1. UNIMARC, RDA and the Semantic Web Gordon Dunsire Presented at Les Journées ABES 26-27 May 2010, Montpellier, France (Originally presented at WLIC 2009, Milan, Italy)

2. UNIMARC  A carrier format intended for the exchange of bibliographic metadata between the systems used by national agencies  Goals  Maintain and develop in alignment with other MARC formats and new bibliographic standards.  Enhance portability of data to the Web environment and interoperability with other standards.  Improve availability of documentation.  Promotion, dissemination, user support.

3. UNIMARC – ISBD - FRBR  UNIMARC is aligned with International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)  Specifies data elements and their display  ISBD is aligned with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)  User-focused model for bibliographic data  All 3 standards maintained by IFLA groups UNIMARCISBDFRBR

4. RDA: resource description and access  New metadata standard for describing the content of information resources  Designed for the digital environment  Built on 100+ years of experience in developing the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR)  Intended for international use  Focus on library collections, but seeks compatibility with metadata in related communities  E.g. Archives, museums, and publishers

5. RDA – FRBR - FRAD  RDA aligned with FRBR  RDA attributes grouped by FRBR entities  RDA also aligned with Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD)  Also maintained by IFLA  FRBR aligned with FRAD  Part of the “Functional Requirements” family RDAFRBRFRAD

6. RDA - ISBD  RDA is not designed for any specific metadata carrier format  But mappings developed from RDA elements to ISBD and MARC21 formats to maximise integration with existing data RDAISBD RDAMARC21

7. Material designation  ISBD and AACR use the device of a general material designation (GMD)  Early warning to catalogue users of how resource content is to be accessed and used  Through a particular human sense (sight, hearing, etc.)  With a specific intermediation device (computer, magnifier, etc.)  GMDs do not clearly separate content mediation (e.g. Sight) from carrier mediation (e.g. Magnifier)

8. ISBD area 0  New area covering content form and media type  Separates content type (form) from carrier (media) type  RDA has also developed separate content and carrier categories  Partial alignment between ISBD and RDA categories  Some are exact matches  Framework underlying RDA categories can be applied to ISBD to improve alignment

9. RDA/ONIX framework  An ontology developed by RDA and the publishing community to improve metadata interoperability  Set of low-level attributes combined to form high-level content and carrier types for RDA  E.g. RDA content type “spoken word”  Category attributes  Character: Language  SensoryMode: Hearing  ImageDimensionality: not applicable  ImageMovement: not applicable

10. Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF)  Project to extend the RDA/ONIX framework  June-November 2009  Extension covers roles and relationships between bibliographic entities and agents  E.g. Manifestation:hasManufacturer:Publisher  E.g. WorkA:isDerivedFrom:WorkB  Framework extended to cover other standards  CIDOC Content Reference Model (CRM), Dublin Core (DC), FRBR, IEEE-Learning Object Metadata (LOM), MARC21

11. VMF RDA VMF (RDA/ONIX+) MARC21CRM LOM ONIX FRBR

12. Alignments  Alignments are not exact (one-to-one)  Mappings may be fuzzy, partial or out-of-date  Some are latent within underlying schemas  E.g. RDA/ONIX framework  Development of one standard may not be synchronised with aligned standards  Standards independently maintained  Aligned standards may be subsequently re- examined and developed  Alignment drift may be amplified in a chain of mappings

13. The (partial) chain RDA VMF (RDA/ONIX+) ONIX CRM LOM FRBRUNIMARCISBD FRAD MARC21

14. From UNIMARC to RDA and back again UNIMARCISBDRDA UNIMARCISBDFRBRRDA MARC21UNIMARC 2001 mapping between UNIMARC and MARC21 Time to review alignments?

15. Importance of (mis-)alignment  Impact on national cataloguing rules  E.g. Italian rules  New rules - FRBR?  Current rules - UNIMARC  But FRBR - RDA - ISBD - UNIMARC  Significant impact on new rules?  Semantic Web  Linked-data depends on (semantic) alignments

16. (Semantic) web  1997 mapping from UNIMARC to Dublin Core  UNIMARCXML also available  DCMI RDA Task Group is expressing RDA vocabularies for attributes and values in Semantic Web formats  VMF project intends to do the same  Similar initiatives elsewhere  FRBR namespaces, LCSH, etc. UNIMARCDC

17. To the future  Semantic Web allows “mash-up” of metadata from different sources using different standards  Publication statement from publisher; subject from author; summary from user; ? from cataloguer  Applying FRBR will help  Multi-lingual sources easier to interoperate  “gesprochene Worte” has same identifier as “spoken word”  Time to review UNIMARC and the Web?

18. Thank you  g.dunsire@strath.ac.uk