04. Allow Physical Union Catalogue to publish data

A union catalogue publishes bibliographic records as open data on behalf of its contributing libraries.

Description

Activity - The supply under open license of bibliographic records from a union catalogue on behalf of its contributing libraries. The open licensing and the open supply of records are undertaken by the union catalogue service. Compare with the variant approaches of UC3 and UC5.
This use case differs from UC3 because it is about the union catalogue organizing open licensing whereas UC3 is about the source library initiating the licensing.
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Actors - Libraries, the union catalogue, third parties
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Data involved - Bibliographic records, perhaps containing holdings and use data
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Data flow - Bibliographic and holdings records are transferred from the member institutions to the central service, where they are imported in to the Union Catalogue. The service provider may undertake some enhancement and de-duplication activity, with the resulting union database being made available to third parties for exploitation.
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Does this require Open Data - Not necessary, but if the records are supplied under an open data license, the scope for exploitation by the Union Catalogue, contributing institutions, third parties and users will be unambiguous.
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Current Examples - North Rhine-Westphalia Union Catalogue (HBZ); this approach could be adopted by such as Copac and Suncat in the UK.
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Benefits

Institution - Supporting scholarship beyond the institution, without needing to invest in local systems and support; the records are supplied in the existing manner to the union catalogue service.
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Library Service - Something for nothing. Improved service to users including the possibility of value added services based on open use of records
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Researchers - Increasing flexibility and choice in accessing institutional services, as third parties construct services on the data
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Students - Increasing flexibility and choice in accessing institutional services, as third parties construct services on the data
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Replication - The bibliographic data extraction process will be of use for other services requiring conditional release of records. Appropriate generic licensing as opposed to a proprietary agreement with the service provider may open up other shared service or third party service opportunities.
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Case for not doing it - Participating libraries may prefer to retain control over the ways in which their data are disseminated to third parties. Those running the union catalogue may not wish to absorb liabilities from member libraries with respect to the provenance of data they contribute to the pool.
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Motivation

Principles - Improved access through discoverability of own resources and access to resources held by partner institutions. Making bibliographic data open for re-use increases those opportunities both within and beyond the Union Catalogue service.
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Costs - Reduces the costs for providers and consumers; rather than dealing with individual member libraries, the license and supply relationship is with the union catalogue provider.
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Services - By making data available in ways that users prefer, usage and satisfaction may rise.
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Rationale for not doing it - Individual institutions may prefer to retain a degree of control over the ways in which their data are exposed to third parties. The union catalogue may not wish to absorb poorly understood liabilities on behalf of contributing libraries.
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Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - (1) The centralised union catalogue will take on aspects of infrastructure, cost and possibly risk regarding the publication of Open Bibliographic data; (2) Staff and students will have the opportunity to access an existing library service in a different way; (3) Additional discovery channels will add value to the user experience and may increase demand on some areas of the local collection, whilst displacing demand from other areas; (4) Presence in a centralised union catalogue will increase visibility of library data to a wider audience.
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Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) Damage to institutional reputation through provision of substandard product by a third party [see also UC3, UC5, UC16, UC17]; (3) The originator of elements of the bibliographic records challenges release as open data [see also UC1, UC2, UC3, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC15, UC16, UC17]; (4) Increased visibility of collection leads to demand beyond local resources ability to supply [see also UC3, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC9, UC13, UC16, UC17].
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Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) Shift to outsourced cataloguing and OPAC services [see also UC3, UC5, UC9, UC11]; (3) Increased use of library collection by internal and external users through improved discovery services [see also UC3, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC9, UC13, UC16, UC17]; (4) Sufficiently large Centralised Union Catalogues to provide ‘web–scale’ opportunities [see also UC3, UC5]; (5) Publication of a mass of data through central point may help manage risk of challenge from originator of elements of the bibliographic records
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Consequences of not doing it? - None that are significant.
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Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - This use case requires the explicit transfer of records to a third party, and will typically be governed by some form of contractual relationship. Whether that transfer is classed as ‘use’ or ‘supply’ will depend upon the nature of the relationship between the organizations involved. See http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Projects/ TransferandUseofBibliographicRecords.aspx.
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Practicalities

Data exchange formatting - Data are presumably provided to the union catalogue using some variant of MARC [see UC3], with the union catalogue service taking on any requirement to reformat for downstream reuse.
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Lifecycle implications - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are no additional hosting implications.
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Hosting requirements - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are no additional systems implications.
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Existing systems impact - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are no additional lifecycle implications.
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Skills demands - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are no additional staffing implications.
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Costs

Setup - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are unlikely to be additional setup costs. Depending upon the nature of the data to be shared, and the form of any existing contractual relationship, there may be a need for some legal costs.
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Ongoing - As institutions are simply granting a set of additional permissions to a union catalogue service with which they are already associated, there are no additional ongoing costs.
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Cost of doing nothing - None
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07. Contribute data to Google Scholar

The supply under open license of bibliographic records containing holdings data to Google in order to enhance discovery, location and delivery services for users.

Description

Activity - The supply under open license of bibliographic records containing holdings data to Google in order to enhance discovery, location and delivery services for users.
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Actors - Library; Google
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Data involved - Bibliographic records containing holdings data. Google supports this for data published from link resolvers (aimed at electronic resources), the details are available at http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/libraries.html). Currently Google seems to only support links to library printed holdings via OCLC WorldCat, although it would seem logical that the current harvesting of electronic holdings information could be expanded to print holdings through negotiation with Google.
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Data flow - Bibliographic data, plus details of link resolvers etc, are provided to Google. Robots refresh Google’s crawl of the data ‘periodically.’
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Does this require Open Data - Many university libraries already allow Google to harvest holdings data from their link resolvers, so while Open data is not necessary, it would establish an interesting principle in the supply chain.
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Current Examples - Google Scholar
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Benefits

Institution - (1) Improved learning and research experience; (2) Marketing, through visibility of institutional holdings via Google
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Library Service - Something for nothing, delivering improved service to users
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Researchers - Potential to increase visibility of institutional holdings via Google rather than via less widely used institutional systems.
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Students - Potential to increase visibility of institutional holdings via Google rather than via less widely used institutional systems.
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Case for not doing it - Libraries may be wary of losing control over their own data and the user experience offered to their customers.
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Motivation

Principles - Improved access through discoverability of own resources and equivalent access to resources held by partner institutions
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Costs - Delivers value to library patrons by raising the web-scale visibility of holdings, free of charge.
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Rationale for not doing it - Diverts the attention of library systems staff from more pressing concerns.
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Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - (1) Staff and students will have the opportunity to access an existing library service in a different way; (2) Additional discovery channels will add value to the user experience and may increase demand on some areas of the local collection, whilst displacing demand from other areas; (3) Presence in Google Scholar will increase visibility of library data to a wider audience.
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Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) The originator of elements of the bibliographic records challenges release as open data [see also UC1, UC2, UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC15, UC16, UC17]; (3) Increased visibility of collection leads to demand beyond local resources ability to supply [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC9, UC13, UC16, UC17]
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Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) Increased use of library collection by internal and external users through improved discovery services [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC9, UC13, UC16, UC17].
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Consequences of not doing it? - The institution appears less visible – and less relevant – than peers that have chosen to participate
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Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - The transfer of rights, and associated licensing issues, are not always clearly described by Google. This may cause concern.
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Practicalities

Data exchange formatting - The format Google currently support for institutional holdings information is documented at http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/institutional_holdings.xml.
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Lifecycle implications - Minor; provision of modest file storage to host periodic data dumps for crawling by Google.
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Hosting requirements - Relatively minor, unless local link resolvers etc are poorly configured and accept requests from all visitors
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Existing systems impact - Minor
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Skills demands - Working with existing vendors, local systems staff probably possess the necessary skills to modify link resolvers, produce periodic data dumps, etc.
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Costs

Setup - The necessary ‘export’ and link resolver capabilities may already be included within the LMS or equivalent local systems. Configuration to meet specific requirements may require modest effort that will normally be within the abilities of systems staff.
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Ongoing - The infrastructural costs associated with sustaining this capability should be relatively low.
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Cost of doing nothing - No additional costs will be directly accrued through inaction. However, as more institutions participate in Google Scholar there may be a detrimental effect upon those institutions that choose not to have visibility through this service.
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09. Supply holdings data for Collection Management

The supply of records containing holdings data to a shared service in order to support collection management.

Description

Activity - The supply of records containing holdings data to a shared service in order to support collection management and to optimize holdings. Libraries face increasing pressures on space, and initiatives such as the UK Research Reserve seek to enable holdings decisions on a larger scale than the individual institution. Holdings records (and some of their associated bibliographic information) are transferred to an external entity, which uses these records to inform decisions.
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Actors - Libraries, which MAY require institutional buy-in, and the external service (possibly a shared service within the sector)
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Data involved - Bibliographic records containing holdings data
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Data flow - Bibliographic and holdings records are transferred from the member institutions to the service, where they can be analysed. Whether these combined records are available for local management purposes or supplied back to member institutions depends on the service design.
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Does this require Open Data - Not essential, as use by the external service and potentially by the other partners can be closed.
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Current Examples - We are not aware of examples based on open data, though this approach could be adopted by such as UK Research Reserve.
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Benefits

Institution - Free library space and reduce acquisition costs
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Library Service - Free shelf space and improve collection management
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Researchers - Potential access to more extensive collections from other universities
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Students - Potential access to more extensive collections from other universities
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Replication - The bibliographic data extraction process will be of use for other services requiring conditional release of records. Appropriate generic licensing as opposed to a proprietary agreement with the service provider may open up other shared service opportunities.
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Case for not doing it - None, assuming the process is efficiently defined and managed by the external service
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Motivation

Principles - Support decision-making and service development by bringing data together
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Costs - Part of wider cost saving initiatives regarding space and print holdings
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Services - May also lead to more optimal inter-lending arrangements across a consortium
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Rationale for not doing it - Loss of differentiation arising from collaborative activity
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Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - Accurate and timely records supply will enable the shared service to become more optimal and will directly benefit the local library.
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Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) Coordination of the changes arising to holdings data in the local catalogue; (3) The shared service may use the records in a public search interface, taking traffic away from the local OPAC and duplicating arrangements with other shared services; (4) Increased visibility of collection leads to demand beyond ability to supply [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC13, UC16, UC17].
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Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) Development of an interlending service; (3) Increased use of library collection by internal and external users through improved discovery services [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC13, UC16, UC17]; (4) Shift to outsourced cataloguing and OPAC services [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC11].
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Consequences of not doing it? - (1) Cost to sector of unnecessary duplication of holdings; (2) Without access to local holdings records, the shared service will be less effective to the detriment of the member libraries.
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Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - This use case requires the explicit transfer of records to a third party. Whether that transfer is classed as ‘use’ or ‘supply’ will depend upon the nature of the relationship between the organizations involved. See http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Projects/ TransferandUseofBibliographicRecords.aspx.
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Practicalities

Data exchange formatting -
  • Model 1: A bibliographic and holdings MARC export from the LMS, based on specified criteria. Additional exports on a regular basis which represent either a full export or just changes (additions, updates and deletions) based on the original export.
  • Model 2: Supply of holdings data in an alternative (to MARC) format, possibly exported from the LMS, but also from other systems such as spreadsheets, ERMS or OpenURL resolver knowledgebases. Additional exports on a regular basis representing either a full export or just changes (additions, updates and deletions) based on the original export.
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Lifecycle implications - Regular supply of updated records, either by full export or changes (additions, updates and deletions) based on the original export.
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Hosting requirements - Either the responsibility of the shared service or local hosting will be required, from which the file can be retrieved by the shared service.
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Existing systems impact - None
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Skills demands - Subject to LMS support of export of MARC records based on specified criteria, this should fall within the capabilities of a systems librarian. If ‘differential’ updates required, it would either be necessary for this function to be available in the LMS, or for some basic development to be done locally to produce differential update files (additions, updates, deletions). In the latter case this would require experience beyond simply running LMS reports, although should be within the capabilities of a systems librarian or local IT staff.

Model 2 additionally requires (1) Ability to transform data between library specific format and to more generic formats. This may be achieved via a third party application or through some basic development to be done locally. This would require experience beyond simply running LMS reports, although should be within the capabilities of a systems librarian or local IT staff. (2) Ability to extract data from a variety of systems. This may be achieved via a third party application or through some basic development to be done locally. This would require experience beyond simply running LMS reports, although should be within the capabilities of a systems librarian or local IT staff.
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Costs

Setup - The necessary export capability should already be included within the LMS or equivalent local systems. Configuration to meet specific requirements may require modest effort that will normally be within the abilities of systems staff.
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Ongoing - The costs associated with sustaining this capability are low, but will inevitably be affected by the frequency with which data updates must be supplied.
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Cost of doing nothing - Library staff will continue with current activities, unnecessarily devoting time and effort to the care and management of non- critical resources.
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11. Share data for Collaborative Cataloguing

The development of bibliographic data through a collaborative partnership for the purpose of generating, improving and enhancing records.

Description

Activity - The development of bibliographic data through a collaborative partnership for the purpose of generating, improving and enhancing records. The Use Case assumes that this is being undertaken by a structured group of library partners for the mutual improvement of their catalogues, though the resulting records will be designated as open data and therefore be available for wider use. The effort may be coordinated or by a third party entity.

Services in which the collaborators are not restricted to libraries (or other professional organizations) should be considered as instances of crowd sourcing (see UC12).
This use case differs from UC12 because it is about a closed group of cataloguers and libraries whereas UC12 is about the opening up the cataloguing process itself.
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Actors - Libraries that wish to collaborate; perhaps a third party providing the overall service
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Data involved - Most likely full (but possibly partial) bibliographic records
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Data flow - Selective supply of current records and return of new / edited records.
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Does this require Open Data - Whilst not essential, if the records are supplied under an open data license, the scope for reuse both within and beyond partner catalogues will be unambiguous. Look for open data licensing before engaging with collaborative services operated by a third party.
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Current Examples - Biblios.net
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Benefits

Institution - Reduction in costs is the typical driver. There is also potential for improved use of and recognition derived from the collection.
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Library Service - Reduction in cataloguing costs is the typical driver. There is also potential for improving discovery and access, resulting in increased and improved use of the collection.
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Researchers - Depending on the emphasis, collaborative cataloguing may lead to improved discovery of specialized resources.
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Students - Depending on the emphasis, collaborative cataloguing may lead to improved discovery of specialized resources.
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Replication - Release of records for cataloguing requires different logistical considerations than more general release, though the licensing may be the same. The logistical process has features in common with UC12, though crowd sourced contributions may be focused on a single local catalogue
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Case for not doing it - Quality of local catalogue, reliance on other forms of records supply, or low volumes of new material may be considerations.
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Motivation

Principles - Well-populated, high quality finding aids are highly desirable. The effort to improve them is costly and the domain knowledge is likely to be scattered. A distributed effort involving professional organizations may therefore be advantageous, especially as the metadata does not itself confer competitive advantage.
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Costs - There are significant potential savings in cataloguing time, even when weighed against the overhead of coordination and quality assurance (which may be the responsibility of a third party).
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Services - Improved services may result from better metadata and new services may result from wider description of the collection (assuming some libraries have significant resources incompletely described, notably in special collections). Open data offers the freedom to pursue those opportunities.
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Rationale for not doing it - Issues of quality and authority need to be addressed, but should be mitigated by the nature of the collaborating community.
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Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - Collaborative cataloguing within an open data paradigm is likely to open up a range of potential economies and opportunities.
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Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) Standards agreed for catalogue records fail to meet local needs; (3) effort and resource required to coordinate across partners outweighs benefits and savings
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Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) Collaborative cataloguing of grey resources amongst the same collaborators given the benefits of open access to the records and the content itself in digital form; (3) It may open up consideration of crowd sourced cataloguing [see UC12]; (4) Shift to outsourced cataloguing [see also UC3, UC4, UC5, UC9]
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Consequences of not doing it? - The sector needs ways of reducing the cost of cataloguing whilst addressing the growth in publication (i.e. of things to be catalogued). This is a major high integrity / low risk option.
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Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - In keeping with the principles behind this act, the license should be explicit and as open and unencumbered as possible in order to facilitate genuine reuse. See the general guidance on Licensing Issues for further detail.
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Practicalities

Data exchange formatting - Such services have traditionally been based on the exchange of MARC and MARC XML records. Given open data licensing, the resulting records may be made available by the coordinating service in a wider range of developer friendly formats, including RDF.
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Lifecycle implications - The lifecycle of such efforts is potentially complex. Planning the ingestion of the collaborative outputs is especially important, including any remaining local QA.
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Hosting requirements - Hosting for editing and download will be the responsibility of the coordinating party.
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Existing systems impact - The LMS should support the logistics of this approach through MARC export and import options.
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Skills demands - Subject to the capabilities of the LMS, this will fall within the capabilities of a systems librarian.
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Costs

Setup - The simplest collaboration will be achieved using MARC export and import software, which should be part of the local LMS.
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Ongoing - The resource implications of managing the operational process should be reviewed but are likely to fall within the scope of existing processes for managing catalogue records.
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Cost of doing nothing - No extra direct costs will be incurred by not doing it, though this may be the principal and most professionally acceptable opportunity to reduce local cataloguing costs.
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02. Publish open Linked Data for unspecified use

Make data openly and freely available as Linked Data.

Description

Activity - A growing enthusiasm for open access and transparency has empowered some efforts to simply make data openly and freely available for unencumbered use by third parties. Government efforts in the USA, the UK and elsewhere provide clear examples of this trend, as do library-specific initiatives such as the Open Library. This is a variant of UC1 involving Linked Data.
This use case differs from UC1 because it is specifically about publication as Linked Data format whereas UC1 is about format neutral.
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Actors - Libraries, which MAY require institutional buy-in and MAY have contractual and licensing implications with respect to suppliers, partners, etc.
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Data involved - Potentially any library data, possibly combined (or linked) with other metadata (such as course titles). Typically records and fields (tags) for which the institution feels rights and licensing issues are sufficiently well understood.
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Data flow - Data are placed online, either within the institution or via some third party such as the Talis Platform. Data may be periodically refreshed, and it would typically be the responsibility of any organisation consuming the data to check for any updates.
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Does this require Open Data - There is no requirement for Open Data per se. However, if we presume that the rationale for publication is to ensure the widest possible dissemination then adoption of a generic open data license (see Rights and Licensing Issues) is the most effective way to make the set of potential uses unambiguous. Restrictive licenses are counter-productive, as is making the data available without some explicit statement regarding potential utilisation. Locally developed licenses and statements regarding use should be avoided where possible as, although perhaps open in spirit, these local variants complicate matters for those wishing to combine data from disparate sources.
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Current Examples - Libris, National Széchényi Library, Freebase
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Benefits

Institution - (1) In line with institutional goals and mission with reference to disseminating knowledge, playing a role within the community, enabling innovation, etc; (2) Attracts publicity and status for first movers.
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Library Service - (1) Creating the opportunity for third parties to develop local and wider services of value, some of which may potentially drive increased attention and traffic back to the library and its holdings; (2) Enables enrichment of library data from other Linked Data sources such as http:// id.loc.gov/ (includes Library of Congress Subject Headings as Linked Data), http://viaf.org (Virtual International Authority File available as Linked Data, documented at http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2010/05/viafs-new- linked-data.html), http://dbpedia.org (Linked Data representation of Wikipedia); (3) Can increase exposure of library collection to web search engines.
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Researchers - (1) A building block in opening up access to large and unique collections of data; (2) potential for third party applications to become richer and more responsive to institutional collections, making those collections easier to access whilst also making the applications more useful.
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Students - (1) The possibility of Google Scholar and other external services having greater knowledge of institutional holdings; (2) local discovery becomes easier and richer due to enhanced library data (from other Linked Data sources).
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Replication - Medium: Pioneers can document the necessary steps to extract data from various systems, and document decisions regarding transformation of bibliographic data into Linked Data. However, decisions made by one institution may not be immediately transferrable to others, and ‘best practice’ for representing bibliographic data as Linked Data is not yet established.
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Case for not doing it - Uncertainty. Once data are released online under an open license, third parties are explicitly permitted to take and reuse those data as they see fit. Even if the institution initially responsible for releasing the data changes its policy and either withdraws the data or relicenses it with more stringent terms, anyone who downloaded the original release remains able to continue using and redistributing it in perpetuity.
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Motivation

Principles - The rationale is essentially philosophical. The institution or the library believes in the importance of openness, transparency and sharing, and is un-persuaded by arguments to preserve the status quo by keeping data private. Additionally the institution of the library believes that it is important to integrate library data into the fabric of the web, and that Linked Data is the best way of achieving this. For early adopters, publicity and status may play a not-insignificant part in the decision making process.
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Costs - Cost benefit is unlikely to be a significant motivation for this approach, especially as this approach may require more effort than UC1. However, doing this may represent an opportunity cost in diverting attention from another priority.
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Services - There is the possibility that a useful service may emerge from an external or internal party.
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Rationale for not doing it - (1) Uncertainty as to the legal status of the data; (2) discomfort with not being able to take the data back once it’s released; (3) concern about how the data might be used, and how that might reflect upon the institution; (4) potential disruption to existing relationships, partnerships, and commercial arrangements; (5) simply insufficient reason to make it a priority.
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Consequences of doing it as Open Data

What will happen? - Library bibliographic data will be linked into the wider web of Linked Data.
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Potential Risks - (1) Loss of control over institutional data; (2) The originator of elements of the bibliographic records challenges release as open data [see also UC1, UC3, UC4, UC5, UC6, UC7, UC15, UC16, UC17]; (3) Loss of future revenue [see also UC1]; (4) While there is currently some momentum behind the Linked Data movement, many of the expected benefits remain, to a large extent, unproven, and some commentators believe that the approach is too complex to gain widespread adoption.
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Potential Opportunities - (1) Development of innovative / compelling third party services based on open data; (2) An ecosystem of enthusiastic developers emerges, keen and able to provide alternative means of accessing key institutional services using Linked Data representations [see also UC1, UC16, UC17]; (3) Third–party tools (LibraryThing, Mendeley) get better and better, as they gain more data and more users – and as those users largely originate inside Universities, the institutions also benefit, although in ways that may be difficult to quantify [see also UC1, UC15]; (4) Large pools of data create opportunities for the creation of regional, national and international services to drive stock management, etc.; [see also UC1] (5) Bibliographic data becomes searchable via semantic web technologies; (6) Libraries establish position as key players in the Linked Data/web of data space; (7) Libraries benefit from other Linked Data sources providing richer metadata and related exploration of the collections.
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Consequences of not doing it? - (1) Libraries seen at odds with moves to Open Data in the public sector; (2) Libraries become sidelined as metadata experts and providers as others expose data on the web.
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Rights and Licensing Issues

Rights and licensing issues - In keeping with the principles behind this act, the license should be explicit and as open and unencumbered as possible in order to facilitate genuine reuse. See the general guidance on Licensing Issues for further detail.
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Practicalities

Data exchange formatting - Data transformed from MARC or local storage format to RDF, which is then serialised in a number of ways (e.g. N3, XML, JSON). Most commonly this would then be exposed via a triple store with a SPARQL endpoint, and via a RESTful web interface which would usually provide both human readable versions of the data (i.e. html pages) as well as machine-parsable data (i.e. RDF).

Key to this process will be choosing appropriate ontologies to represent the data. While there is some previous practice in this area, (see http:// dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs/article/viewArticle/927), it is probably too early to see this as ‘best practice’ for representing bibliographic data as Linked Data. Common vocabularies used in current implementations are:

As libraries tend to hold information on non-bibliographic resources as well (e.g. audio-visual material), it may be necessary to represent these using more appropriate vocabularies (e.g. http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/RDF for recorded music).

A W3C ‘incubator group’ for Library Linked Data which is currently (May 2010 – May 2011) investigating “how existing building blocks of librarianship, such as metadata models, metadata schemas, standards and protocols for building interoperability and library systems and networked environments, encourage libraries to bring their content, and generally re-orient their approaches to data interoperability towards the Web” (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/)
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Lifecycle implications - Examples to date have merged the human-readable web interface to the library catalogue (OPAC) and the machine-readable RDF, with the implication that this is an up to date representation of the library catalogue, possibly refreshed daily or even more frequently.
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Hosting requirements - There are a variety of options, but the minimum would be space to store the RDF representation of the data, and a web server to serve data on request. However, when publishing this type of data it is becoming common to provide a SPARQL endpoint as well as a web interface, which further suggests the use of a triple store to host the data. An alternative approach is to outsource hosting to a third party, such as the Talis Platform.
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Existing systems impact - It is currently unlikely that existing systems will support publication of bibliographic data as Linked Data. It would be necessary to create the relevant routines to extract data from existing systems, transform into RDF, and publish either directly onto the web, or via a triple store.
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Skills demands - There is likely to be a steep learning curve for those engaging in the publication of bibliographic data as Linked Data. An understanding of both bibliographic data in traditional formats (e.g. MARC) and RDF will be required, which is likely to mean a high degree of collaboration between library staff and technical staff. A good understanding of http, configuration of web servers, and possibly triple store technology will be required, which implies a high level of technical expertise.
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Costs

Setup - While much of the software needed to publish Linked Data is Open Source, the time needed to gain the necessary expertise and setup the necessary infrastructure could be significant. In the short-term, outsourcing the provision of the necessary infrastructure could prove more cost effective.
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Ongoing - Once the investment in the initial setup has been done, the costs associated with sustaining this capability are likely to be low. If the activity has been outsourced there are likely to be higher ongoing costs in the medium to long-term. However, it should be noted that as the sector understanding of representing bibliographic data as Linked Data changes, it may be that earlier adopters will need to revisit implementations to bring their practice in line with more recent developments elsewhere.
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Cost of doing nothing - No additional costs will be directly accrued through inaction.
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