Proposal by Diane Hillmann and Gordon Dunsire at the NISO Bibliographic Roadmap meeting, April 15-16, Baltimore, MD. In this proposal, Hillmann and Dunsire describe how the current environment can be transformed without necessarily the kinds of disruption that have been feared.

1. The Road Forward
based on what we’ve learned from the one we’ve
been on
Diane Hillmann and Gordon Dunsire
NISO Bibliographic Roadmap meeting,
April 15-16, 2013, Baltimore, MD, USA

2. Let’s start from here
FRBRer FRBRoo
ISBD
BibO
MARC 21
UNIMARC
RDA
DC
BIBFRAME?
Schema.org/bibex?
Bibliographic RDF element sets
Local

3. Similar things, different povs
o It’s the same bibliographic universe
o With common concepts found in most bibliographic
schema/element sets
o Author, title, subject, format, etc.
o Plus specialized concepts for non-global use
o Musical key, parallel title, etc.
o Allowing semantic maps between particular schema
elements/properties (ontologies)

4. m21:
M338__b
rda:
carrierTypeManifestation
rda:
mediaTypeManifestation
dct:
format
dc:
format
unc:
mediaType
isbd:
P1003
schema:
encodes
Carrier/format concept map (ontology)

5. Environment
o Many element sets and vocabularies
o Common concept maps are in process - more can be
created, and viewed as part of a “contract”
o Don’t need complete “schema-to-schema” maps
o Concept-focused maps/ontologies are the
consensus, not the schema boundary
o What’s the common minimal data that you need to
provide to be part of a global service? What else is
necessary for the description?

6. Design strategies
o Bottom up, not top down: the evidence of global
consensus lies in the commonality of multiple local
environments
o Top down requires agreement prior to evidence of
usage
o Some approved elements never get used; MARC
21 has several examples
o The consensus may not lie at “the top”, i.e. the
“dumbest” element

7. From local to global (data)
o “Contract” specifies set of properties that data must
interoperate with
o Local data can interoperate via direct mapping, or via
connection to any part of a concept-focused map
o Local data remains in original format for local
applications
o Automatically dumbed-down for global services
using maps
o “Think global, act local” = add mappings from local
properties to global graphs

8. Role of Standards Organization
o Build on library community strengths in collaboration
and trust
o Maintain “contract” for accepting data in global
service(s)
o Consensus identification of component elements
o New candidate elements identified by local usage
o “Endorsement” mechanism brings new elements
into contract

9. Local to global (development)
o Local development proceeds at own pace
o No need to wait for consensus approval
o Global endorsement necessarily and usefully lags
behind local developments
o E.g. W3C/HTML5; schema.org
o “Tell us what to do”
o Do your own thing!

10. Beware of Zombie Issues
o Assumption of “records” as units of management
o Records can be inputs or outputs
o Round tripping
o It’s not about data “residence” in one schema or
another—more of a “view”
o De-duplication—no more “master records”
o Data at the statement level is available for many
kinds of aggregation

11. Provenance and Filtering
o “Who says?” is an essential question when evaluating
statements
o Not all data statements are created equal, but
trustworthiness is hard to determine without
provenance
o Provenance info is the basis for data filtering
o No other technique works quite as well to determine
quality

12. What’s Needed?
o Infinite namespaces, without encodings, sequences,
hierarchies
o Support for innovation at every level
o Commitment to move forward (not back), and to learn
the right lessons from experience
o Leadership from institutions and individuals