1. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Making sense of hybrid union catalogues: collection landscaping in complex information environments Gordon Dunsire

2. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Types of union catalogue Union catalogues = metadata aggregations COPAC is an example of a physical union catalogue, where records are held in a single, central database Clumps (CAIRNS, InforM25) are examples of distributed union catalogues, where records are distributed in local databases Late addition! Harvested OAI-PMH catalogues (OAISTER, HaIRST) are types of physical union catalogue

3. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Complexity in union catalogues arises when metadata is duplicated Duplication is a feature of physical union catalogues (COPAC, HaIRST) Duplicate records may be transformed into a different structure, or augmented (COPAC) or simplified (HaIRST) Metadata for the same item may be offered in different catalogues within the same information environment Large-scale environments will offer a mix of distributed and physical union catalogues

4. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Harvested Union cat. B Local catalogue Z39.50 catalogue Distributed Union cat. B Physical Union cat. Item-level metadata Metadata repository Harvested Union cat. A Distributed Union cat. A UKNUC Single item metadata can be aggregated repeatedly in physical and distributed union catalogues, with potentially confusing and inefficient results for the enquirer. Complexity of a hybrid UKNUC

5. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London CLD landscaping can specify which catalogues to search JISC functional model of IE advocates use of collection-level description (CLD) to provide user- oriented ‘landscapes’ for information retrieval Tools to identify rich ‘lodes’ of metadata to ‘mine’ for specific items. Scottish Collections Network (SCONE) used as a test bed to investigate issues and suggest solutions Other CC-interop work showed SCONE to be compatible with most CLD schemas in UK including RSLP and DC.

6. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Survey Collection descriptions service [SCONE] Landscaper Collection-level descriptions Entry Initial landscape [Scottish Cultural Portal; SCONE] Functional model of the (Scottish) information environment (1)

7. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Detail Discover Distributed union catalogue [CAIRNS] Harvested union catalogue [HaIRST] Union catalogue [COPAC] Item metadata Functional model of the (Scottish) information environment (2)

8. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Landscaping using SCONE SCONE CLDs investigated for landscaping an environment of hybrid union catalogues COPAC, CAIRNS and InforM25, HaIRST Concept of “functional granularity” (from Heaney’s model) is a key tool Allows a collection to be defined on the basis of metadata aggregations “The aggregation (collection) of things which are described by this aggregation of metadata”

9. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Relationships between CLDs (1) CLD for the functional collection is created. e.g. COPAC collection, CAIRNS collection. CLD for the associated finding-aid (union catalogue) is created (collection of metadata records) CLDs are linked by the standard “Is-Described-By” relationship COPAC collection Is-Described-By COPAC CAIRNS collection Is-Described-By CAIRNS

10. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Relationships between CLDs (2) But individual contributors to union catalogues have their own local catalogues and collections E.g. Edinburgh University Library (COPAC and CAIRNS) So CLDs also have a hierarchical relationship EUL collection Is-Part-Of COPAC collection EUL collection Is-Part-Of CAIRNS collection Parallel relationships between metadata aggregations are NOT used (to keep it simple!) Landscape can be simplified by only displaying links to ‘nearest’, co-extensive metadata aggregation

11. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London EUL collection COPAC collection COPAC (catalogue) EUL catalogue Italics = functional granularity CLD No italics = existing collection CLD ?! ?! X COPAC CLDs and relationships

12. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Some conclusions (1) CLD can provide some ways of simplifying complex information retrieval environments by utilising functional granularity and using collection hierarchies to define nearest or best finding-aids where there is known duplication of metadata. This requires metadata aggregators to contribute to CLD services CLD services to ensure collection hierarchies are maintained

13. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Some conclusions (2) Further research might usefully be undertaken in defining metadata aggregation parameters and developing tools for more flexible landscaping of information environments, taking into account: Not all finding-aids relate to every item in the associated collection (hierarchical/archival approach, cataloguing backlogs, long-term retrospective conversion …) Union catalogues may degrade/simplify aggregated metadata or augment it for retrievability The degree of human mediation in creating metadata, ranging from none (automatic cataloguing) to full (manual)

14. "Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues: resource discovery for the 21st century“ 11th November 2004, British Library, London Thank you g.dunsire@strath.ac.uk