International Standard Bibliographic Description: background and recent developments

Presented at the seminar Libraries and the Semantic Web: the role of International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 25 Feb 2011

1. International Standard Bibliographic Description: background and recent developments Elena Escolano Rodríguez IFLA ISBD Review Group, chair National Library of Spain Coordination and Normalization Service 2011

2. Definition of data elements for the description of a resource Location in the resource from where to take these elements of information to enable identification and verification Structure of these pieces of information, the elements with punctuation for international understanding What isISBD ? International agreement on:

3. 2007 Consolidated edition superseeds all ISBDs

4. ISBD Review Group ISBD Future Direction Study Group (Dorothy McGarry,chair ) XML schema development for ISBD suggestion, 2006. Decided to postpone: Once we had the consolidated edition, it would be easier to deal with these approaches and other issues affecting the update of the description of resources Material Designation Study Group (Lynne Howarth, chair): Also recommended it It was only after Preliminary edition of Consolidated ISBD in 2007 that ISBD-XML Study Group was established ( Mirna Willer , chair)

5. Different interpretations IFLA rotation policy regarding members of Sections and Working Groups Reticence to change the practice Expertise of the members Counteract any bias position that could exist in relation to an international standard. Problems or advantages ? encountered in the updating process of the ISBD

6. Single text, a corpus on which to work. Its objectives were to unify, consolidate, and collect and merge all the rules for describing of all types of resources, to the same level of updating and adaptation to FRBR. But further revision and updating would have to deal with different understanding. Preliminary edition of Consolidated ISBD, 2007

7. The text has been edited to avoid redundancy and achieve more harmonization The levels of mandatory, optional and conditional elements have been simplified to indicate only when an element is mandatory The basis of the description, which constitutes the object of the bibliographic description, has been clarified. More attention has been paid to multipart monographic resources. Name of area 6 has been expanded Some debated issues for 2011 edition :

8. The sources of information have been revised for consistency of terminology and application More consideration has been given to the requirements of nonroman scripts Change in the structure: an area 0 has been created Area 5 has been renamed and now allows printed resources to be described consistently with other materials Stipulations for the description of older monographic resources that did not correspond to the ISBD have been removed   More definitions included in the glossary. Some issues in 2011 edition :

9. Sometimes, when consensus could not be reached was largely due to not same understanding about what is considered an element of information, and what was the information that can compose this element Eg: Publisher name (distributor qualifier) ISBN (qualifier) In 2011 edition has been clarified that qualifiers are different from elements.

10. ISBD-XML Study Group in 2008 Objective: reviewing ISBD concepts and the standard itself by the application of web technologies to the field such as building an ISBD-XML schema evolving the standard into a tool open to Semantic Web technologies and services. Time for the development of an XML schema of ISBD

11. ISBD-XML Study Group in 2008 First result and consequence in updating ISBD: the list of elements has been determined and it is published as part of Consolidated ISBD new edition, approved for publication by IFLA Cataloguing Section Standing Committee on January 31, 2011 .

12. Working for the future of ISBD, but always making consistent with the past Putting the information from our catalogues in a different environment accessibility, making consistent/interoperable the information from the new digital resources with the not so recent resources. Breaking the barriers between past and future resources, print-electronic resources, digital/ analogic resources, local/remote access resources and the possibilities of access to one type of catalogue or other, offering the option that best suits the conditions. Objectives :

13. Thank you [email protected]