Re: Next Recommendation: Costs

Owen, good point. So perhaps there needs to be something about  
discovery services ... and moving library data initially onto the  
SemWeb for discovery?

The trick that I see to the idea that LD will be built on top of  
current systems (which I agree is likely to be the first step) is the  
question of how truly useful LD will be created if we continue to  
create MARC records in our systems. MARC can't handle any of the WEMI  
relationships ("is translation of") and so these would have to be  
coded outside of the library cataloging systems. This implies that we  
will actually be re-creating our data in an LD space, something that  
many will see as duplicate work.

kc

Quoting Owen Stephens <owen@ostephens.com>:

> I don't have an issue with what is proposed here, but it feels like it
> addresses the most extreme vision of library adopting linked data practices
> - that is baking LD into library data at a low level in terms of metadata
> practices.
>
> However, most of the activity I'm aware of with LLD is taking existing
> library data and expressing it as LD. I feel that there should be an
> analysis of the cost/benefit of this approach as well - winning the argument
> 'start creating library data as linked data' feels too hard to win outright
> and it may be a matter of justifying some incremental steps first?
>
> Owen
>
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
>
>> The recommendations are broken into three major sections, one of which
>> speaks to management actions that are needed. Of these, the first addresses
>> costs and return on investment. The group felt that without some kind of
>> cost benefit, it would be hard to make a good case for LLD. At the same
>> time, we don't really have a good grasp of what our current practices cost
>> us. Thuus:
>>
>> *Identify costs of current practices, and costs and ROI to moving of LLD*
>>
>> There must be some measurement of the relative costs of current library
>> data practices and the potential of Linked Data to aid in making decisions
>> about the future of library data. There are various areas of library
>> metadata practices that could be studied, either separately or together.
>> Among these are:
>>
>>    * The relative costs of the Record v. statement approach: for editing by
>> humans, as full record replacement in systems, and the capabilities for
>> sharing
>>    * The use of text versus identifiers approach has costs: actual records
>> must change when displays change (Cookery to Cooking); international
>> cooperation requires extensive language mapping processes; some needed data
>> elements must be extracted from textual field using algorithms, which also
>> hinders sharing; and some library data formats require catalogers to
>> duplicate information in the record, providing both textual fields and coded
>> data for same information.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Again, comments, suggestions, alternate ideas are all welcome.
>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Owen Stephens
> Owen Stephens Consulting
> Web: http://www.ostephens.com
> Email: owen@ostephens.com
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 14:51:27 UTC