Roberta Shaffer
Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LC) has kicked off a process called the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) to develop a new communications vehicle for bibliographic data, a cornerstone of libraries. The library and cultural heritage institution environment has and is changing, with the Web and the Internet becoming central factors for sharing both bibliographic data and resources themselves. The result page number on Google is a statistic of concern as it means visibility for the resources that libraries can supply to the community. While MARC has served well beyond the original expectations, there are aspects of the current community that could function better and enable libraries to be more central and relevant if the bibliographic description exchange tools were “retooled.” This presentation will describe the BIBFRAME steps taken thus far and the current expectations for this development with an aim of stimulating interest and concerns from attendees.
http://bibframe.org
http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition