Here is my summary of sessions I attended at the 2018 IFLA World Library and Information Congress, distilled from 7 pages of notes:
I attended both sessions of the Subject Analysis and Access Section. Development of standards: Impact of IFLA bibliographic standards. There was much talk of the impact of last year’s approval of the Library Resource Model (LRM) on a variety of other standards. Already there has been discussion of modifying the model from an entity-relationship one to an object-oriented one, to be called LRMoo. This is all about the theory underlying our cataloging rules, with the vocabulary being arcane and not a little bit obscure. Nevertheless, in the very near future, this will have an impact on RDA’s terminology and possibly actual cataloging rules. One of the terms bandied about was “diachronic works,” that is works that are issued over time – an addition to the terminology used for continuous resources. Such works can be indeterminate or determinate in duration as well as being successive or integrating, resulting in 4 classes of such works:
a. Serials – which are indeterminate and successive
b. Websites and databases – which are indeterminate and integrating
c. Websites of limited duration (such as a website set up for a particular Olympic games) – which are determinate and integrating
d. Dictionaries issues in several volumes over time – which are determinate and successive
If this doesn’t make sense to you, you are not the only one. I’m looking forward to seeing some training materials. The other term I heard for the first time was “WEMlock.” That refers to the idea that a manifestation determines the expression and the work.
The Global Vision project was another theme of the conference. A total of 200 reports from IFLA led sessions around the globe were received over the past few months in addition to another 18 locally-sponsored reporting sessions. All told the full report runs 740 pages. The OLA session on the Global Vision Project was one of the 18 local sessions mentioned.
With my project to create subject headings for Oregon Indian tribes in mind, I chose to attend the program sponsored by the Library Services to Indigenous Populations Section. All of the speakers were very good, but I especially liked hearing about Librarians without Borders. In Colombia, following the truce between FARC and the federal government, this organization did a project to bring mobile libraries to areas where FARC rebels had been active to help them transition back into civilian life and promote reconciliation. The presenter also spoke about the impact of the long civil war on indigenous peoples, many of whom were displaced by the war and whose children are in danger of losing their cultural background. About 41,000 people of 65 indigenous groups were displaced, leaving them vulnerable to slave trafficking, isolation from their own people, and impoverishment. One way that the organization supported them was by developing an “Ideasbox,” a popup library-in-a-box that can be used to promote access to indigenous culture, provide education, and support information exchanges between displaced persons and the local population. Library assistants were recruited from the indigenous communities themselves.
I also liked Decolonizing Academic Library Research with Indigenous Methodologies: A Collaborative Approach presented by Camille Callison, University of Manitoba, and Danielle Cooper, Ithaka S+R. Callison spoke about her own people, the Tahltan in BC, and the need to implement the UN statement on indigenous knowledge. Libraries need to preserve traditional knowledge, which can present a worldview much different from that of the dominant culture. Danielle Cooper spoke about how in the dominant culture, researchers typically gather data for interpretation, but the result is often something that benefits the researcher. In working with indigenous populations, this is often viewed negatively, that the researcher has taken something from the indigenous people without giving anything back. She provided a short list of resources on indigenous research methodologies. Ithaka S+R will be publishing a capstone report about this topic.
The Evolution of BIBFRAME: from MARC Surrogate to Web Conformant Data Model Philip Schreur, Stanford University, provided a history of MARC and the need to transition to
linked data and Bibframe. He pointed out how equipment (computers, phones, etc.) from the time that MARC was created are not around today and that we take for granted that machines will interact with another. Nevertheless, MARC is still around today even though it doesn’t readily interact with a variety of systems. Bibframe was launched in May 2011 and allows for translating MARC into linked data, the language of the semantic web. In September, 2017, the – first Bibframe workshop was held in Europe; a 2nd one is scheduled for Florence this month. The Program for Cooperative Cataloging recently created a sandbox for creation of cataloging workflows using Bibframe, an important development as many libraries internationally can take on the work of implementing it (as opposed to having LC be the guiding organization).

Other speakers at the Bibframe session discussed development of an in-house conversion project to move data from MARC to Bibframe.

The best named paper in the Bibframe session was “Still waiting for that funeral” presented by Sébastien Peyrard and Mélanie Roche, Bibliothèque nationale de France. They maintained that MARC is not dead yet and that MARC is adequate for their needs.

The metadata sections (Cataloging, Bibliography, and Subject Analysis/Access) did a joint session that covered a variety of topics. Their main collaborative achievement recently is the creation of an IFLA metadata newsletter. The Bibliography section is coming out with a revised Guidelines for National Bibliography in the Digital Age, due out in 2019. It has also worked on the NBR, national bibliographic register, which compiles information about national bibliographies for many countries (i.e., a directory of national bibliographic agencies, such as LC and the British Library).
The Guidelines for Authority Records and References (GARR) was being revised but is currently on hold while recent changes in ISBD are being considered elsewhere in IFLA.
Other work: ISBD review group received permission to start revision of ISBD after many years of waiting for the LRM model. “Names of Persons” was published in 1996 and is in desperate need of revision. Multicat project is a multilingual dictionary for cataloging and also needs revision, especially after LRM approval.
I attended my first meeting of the Form/Genre Work Group to which I was appointed this past year. We reviewed potential tasks for the group listed in a Google docs spreadsheet and decided to tackle creating a list of form/genre vocabularies with annotations to facilitate selection of a vocabulary when users are working on a project. A companion bibliography of articles about form/genre terms was also suggested

I attended two sessions of the lightning talks, a new feature of the IFLA conference. In addition to my providing an update to my project about Oregon Indian tribe subject headings, I heard about many different projects. Favorites were: “PD with a Passport” about how a burnt out librarian decided to volunteer for a number of different NGOs, including Librarians without Borders, to help develop libraries in Central and South America; providing mobile library services to IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons) in Nigeria, promoting reading for pleasure as a way to both educate children and provide relief time from the worries of living as a refugee (and also including social workers, health workers, and translators to help with those challenges); and a project to digitize books in Iraqi libraries (particularly Mosul University) after ISIS had been driven out.
Next year: Athens! (and 2020 in Auckland, New Zealand)

University Librarian/OSU Press Director travels (May-June 2018)

May and June were unusually busy travel months for me.  In May, I attended two meetings that I don’t typically attend—Center for Research Libraries Forum and Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) 40^th Annual Conference.  Both were held in the Windy City so I stayed with my fiancée Cara at her place in Chicago.  I also went to AUP in San Francisco and ALA Annual in New Orleans.

CRL Global Resources Collections Forum, May 17-18

OSU Libraries is a long-time member of CRL and they have an in-person meeting every other year.  This is the first time I have attended a CRL meeting.  The forum was held in Chicago at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. All of the sessions were recorded and are available at https://www.crl.edu/events/crl-global-resources-collections-forum-2018

The common themes at this year’s CRL forum:

Archival holdings are vulnerable, if not  threatened, across the globe.  Derek Petersen’s talk on African government records demonstrated this but he also questioned whether digitizing such records and opening them up  in places like Uganda was a good idea.  His point was that what works in the Western world may not work in other regions.  It was startling to see photos of new facilities that had been built to house records but without adequate shelving, staffing, etc. to process them.  I also liked the presentation from UTexas (Benson Collection) curators of a huge Mellon project to implement a post-custodial approach to curating documents related to documents related to Central American politics (Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador).

The use and potential reuse of data needs our attention.  CUNY law librarian Sarah Lamdan raised the alarm regarding how commercial vendors like Lexis Nexis have ramped up their involvement (and profit gain) from the world of gathering data for surveillance purposes.  They and others are contracting with US government entities like Homeland Security.  There was a similar message from Irena Knezevic’s presentation on what big Agra companies like Monsanto are doing to commercialize research results—big data—that comes from farmers who may or may not know what their data rights are.  Finally, I enjoyed Cliff Lynch’s presentation which built on his First Monday publication “Stewardship in the ‘Age of Algorithms.'”

Society for Scholarly Publishing  40^th Conference highlights

SSP was kicked off with a series of Sponsored Sessions.  These enable vendors to talk about their products and services and are clearly labeled in the program.  I’m not sure why we don’t do this in “Libraryland.” They could be revenue generators plus a timesaver for all of us who want to learn about a vendor’s new product.  Since they are clearly delineated as “sales talks”in the program, attendees can avoid them if they want to do so.

I was curious about all the publishing platforms that are available for scholarly publishers so I went to a Typefi Systems session on automation. The session covered several case studies demonstrating how investment in their platform improved productivity. Typefi Cloud allows production of HTML and PDF outputs and authors, editors, designers and others can keep using the same software (i.e. Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign), they are comfortable with to create scholarly works.  This is helpful so authors don’t have to learn InDesign.

Diversity, inclusion, equity issues are an emerging topic in the publishing world.  A panel covering this topic featured Jody Gray from ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services; Association for University Presses’ Executive Director Peter Berkery, and Jean Shipman from Elsevier.  The panelists reported on efforts at their organization.  I was keen to learn what Elsevier is up to but they are struggling as much as any of us in this arena.  Everyone has the same challenges we have in terms of recruitment.

There were two awesome keynotes. First, Safiya Noble spoke about her new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. https://www.playbackssp.com/2018-ssp-annual-meeting/14181-gs1 Her book is on my nightstand of books to read sooner rather than later.  Noble also gave the closing keynote at AUP in San Francisco.  I thought the AUP keynote might be a repeat but she did an excellent job of covering similar ground without being repetitive.  The other keynote was by Steve Mirsky, an editor and columnist for Scientific American.  His talk focused on how psychologist Robert Cialdini’s six principles of influence (reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity) can be applied to changes we want to see in the scholarly communication environment.  Mirsky has a lot of concern (as do many) about the preponderance of denial related to scientific evidence supporting evolution, climate change, etc. https://www.playbackssp.com/2018-ssp-annual-meeting/14181-gs2?html5player=true

I also went to several sessions where metadata and its role in machine learning or AI were the focus.  A speaker from Science talked about the metadata they are collecting on authors (gender, ethnicity, degrees).  That was a bit scary in regards to privacy concerns. He wasn’t altogether clear what they were doing with this data (supposedly kept internal) or how they were collecting it. (DON”T) Rage Against the Machine  a session on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was another session on how use of AI can improve discoverability (ie., introduction of new music) online learning, prediction of things like revenue and other trends.  There was also a good panel with 3 women and one male (the U of Utah AUL Rick Anderson, BTW) that was a really good conversation with considerable Q&A to engage with the audience.

The session on funders as publishers had representation from a library (as publisher of OA stuff), a faculty research from UC San Diego, an editor from AAAS, and rep from F1000. The response from the UL at the University College of London offered expected info in terms of their initiatives to run an IR and operate a relatively new OA university press. He also covered the political context in the UK—funders requiring OA.  Library as publisher begs the question: What does it mean to be a publisher—pre-print server?  What about distributing data or is publishing just mean being an entity that publishes publications?

All panelists addressed these questions:

What do researchers want from OA

• Publish in high quality journal read by peers; the researcher Maryanne Martone from UC San Diego repeated the term “prestige economy” to describe why researchers publish;
• Solid review process and short pub times
• Make it easy to comply with OA requirements

Perceived benefits of OA

• Access for scientists and for public

Perceived challenges of OA

• Non-productive conversations
• Quality comes at a cost

What are cost complications?

The AAAS editor focused on what he termed “transition pains” as funding migrates from subscriptions to APCs. He described a fragmented world in terms of sales because Europe will likely be APCs but rest of the world (including US) will be subscriptions.  He said the transition would likely hurt smaller publishers more.

Martone asked what were the costs of unrecovered research? More to the point what were the costs of not going with OA.  She mentioned the article on “long tail” data that has become dark so now the data is unavailable. She said there may be increasing ROI for funders through initiatives like bioRxiv, the biology preprint server.  Also described that there is more than just articles that researchers need access but important scholarly outcomes include data as well as code.  All research outputs need to be reusable. As a neuroscientist, Martone spoke to need to access big data because her field depends on integration.  Mentions library license agreements that don’t allow machine-based access or text-mining.

The UCLondon UL Paul Ayris  spoke about his campus’ coming adoption of new bilbiometrics.  They are not going to allow the journal impact factor to be considered for P&T as the journal impact factor does not provide insight into the value of the actual article—it’s not at an article level.

FOLLOWUP: Martone, Lamden, Noble (yes, again) might be speakers we would consider bringing to OSU to talk about scholarly communication topics of interest to OSU faculty

ALA Annual, New Orleans, 2018 Conference Report
Below are some of the significant things I learned at the many sessions I attended:
1. OCLC Expert Cataloging Community Sharing Session
As OCLC continues to develop its WorldShare manager systems and related services, OCLC reps assured catalogers that support for Connexion would not be going away without plenty of notice. I asked about the recent spate of DLC records without controlled headings. While no one had any certain answer, some in the group speculated that: a) records were being used by OSU before LC had created authority records for personal names (although the records included uncontrolled subject headings); b) records created by other libraries that had controlled headings were copy-cataloged by LC and for some unknown reason the headings became uncontrolled; c) something was going awry at LC. In any event, OCLC did not claim responsibility and suggested I get in touch with someone at LC.

2. Emerging Leaders Poster Session
The Emerging Leaders program enables ALA units to task groups of early career librarians with research and development projects that further the aims of the association. IRRT again sponsored a group of emerging leaders to survey international librarians who are members of ALA and/or IRRT as to how the round table can better serve their needs and engage them in the work of the association/round table. I also spoke with some who did a project for the American Indian Library Association to create a database of tribal museums and libraries accessible on the web. I noted that they missed the ones in Oregon, but as this is an ongoing project, they assured me I could submit information for inclusion in the database.
3. International Librarians Orientation – an orientation for some of the 500 librarians from overseas so that they can get the most out of their conference experience.
4. Opening General Session with Michelle Obama
Ms. Obama was interviewed by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress. This was an event not to be missed. Ms. Obama was her warm, compassionate self in describing her early life, life in the White House, and her support for girls and women to be all that they can be. If she had any inkling of running for office, I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I think she has other plans for her future.
5. IRRT All Committees Meeting
Committee chairs shared about programs planned for Annual and beyond as well as other IRRT business. The session is a good networking opportunity for all.
6. IFLA Update
Gerald Leitner, IFLA General Secretary, and Gloria Salmeron-Diaz, IFLA President, reported on IFLA initiatives, especially the Global Vision Project and the Library Map of the World. The former is an effort to collect input from librarians worldwide to create an “idea store” to further the ten foci for the future of libraries around the world. The latter is a project to collect data on libraries around the world to further library development and integrate stories from libraries with the UN’s Sustainable Development goals.
7. IRRT Chair’s Program: Libraries Saving Lives: Supporting Refugees and Immigrants
3 speakers from very different venues spoke on their libraries’ efforts to support immigrants and refugees:
a. Louisville (KY) Public Library. The city has seen an incredible uptick in diversity with 138 languages listed as the primary language spoken in home, with the top 5 non-English languages being: Spanish, Arabic, Somali, Nepali, Swahili. Programs include: free English conversation classes given by the school district; partnering with universities and high schools to have immigrants integrated into syllabi of appropriate classes; veterans speaking with refugees from the countries they were stationed in; engaging retired immigration lawyers to respond to questions from immigrants; having immigrant musicians play together at the library and offer lessons (oud, ukulele) at the same time as English lessons. Citizenship ceremonies are conducted at the library. Numerous other examples were given: multiethnic iftars; film series about causes that brought refugees here; language salons (Arabic, Somali, etc.); even bringing books to a local slaughterhouse where immigrants worked so they could take advantage of library services on their lunch break.
b. Koln, Germany, public library. The 4th biggest city in Germany where 37% of population is minority immigrants, but are well integrated in the city. Plus about 10,000 refugees. Public libraries funded by municipality but unlike the US, they charge a $45 fee to borrow books. They offer intercultural mediakits for schools and other locations. In 2015, they created a language space, open to all, as a place to practice German, using volunteers come from the community. Library serves as mediator between committee members and refugees, offering training for the volunteers. The library also encourages immigrants to tell their stories, which are recorded and posted on the libraries website. Their stories are also told through art, such as painting. The library has also used reading dogs, an idea borrowed from their sister library in Indianapolis; multilingual reading events; encouraging story times with fathers – especially important for people from countries where reading aloud to children isn’t well established.
c. The director of Libraries of Malmo, Sweden discussed their efforts where 1/3 of the population was born abroad. They have an obligation to prioritize people with a first language other than Swedish. Over 150,000 refugees coming to Malmo – a large strain on resources. They have created a children’s library in Arabic on Facebook. “Maktabat al atfal” (sp?). Also a service called “A Million Stories” at www.refugeelives.eu. The library cooperates with outside groups that work with immigrants to conduct language workshops where new immigrants can practice Swedish skills and also to learn English.
8. Catalog Form and Function Interest Group
Several interesting projects were described here. One involved using MARCEdit to crosswalk tab delimited text (Excel) describing finding aids to Marc. Records, which were still very brief, were then loaded into the local ILS, but not shared with WorldCat.
Dallas Public Library created something called Library.Link to take their 100+terabytes of MARC records and make it discoverable on the web. They used Bibframe to move the data to Dublin Core as well as schema.org. Using “Data dashboard” (?) they were able to generated links reconcile data, then publish it on the open web. This was definitely a bit beyond me, but seemed like a very cool project nevertheless. New Directions in Non-Latin Script Access
9. International Papers Session: Libraries Supporting Social Inclusion for Refugees and Immigrants
Since this was the IRRT chair’s theme for this year, this program also featured a variety of innovative ways of reaching out to immigrants and refugees.
Libraries empowering immigrant communities in Hawaii: Using a Hawaiian approach, the ”talk-story” which is similar to storytelling. About ¼ of the Hawaiian population are immigrants: Japanese, Filipino (the largest group), Portuguese, Americans, Puerto Rico, etc. In pidgin Hawaiian, talk-story means that the more you chitchat, the more you understand. It legitimizes storytelling. There are many social issues that need addressing. Many immigrants live on Oahu where the cost of living is very high and the need for affordable housing is very great. Many are homeless. The indigenous population is struggling for sovereignty. Immigrants struggle for equitable wages. At the University of Hawaii it is hard to keep faculty because of how expensive it is. Hamilton Library is the largest in Hawaii. It does outreach to high schools to try to reduce the library anxiety. They conduct many cultural sensitivity activities in an attempt to reduce ethnic slurs and bullying – problems which make attendance undesirable to kids. The library sponsors events that include eating and dancing in the library and a chance to share about their history. Their goal is to flip their stories to hope instead of despair.
Nordic World Library Project: This project delivers digital library services to immigrant communities in the Nordic countries, a cooperative project between the national libraries of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. A digital platform for disseminating film and music was developed by the Royal Library in Denmark with the goal to improve digital library services to minorities in Nordic countries. The project purchases rights, services, cataloging, etc. for these resources. Many immigrants from these countries are illiterate, so the project also needs to teach languages to enable them to read, educate, and enable users to find employment and integrate into Nordic society. Materials are purchased in 5 languages: Somali, Arabic, Farsi, Serbo-Croatian, and Tigrinya.
Two Norwegian presenters discussed their public library’s programs in the northernmost part of the country. They sought to make their public library a place for learning and social inclusion of immigrants. Of the total population of Norway, 880,000 are foreign born or have foreign-born people. Their county in the very northern part of Norway has a population of 75,000 and borders on Russia and Finland, with their small town of 7000. The county has settled the most immigrants per capita. They offer literature in the immigrants’ own languages, including literature from their home countries and Norwegian literature in translation. Over 70 different languages are represented. They host “anguage cafes” – places where immigrants and refugees can talk about a particular topic in Norwegian, to encourage speaking in the language. They also create meeting points between immigrants and local citizens based on hobbies and interests.
10. Technical Services Discussion Group (ACRL-Rare Books and Manuscripts Section)
This was my first time attending this discussion group. The floor was open for discussing topics from participants rather than having any formal presentations as many discussion groups have. The most relevant part was the discussion of links in records for archival finding aids, something that the OCA has been dealing with this past year. I shared some about the effort to remove portfolios from our finding aid records.
11. IRRT Executive Board Meeting
The was our semiannual meeting face-to-face. The board was very happy with the Emerging Leaders project mentioned above, which will likely result in some changes in the way the IRRT conducts its business and communicates with the membership.
12. Authority Control Interest Group
Janis Young (LC) provided the following info:
a. “multiple” subdivisions in LCSH will be going away over a yearlong project to begin June 30 and expected to last a year. These are subject headings of the type [Topic] in Christianity [Judaism, Islam, etc.] where the cataloger could substitute the name of the religion in the heading freely. These types of headings cause problems for linked data. LC will work with OCLC to provide strings of these multiples so that proper subject heading authority records can be created for each one. Once that is done, multiple subdivision authority records will be cancelled. For now, LC is asking that catalogers don’t propose any new ones of this ilk, but you can continue using multiples as needed. They also ask that catalogers don’t try to help by making individual proposals. Propose new subdivisions as needed where a multiple does not exist. Instructions are now included in the Subject Cataloging Manual under H1090.
b. There are duplicate authority records for some entities, such as the Catholic Church, in both NAF and LCSH. These are not a true duplicates. These are created when LC needs to provide info. Please do not report these as duplicates.
c. For a variety of reasons, only LC staff will add LC-verified author numbers in LC Classification from now on rather than allowing PCC and other catalogers to propose author numbers in the P schedules.

13. Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Participants Meeting
a. Guidelines for bibliographic file maintenance were provided.
b. Gender and authority records report based on the recent survey has been completed, including best practice recommendations. An approved DCM will be placed in Cataloger’s Desktop and the policy posted on the PCC website.
c. Library and Archives Canada has joined NACO, but because of bilingualism, training, etc., we are asked to report anything unusual in the NAF.
d. Relationship designations for authority records have had guidelines approved. A general announcement about the guidelines will go out soon and should be a big help for linked data.
e. Literary author class numbers (053 field in authority records) have been included in PCC authority record proposals in the past. However, LC is no longer allowing these as they cause problems for LC authority record reviewers given a number of suppressed classification records that PCC members cannot see but LC catalogers can.
f. Janis Young reviewed the processes that LC performs when reviewing subject heading proposals and advised libraries submitting new subject heading proposals to be patient when awaiting approval.
g. Isabel Quintana reported on a pilot project to include ISNI identifiers in authority records. A report and other information is available on the website.
14. Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group
a. Casey Mullin, WSU, reported on his experience coordinating with multiple other units and staff at WSU with respect to cataloging of resources in their IR. His collaborative model of digital collection management was very interesting and reminiscent of our own Metadata Interest Group discussions.
b. Dave Van Kleeck, U. of Florida, reported on their efforts to improve legacy metadata quality issues in order to improve discoverability. They partnered with Access Innovations, Inc., to clean up metadata since different standards had been applied over time. This included enhancing subject terms for ETDs and digitizing issues of a Florida journal.

15. OCLC Research update
a. The main presentation here was from Andrew Pace who discussed their linked data project to enhance cataloging productivity using Wikidata, MediaWiki, and OpenRefine. A website at OCLC provides details of the project.

In lovely Austin TX in early January, this Re-think It conference was small, focus and full of a variety of types  of sessions: from keynotes, to lighting rounds, to panels, to 20 min talks, to visits of various spaces.  Mainly academics and hosted on UT Austin campus, there were architects, planners, public librarians and even school librarians there. We presented on the Studio project, more so on the process of rapidly creating this space in our library.

Skim the tweets #rethinkit18   to hear about the conference conversation  or view photos from all the library visits and Austin highlights. This conference only happened once before and may not happen again, but it was a great topic, theme and very well organized. Great for people looking at space design and informal space use.