Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world
A new Research Information Network report, Creating Catalogues:
bibliographic records in a networked world, is a timely overview of the
process of producing and disseminating bibliographic data for scholarly
journals, journal articles and for printed and e-books. It finds that
there would be considerable benefits to be gained if libraries, along
with other organisations in this data supply chain, were to operate more
at the network level, but that there are currently significant barriers
to making effective moves in that direction.
Within the Web 2.0 environment, there are increasing opportunities for
innovative use of datasets that are freely available to all - including
the bibliographic and metadata that are used to make up catalogues -.
Open data are an increasingly hot topic, and there is growing interest
from Government and others in making information created by public
sector organisations more widely available for re-use, in order to
generate greater economic benefit, social gain and improvements to
public services.
Our report explains how bibliographic data are created and used from
publishers through a range of intermediaries (including libraries), to
the end users. Whilst there are pressures to make these data more freely
available, each player in the process has its own motivations and
business models in creating, adding to, using or re-using bibliographic
data, many of which hinder moves to open up this data.
Creating catalogues identifies key issues in the process and aims to
stimulate the debate on possible ways forward, both to eliminate
wasteful duplication of effort, and to make the data more freely
available for re-use and innovation.
The report provides a number of important recommendations for all
involved in the process. The Research Information Network will work with
the academic library community and others in the supply chain to raise
awareness and understanding of the issues in this report, of the
benefits to be achieved by moving to new models, and to identify ways in
which we might work towards achieving them.
The report and supplementary notes, plus a short briefing document are
available at www.rin.ac.uk/creating-catalogues
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Sarah Gentleman
Communications Officer
Research Information Network
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London NW1 2DB
telephone: 020 7412 7241
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