Bibliographic control in the fifth information age

Dunsire, Gordon Bibliographic control in the fifth information age. JLIS.it, 2022, vol. 13, n. 1, pp. 25-36. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[thumbnail of jlis_416_1.pdf]
Preview
Text
jlis_416_1.pdf - Published version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (139kB) | Preview

English abstract

Bibliographic control is concerned with the description of persistent products of human discourse across all sensory modes. The history of recorded information is punctuated by technological inventions that have had an immediate and profound effect on human society. These inventions delimit five ‘information ages’. It is now the Fifth Information Age, characterized by the ubiquitous use of powerful portable information processing devices for peer to peer communication across the entire planet. All such discourse is recorded during transmission and is copied to persistent storage media.In the Fifth Information Age, the end-user is immersed in and interacts with a global ocean of recorded information. The interaction is continuous and ubiquitous, and never passive. Every interaction increases the volume of data; all aspects are recorded, including the time, place, and nature of the interaction, and details of the ‘reader’ and their ‘book’. The roles of cave ‘artist’, scribe, printer, publisher, encoder, broadcaster, librarian, and other mediators are no longer differentiated from ‘author’. The distinction between data and metadata is completely blurred: data becomes metadata as soon as an information resource is named by its creator.The challenge for bibliographic control is the reconciliation of globalization and personalization via localization. The bibliographic ecosystem is very different and the activities and imploded roles of the end-user must be taken into account by professional agents.

Italian abstract

Bibliographic control is concerned with the description of persistent products of human discourse across all sensory modes. The history of recorded information is punctuated by technological inventions that have had an immediate and profound effect on human society. These inventions delimit five ‘information ages’. It is now the Fifth Information Age, characterized by the ubiquitous use of powerful portable information processing devices for peer to peer communication across the entire planet. All such discourse is recorded during transmission and is copied to persistent storage media.In the Fifth Information Age, the end-user is immersed in and interacts with a global ocean of recorded information. The interaction is continuous and ubiquitous, and never passive. Every interaction increases the volume of data; all aspects are recorded, including the time, place, and nature of the interaction, and details of the ‘reader’ and their ‘book’. The roles of cave ‘artist’, scribe, printer, publisher, encoder, broadcaster, librarian, and other mediators are no longer differentiated from ‘author’. The distinction between data and metadata is completely blurred: data becomes metadata as soon as an information resource is named by its creator.The challenge for bibliographic control is the reconciliation of globalization and personalization via localization. The bibliographic ecosystem is very different and the activities and imploded roles of the end-user must be taken into account by professional agents.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: Bibliographic control; Semantic Web; Metadata
Date deposited: 15 Sep 2026 05:09
Last modified: 15 Sep 2026 05:09
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/48849

References

Allemang, Dean, and Jim Hendler. 2011. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, Second Edition. Amsterdam, Morgan Kaufmann.

Glavic, Boris and Klaus R. Dittrich. 2007. “Data Provenance: A Categorization of Existing Ap- proaches” In 12. Fachtagung des GI-Fachbereichs “Datenbanken und Informationssysteme”, Aachen, Germany, 7 March 2007 - 9 March 2007:227-241. Accessed April 12, 2021. http://dx.doi. org/10.5167/uzh-24450

ICO. nd. “Right to erasure”. Accessed April 12, 2021. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/ guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ right-to-erasure/

IFLA. 2012. IFLA Professional Statement on Universal Bibliographic Control. Accessed April 12, 2021. https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/bibliography/Documents/ifla-professional-statement-on-ubc-en.pdf

ISBD Review Group. 2011. ISBD : International standard bibliographic description, consolidated edition. Berlin, De Gruyter Saur.

Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. 1999. MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data: 005 - Date and Time of Latest Transaction (NR). Accessed April 12, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd005.html

Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. 2008. On the Record: Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. Accessed April 12, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/bibliographic- future/news/lcwg-ontherecord-jan08-final.pdf

Morton, Katherine D. 1986. “The MARC Formats: An Overview” In American Archivist Vol. 49, No. I/Winter 1986:21-30.

NISO. 2021. “NISO Members Approve Proposal for a New Recommended Practice to Update Author Name Changes”. Accessed April 12, 2021. http://www.niso.org/press-releases/2021/04/ niso-members-approve-proposal-new-recommended-practice-update-author-name

Ranganathan, S. R. 1931. The Five Laws of Library Science, etc. Madras, Madras Library Association.

Riva, Pat, Patrick Le Bœuf, and Maja Žumer. 2017. IFLA Library Reference Model: a Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Information. Den Haag, IFLA. Accessed April 12, 2021. https://www.ifla. org/files/assets/cataloguing/frbr-lrm/ifla-lrm-august-2017_rev201712.pdf

RSC Technical Working Group. 2016. RDA models for provenance data. Accessed April 12, 2021. http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/RSC-TechnicalWG-1.pdf

Wilson-Lee, Edward. 2018. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library. London, William Collins.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item