ALA Midwinter 2012: Discovering and Cataloging Repositories and Unique Collections: An Update on Standards, Preservation, and Usage

Standards Committee, Holdings Committee, Continuing Resources Section, ALCTS

 Auditing Digital Repositories: An Update on Standards, Preservation, and UsageCenter for Research Libraries

By Marie-Elise Waltz, Special Projects Librarian, Center for Research Libraries

 Marie introduced that, based on the interests of members on auditing and certification of digital repositories, CRL developed OAIS (Open Archival Information System) to define attributes and responsibilities of trusted digital repositories; and then, the framework was accepted by ISO as standard ISO 16363 for certification and auditing. So far 6 repositories in the US and Europe have been tested. As defined by RLG, a trusted digital repository is one whose mission is to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now and in the future. Marie believed that an audit benefited the repositories by establishing their soundness and dependability. The standards which are used for auditing include Metadata Standards (Dublin Core, CSDGM, etc.), technical Standards, ISO 27001 and data and format standards, PDF/A, etc. After auditing, qualified repositories will be certified as trusted repositories and report to the research community. CRL welcome academic and independent researchers to contact them if they have interests in have their repositories audited and certificated. Community involvement and feedback is crucial for the project’s success.

Cataloging Unique Collections with RDA and Non-MARC Standards

By Melanie Wacker, Metadata Coordinator, Columbia University Libraries

Melanie shared her experience in cataloguing digital items with non-MARC standards based on RDA concept. She found only a few non-MARC records were tested in the US RDA test. She tested metadata standards such as MODS, Dublin Core and EAD. The items catalogued include websites, finding aids and digitized text and images. The following were the issues she encountered:

  • One-to-one Principle. RDA requires one description for one resource while MODS recommends cataloguing digitized and original carriers together in the main record.
  • Relationships. It is hard to define whether a digitized item is the digital reproduction of the item or the manifestation.
  • FRBR. There are four levels of description in FRBR. Melanie gave an example that a 3D object was printed on an envelope, and then somebody wrote some text on it, and then the envelope was digitized. The item might be consider as the work (3D object), the expression (image of the 3D object), the manifestation (the envelope), or the item (texted envelope) in different scenario.
  • Relationship Designators. In non-MARC metadata standards, the definition of contributor is pretty broad, e.g. the collector, while RDA only defines the statement of responsibility as the creation of, or contributing to the realization of, the intellectual or artistic content of the resource.

Melanie concluded that RDA might be better for describing traditional resources. For cataloguing digital resources with non-MARC standards, more research needs to be done on finding best practise, documentation and testing.

The PIRUS Project: objectives, outcomes and next steps

By Gary Van Overborg, Scholarly iQ

The PIRUS project has been funded by JISC. the UK Joint Information Systems Committee

Gary introduced the PIRUS project which purposed on collecting usage data of online resources on article level. The articles could in any online locations, such as journal publisher’s website, aggregator sites (Ovid, ProQuest, etc), subject repositories ( PubMed Central, etc) and Institutional Repositories. Authors and funding agencies are increasingly interested in a reliable global overview of usage of individual articles, as well as online usage is becoming an alternative, accepted measure of article and journal value. The system is based on COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources), an international initiative by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting of online usage statistics, and generate XML-based stats reports. Gary brought up the concept of Central Clear House (CCH) that behaves the bucket of usage data for authorized parties, which can compile and tailor the data reports. The CCH process is that each journal article download invokes an  tracker code that sends data to a single big bucket. Repositories and publishers also can collect data into their own buckets. The feedback from authors, publishers and research institutions are pretty positive. The only concern from repositories is global standard and cost.

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