![\"passage_header\"](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/passage_header.jpg\")
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Imagine your favorite musicians from throughout all of human history (paging Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley!) getting together in the same room. Together, they are free-flowing and improving melodies on top of chord progressions with beautiful and surprising results. The tune is familiar enough to tap your foot along but multilayered enough to be different and completely thrilling.<\/p>\n
Being a part of the Project Passage experience was exactly this. Project Passage<\/a> was an \u201cOCLC and Friends\u201d metadata jam session. (\u201cOCLC and Friends\u201d would make a great band name, am I right?) At the conclusion of the Project Passage experience, I was convinced that linked data and libraries have a bright future together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When talking about emerging trends, the technology industry uses the Gartner Hype Cycle<\/a> as a yearly roadmap to navigate through the rosy-hued Peaks of Inflated Expectation to the aspirational Slopes of Enlightenment. Libraries and linked data are entwined together trekking relentlessly through disillusionment towards productivity<\/a>.<\/p>\n Librarians are not strangers to this cycle. Together, we\u2019ve broken through change barriers<\/a> and slogged through bouts of professional humdrum<\/a> plenty of times before. However, the emotions surrounding libraries and linked data take on an extra special fever-pitch because we are discussing an international shared mission, evaluating a new library service, and re-envisioning the very fabric of the Bibliographic Universe. Linked data, as a monumental development with implications for the future of library resource discoverability, has a lot riding on it. We know it. OCLC knows it. Your library vendors know it. Your catalogers and metadata wranglers know it.<\/p>\n Project Passage\u2019s seven lessons (see page 59 from the OCLC Research report) pointed out how much our current cataloging and metadata practices will have to change within a Wikimedia-like object\/relationship ecosystem. But \u2026 many foundational principles remain the same. Let\u2019s walk through all that at a very high level, with some help from our favorite webcomics, Randall Munroe, Mya Lixian Gosling, and Rich Burlew, to illustrate things for us.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> Project Passage pointed out that we need enhancements to current library ontologies to address gaps in the models and that our best practices on description enable the identification of unique resources.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> Some stuff is harder to catalog than other stuff and so it is with Wikimedia\u2019s fingerprint-y minimal resource description \u201ccore-ish-ness.\u201d<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> Project Passage showed us just how much can be gained by incorporating entities from outside the library domain. What remains to be seen is how a more democratically governed vocabulary will affect ontology management.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> We will still need ontology governance and rules on how to catalog. Potentially even more rules and standards than we have now.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> Nothing. Description boils down to discovery, discovery, discovery. So how do we define \u201cgood enough\u201d data?<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> If they can\u2019t find it, it ain\u2019t good enough. We know that resource description is about the user experience. At the end of the day, our tasks boil down to discoverability.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> We are going to save time and effort by not having to create comprehensive descriptions since factual statements are added to a prepopulated graph. So, trust me, for a while this is going to feel really weird.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> Querying existing bibliographic and authority data has always helped catalogers understand \u201cwhat is already out there,\u201d and subsequently, add to it. We will just be doing this task more efficiently by a singular factual statement on entities\/relationships rather than by endlessly populating strings over and over on a record-by-record basis.<\/p>\n Lesson five.<\/strong> To populate knowledge graphs with library metadata, tools that facilitate the reuse and enhancement of data created elsewhere are recommended.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> The data may come from a place other than the \u201ctypical\u201d library sources. Differentiating between authors, corporate bodies, and topics is about to become a whole lot more important.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> The reuse and enhancement of data, concepts of authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and the reduction of duplicates are enabled by the crowdsourcing of library work and reliant on functionality within particular systems. Best yet, this ecosystem will actually be able to use the incredible, robust details we already collect on entities. Catalogers need to reconcile search results to identify items in hand with existing descriptions.<\/p>\n Lesson six.<\/strong> The pilot underscored the need for interoperability between resources, both for ingest and export.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> Nothing. Libraries have always understood the need to work together, create innovative low-cost sustainable solutions, and create interoperability. Our current library copy cataloging and sharing model will need to continue to evolve and create new paths for library cost savings, just as it has done over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> Not a lot. Interoperability in data, interoperability in systems, and synchronization of data stores will change. The targets for ingest and export of that data will remain the same. But the vocabularies will need updating as technologies change and to reflect new social conventions.<\/p>\n Lesson seven.<\/strong> The descriptions created in the Wikibase editing interface make the traditional distinction between authority and bibliographic records disappear.<\/p>\n What changes?<\/em> Everything. The traditional walls between authority work and bibliographic description are coming down, folks.<\/p>\n What\u2019s constant?<\/em> Catalogers will have a major role in reconciling the Bibliographic Universe with all the other ones, including the \u201creal\u201d one that you and I work, breathe, and sleep in. Catalogers will continue to act as a conduit for data interpretation and build important context around the factual statements surrounding entities.<\/p>\n [bctt tweet=”We, catalogers and metadata wranglers, are writing the next chapter on library resource discoverability.”]<\/p>\n The lessons from above are taken from \u201cCreating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s 89 pages. I know, because I helped write it.<\/p>\n 89 pages. That\u2019s not long. C\u2019mon. We\u2019re library workers. Anything under 300 pages is a lark, right? Plus, very little of that is big chunks of text. Like linked data itself, we designed it to be consumable in chunks. You can read the text without the footnotes. Or the footnotes without the text. You can skip around or just look at the pictures and still learn something. ?<\/p>\n You should read it because it highlights some very exciting stuff: real-life use cases for library resources created by real-life catalogers and library metadata wranglers using Wikibase. We got our hands dirty in data by creating and maintaining bibliographic data in an entity-relationship ecosystem.<\/p>\n We, catalogers and metadata wranglers, are writing the next chapter on library resource discoverability. Identifying \u201cthe entities that matter\u201d will drive the construction of the future Bibliographic Universe. Building that house, together, gives us a deep sense of stewardship over the next generation\u2019s worldwide union catalog of entities and relationships.<\/p>\n All webcomics used with direct permission or, in the case of xkcd, appropriate attribution<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nFrom the Trough of Disillusionment to the Slopes of Enlightenment<\/h2>\n
Seven lessons, six constants, five changes, and four webcomics<\/h2>\n
![\"20131007-boxesofbooks_sm\"](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/20131007-boxesofbooks_sm-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Lesson one.<\/strong> The building blocks of a Wikibase item entity can be translated into a straightforward procedure for creating structured data with a precision that exceeds the expressive power of current library standards. But can this data be used to build the context required to discover and interpret a resource?<\/p>\n![\"standards_sm\"](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/standards_sm.jpg\")
<\/a>Lesson two.<\/strong> User-driven ontology design enabled by the Wikibase platform is a good thing. But how should it be managed for long-term sustainability?<\/p>\n![\"university_website_sm\"](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/university_website_sm.jpg\")
<\/a>Lesson three.<\/strong> The Wikibase platform, supplemented with OCLC\u2019s enhancements and stand-alone utilities, represents a step forward in enabling librarians to obtain feedback as they work.<\/p>\n![\"OOTS1022\"](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/OOTS1022-1.png\")
<\/a>Lesson four.<\/strong> Robust tools are required for local data management.<\/p>\nYou should really read the whole report<\/h2>\n
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