can be done, even in the present era of uncertainty, as I hope the following paper in this session will demonstrate. Share the data thus created, and share in the data created through the National Bibliographic Database, if this is at all possible.

If we can do this, and also address the preservation and persistence issues that lie beyond the scope of this paper, we will build a solid infrastructure on which to base future library services and collections. The time has come for libraries to determine their own digital destiny.(8)

(1) Prime, Eugenie. 2001 “Impossible Things. Making Waves: New Serials Landscapes in a Sea of Change, Part 1”. Serials Librarian 40, no. 1/2(2001): 43-51.

(2) Pearce, Judith, Warwick Cathro and Tony Boston. 2000 “The Challenge of Integrated Access: the Hybrid Library System of the Future”. Books and Bytes: Technologies for the Hybrid Library. Melbourne, Victorian Association of Library Automation Inc., 2000.

(3) Craigmile, R. 1995. “Will Librarians Hack It on the Highway?” Computers in Libraries 15, no. 1 (1995): 24-25

(4) Levy, D.M. 1995. Cataloguing in the Digital Order. In: Shipman, F.M; Furuta, R.; Levy, D.M., eds. Proceedings of Digital Libraries ’95: The 2nd Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, June 11-13, 1995. University of Texas at Austin.

http://csdl.tamu.edu/DL95/papers/levy/levy.html

(5) Gerhard, K.H. 1997. “Cataloguing Internet Resources: Practical Issues and Concerns”, Serials Librarian 32, no. 1/2(1997): 123-137.

(6) Weiss, Amy K. and Timothy V. Carstens. 2001 “The Year’s Work in Cataloging”, 1999. Library Resources and Technical Services, 45(1):47-58

(7) National Library of Australia. 2001 Electronic Information Resources: Strategies and Action Plan 2001-2002. Canberra: National Library, 2001.

(8) Tennant, Roy. 2000 “Determining our digital destiny”. American Libraries, January 2000: 54-58.

Peter Haddad
Director, Technical Services
National Library of Australia

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