Library of Congress Announces Modeling Initiative

Library of Congress Announces Modeling Initiative (Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative)

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce that it has contracted with Zepheira to help accelerate the launch of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative.  A major focus of the project is to translate the MARC 21 format to a Linked Data (LD) model while retaining as much as possible the robust and beneficial aspects of the historical format.  Zepheira brings to the project extensive experience in LD technology for library applications. 

Eric Miller, who was a leader in the Semantic Web Initiative in its early days for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and who has also worked in the library and information science field, leads the Zepheira team.  The company, under Mr. Miller’s leadership, has been active in the development of Semantic Web and Library standards as well as open source tools to support LD technologies and library applications.  These activities represent knowledge and experience that are instrumental for constructing a core data model and to support prototype services that will serve as a basis for a new bibliographic framework and related services. 

The Library of Congress has asked Zepheira to provide a model (or models) that can serve as a strong starting point for discussion, and an analysis of related initiatives underway that will be useful to this effort.  LC expects that the proposed model(s) will change and be further tuned based on valuable feedback from the community and a natural progression of requirements as they are addressed. The initial model(s) will serve as a basis for work focused on a demonstration system/service which will then, in turn, be used to further refine the model(s). The expectation is that such iterative feedback loops will eventually ensure a flexible bibliographic framework, a robust reference code, a supporting infrastructure for deployment, and an effective migration plan to support the community in making a transition from MARC to a new framework.

The Library of Congress will now proceed to organize various scenarios to enable community participation that will be broad and include international users and partners, various types of information agencies and libraries, and library suppliers.  We will be posting information as it emerges from this initial work, especially relating to projected milestones at the Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative website (www.loc.gov/marc/transition). 

The Library intends to offer its plan of action for discussion and community input at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. Eric Miller will join the Library in this update session.  (LC Bibliographic Framework Transition Update Forum, Sunday, June 22, 10:30am-12:00 noon, Anaheim Marriott Grand Salon A-C.)

(source: RDA-L)