We are one of the JISC community data groups, and our work ties in with Nick Barratt’s recent blog post regarding the metadata mapping project and review of metadata practice in the UK. Our group’s focus is to explore the technical aspects of data import and export relating to 2 key areas and how this may help libraries contribute to the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK).
The first area we are keen to learn more about is the types of catalogue records libraries are currently working with and the potential variance in quality provided by different suppliers vs. the staff time and resource to possibly improve these for our user community. We are interested in understanding the possible implications of this variance for the NBK, particularly when libraries use it to support collections management activities such as weeding or identifying collection strengths. Our initial discussions as a group raised questions which have now been incorporated into the NBK questionnaire, and we are sure that this data will be useful in shaping best practice and the development of the knowledgebase.
The second area we are focusing on is how Library Management System suppliers could provide documentation or other forms of guidance on the functionality of their systems when their customers are exporting large data sets to the NBK, thereby removing a potential barrier for non-contributing libraries. We are hoping to identify any challenges libraries may be facing and feed this back to the NBK group and LMS suppliers, which in turn may support the provision of guidelines / best practice / publishing profiles /NBK tool kits for libraries wishing to be involved.
It’s all about identifying potential problems or challenges and engaging the community and suppliers in addressing these, so that the NBK can fulfil its rich potential.
As part of this, we’re also interested in how the community can help itself, and what types of support mechanisms can enable a vibrant user community.
The NBK questionnaire will go some way to providing the data to support our work, but it would also be great to hear from the wider community about what steps we can take to make this work. Because our group is interested in library staff’s experiences with key processes, we would like to undertake some short informal interviews to gather more detailed qualitative data to capture this, so if you would be interested in being in interviewed, please do get in touch!
Gareth Owen, Programme Manager, WHELF
Helen Faulds, Collections Manager, University of St Andrews
Suzy Cheeke, Collections Librarian, University of Bristol
Elly Cope, Manager, Access & Acquisitions, Leeds University
Ed Kirkland, Data Services Manager, University of Warwick
Aniska Kumra, Assistant Librarian – Resources Management
David Miller-Crook, Library Systems Manager, University of Southampton
Andrew Paton, Metadata Management Team Leader, University of Manchester
Wendy Taylor, Metadata Officer, University of Salford
Sarah Thompson, Head of Collections, University of York
