KBART Achievements and Challenges in Improving Metadata Interoperability
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This session will comprise a talk with a panel of speakers looking at KBART: seven years later (since the publication of the first set of recommendations up to today). The panel will discuss the changes on the e-resources metadata landscape, the benefits of KBART and the challenges of its implementation. Today poor metadata in the electronic resources supply chain is still a problem. The panel will use practical examples to explain how metadata creation, consumption and usage are marked by the constant requirement of finding the balance between available resources (technical and human) and end user discoverability needs. The KBART Standing Committee sees the implementation of KBART recommendations as a community effort from a range of stakeholders (content providers, knowledge bases, link resolvers and librarians).
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KBART Achievements and Challenges in Improving Metadata Interoperability
- 1. KBART: Challenges and Achievements Magaly Bascones, Co-Chair NISO KBART standing committee
- 2. “What options do we have for speeding the grindingly slow process of getting our metadata in order, and improving systems interoperability? Boring, but really necessary.” Ann Rossiter Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) UKSG 2016 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later
- 3. “What options do we have for speeding the grindingly slow process of getting our metadata in order, and improving systems interoperability? Boring, but really necessary.” Ann Rossiter Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) UKSG 2016 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later
- 4. 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 4 UKSG 2007 research report, “link resolvers and the serials supply chain” lack of awareness of OpenURL's capabilities impacting the quality and timeliness of data provided to knowledge bases undermining the potential of this sophisticated technology
- 5. KBART standing committee 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 5 Knowledge base providers » Sheri Meares (EBSCO) » Christine Stohn (Ex Libris) » Ben Johnson (ProQuest) » Bettina Huhn (OCLC) » Benjamin Bober (BACON_ABES) » Magaly Bascones (KB+ Jisc) Content providers » Kathy Marcaccio (Gale Cengage Learning) » Julie Zhu (IEEE) » Noah Levin (Springer) » Jonathan Ponder (JSTOR) Librarians » Dominic Benson (Brunel University London) » KristenWilson (GOKb)
- 6. KBART recommendations phase 1 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 6 KBART phase 1 recommendations published in 2010
- 7. » Publication title » Print identifier » Online identifier » Date first issue online » Num first vol online » Num first issue online » Date last issue online » Num last vol online KBART recommendations phase 2 » Num last issue online » Title url » First author » Title id » Embargo info » Coverage depth » Notes » Publisher name 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 7 » Publication type » Date monograph published online » Monograph volume » Monograph edition » First editor » Parent publication title id » Preceding publication title id » Access type » Date monograph published print
- 8. Publishers and content providers are providing significant metadata. Some of them still do not provide even basic KBARTish formatted files. Metadata supply chain 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 8 aggregators
- 9. Metadata supply chain 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 9 IEEE KB+ BACON -ABES ERDB-JP aggregators OUP, HUP, Project Muse, Greenleaf
- 10. Metadata supply chain 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 10 aggregators System vendors: their systems are unable to process them fully and their discovery layers do not display the enriched data. Consortia: good metadata is not on the negotiating table
- 11. “What options do we have for speeding the grindingly slow process of getting our metadata in order, and improving systems interoperability? Boring, but really necessary.” Ann Rossiter Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) UKSG 2016 » Librarians and their negotiating agents should bring metadata to the negotiating table » The library community should strongly support good examples of content providers and a service at the national level » System vendors should assume their role as part of the digital transformation within the industry, and should share their responsibility with their customers 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later
- 12. 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later Why KBART? Adoption of Knowledgebases And RelatedTools (KBART) Recommended Practice gives content providers a single source of data to distribute to content aggregators, knowledgebase (KB) vendors, and libraries. KBART data is a universally-accepted data format that is human-readable for marketing and product information purposes as well as machine-readable to facilitate automated delivery of data to KB vendors. Putting your data into KBART format makes it easier for librarians to use your content and for library users to find and access that same content on your platform, increasing your site traffic and ROI for libraries. KBART Endorsement The KBART Standing Committee members are information professionals from content providers, knowledgebase vendors, and librarians, who are happy to help you learn KBART as you develop your data feeds and address any questions you may have about the Recommended Practice. We encourage you to submit sample data to the Standing Committee (kbart-sc@list.niso.org) for review and feedback to ensure that it will meet the needs of your customers and work optimally with vendors' products. If your data meets the guidelines of KBART, the Standing Committee will endorse your files. Being able to say that your files are KBART-endorsed will create confidence in the quality of your metadata to those who use your files. Where to find more information http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart/endorsement/
- 13. Magaly Bascones Co-Chair NISO KBART Standing Committee kbart-sc@list.niso.org . 12/04/2017 KBART: 10 years later 13
Editor's Notes
- Last year at this same conference, Ann Rossiter, Executive Director of SCONUL, in her presentation about the relationship between libraries and publishers and how it could be managed for greater impact. She appealed for publishers to engage more with the digital transformation within the industry. Among the medium-to-long-term issues that need to be resolved, she mentioned: metadata,
- she said : “What options do we have for speeding the grindingly slow process of getting our metadata in order, and improving systems interoperability? Boring, but really necessary.” I was pleasantly surprised that she included metadata in the list of problems the community has been trying to resolve for a very long time. And there are a couple of aspects of her remark that I would like to comment on.
- “Systems interoperability”: we need to keep this in mind, metadata is the key to success for the performance of electronic management systems, metrics, discovery, content usage and customer satisfaction. “Boring”: metadata is not boring. Describing reality in a structured way is a fascinating task. What is boring, and on this most of you will agree with me, is working with bad metadata and having to correct it. Bad metadata creates lots of work and frustration for librarians.
- So what is bad metadata? Metadata is bad when it is wrong and/or out of date. The problem of bad metadata and its knock-on effect was analysed in the UKSG research report Link Resolvers and the Serials Supply Chain, published in 2007. The key point of this report was that good-quality data was not being provided to knowledge bases when it was needed, and this was undermining the potential of link resolvers’ sophisticated technology. Today, I will add that affect in general interoperability and it holds back the digital transformation of the industry.
- The KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) working group was an UKSG and NISO joint initiative founded in 2008. Its first set of recommendations was published in 2010 and was concerned with format. It outlined minimum requirements to produce smoother interaction between members of the knowledge base supply chain.
- Basically, we asked content providers to send their data in a standard format with clear and standard labels. Several publishers enthusiastically embraced the format and now produce KBART or KBARTish files. But even though the message – that standardised basic formatting was needed – was widely understood, a number of publishers, small, medium and large, still do not provide their metadata using KBART. In several cases, however, librarians, system vendors and knowledge bases had a more useful set of metadata to work with. This helps, in general, to improve processes, because it means that users no longer had to work from scratch. However, format is not everything. Even if the files are formatted in KBART, there is no guarantee that the data is accurate.
- KBART’s Phase II report, published in 2014, focuses on the more complex issues that cause problems in this area. With KBART Phase II, things have become more interesting. Its recommendations include that basic publications information should be accompanied by data on related titles, Open Access, eBooks and consortia-specific metadata. The aim was to produce a more useful, comprehensive and complete format that would have more impact on discoverability, would increase usage and provide libraries with more detailed information. KBART Phase II supports the industry digital transformation that Ann Rossiter was talking about. But here the NISO KBART Standing Committee has witnessed less enthusiasm among content providers, who have been slow to provide files in Phase II format. There are several reasons for this: a lack of understanding of the benefits involved, lack of resources to implement workflows and lack of tools to enable providers to produce the required files. Producing metadata is not seen as a commercially fruitful thing to do and content providers are not fully playing their part in achieving the goal of sharing the world’s knowledge
- So, to summarise how things currently look among content providers: There are publishers who are not providing significant metadata. Some of them still do not provide even basic KBART formatted files. Aggregators: Aggregators struggle to provide files for their products. Their multi-format databases are a challenge. The variety of formats, holdings and embargoes are difficult to describe in a structured way. The massive number of items involved makes it difficult to produce useful files. But it is not all bad news.
- We have good things happening and we are presenting them today. Some content providers have implemented KBART Phase II and are committing to good customer service. Initiatives are happening at the national level, with accuracy at the centre of activities. The two examples that Christina and Julie will present today has allowed to reveal that the problem is not only at the metadata creation level. The problem is larger than that.
- Let’s see what is happening on the other side of the supply chain: Most of the system vendors are not playing their part. They receive KBART 2 files, but their systems are unable to process them fully and their discovery layers do not display the enriched data. In general, good metadata is overwritten by the bad metadata they have on their own databases; their processes are slow; they upload incomplete information, and so on. And they don’t have a timeline for these issues to be solved. Libraries’ expenditure on content takes up a large amount of the library budget, but good metadata is not on the negotiating table. It is left behind as an after-purchase issue. Basically, libraries get into agreements without a clear understanding of what they are paying for and they are basing decisions on incomplete usage metrics.
- So, to finish, let us come back to Ann Rossiter’s quote: “What options do we have for speeding the grindingly slow process of getting our metadata in order, and improving systems interoperability?” I will answer, we have several options: Librarians and their negotiating agents should bring metadata to the negotiating table. The library community should strongly support good examples of content providers and services at the national level. System vendors should assume their role as part of the digital transformation within the industry.
- The KBART Standing Committee will continue to support content providers who want to create KBART files – with advice, educational activities, the endorsement process and so on. We will continue to advocate the adoption of the recommendations in the context of our goal of sharing the world’s knowledge.