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The purpose of this paper is to report on a quantitative analysis of the LCGFT vocabulary within a large set of MARC bibliographic data retrieved from the OCLC WorldCat database. The study aimed to provide a detailed analysis of the outcomes of the LCGFT project, which was launched by the Library of Congress (LC) in 2007. Findings point to a moderate increase in LCGFT use over time; however, the vocabulary has not been applied to the fullest extent possible in WorldCat. Further, adoption has been inconsistent between the various LCGFT disciplines. These and other findings discussed here suggest that retrospective application of the vocabulary using automated means should be investigated by catalogers and other technical services librarians. Indeed, as the data used for the analysis show somewhat uneven application of LCGFT, and with nearly half a billion records in WorldCat, it remains a certainty that much of LCGFT’s full potentials for genre/form access and retrieval will remain untapped until innovative solutions are introduced to further increase overall vocabulary usage in bibliographic databases.

Purpose This paper aims to report on the survey results relating to the current experience of cataloging and metadata professionals with emerging information standards and technologies, as well as the state of professional training and existing barriers to continuing education (CE) in these emerging areas. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a quantitative analysis of the data collected in the online survey, supplemented with a qualitative analysis of some open-ended responses. Findings There was a wide interest in leveraging emerging Semantic Web and Linked Data approaches. Training activities on newer information standards and technologies were reported by more than half of the respondents. The survey data suggested the importance of increasing field-wide collaborations and institution- or organization-level support for professional development. Improving the discoverability of relevant CE resources and programs was also considered to be the key, as were affordability and the ability to incorporate ongoing learning into everyday practice. Originality/value There are currently no comprehensive studies or benchmarked data on how the existing CE system meets the needs of cataloging and metadata professionals. This study establishes a baseline for an understanding of their ongoing professional development preferences and requirements relating to new information standards and technologies.

This study is a part of the larger project that develops a sustainable digital repository of professional development resources on emerging data standards and technologies for data organization and management in libraries. Toward that end, the project team developed an automated workflow to crawl for, monitor, and classify relevant web objects into searchable professional development categories. In this study we present the rapid prototyping approach and the iteration and ranking processes used to develop the automatic crawling system. In its final form, the repository will constitute self-sustaining continuing education resources for the cataloging and metadata community.

This study provides analysis of a large online survey that was distributed to the cataloging community in 2018. The survey aimed to answer a number of important research questions to gain a general sense of the current state of Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT) usage. Findings include an overall broad acceptance of LCGFT, suggesting that the LCGFT project has been successfully embraced as a new controlled vocabulary; however, the adoption of the vocabulary remains uneven, especially between different types of institutions and different areas of the LCGFT vocabulary. Additionally, training points to a much-needed area for improvement as the survey found that the vast majority of non-users of LCGFT had never received vocabulary training. Survey results also suggest that retrospective LCGFT application, particularly using automated means, presents forthcoming challenges for librarians and library IT staff. Despite these limitations and challenges, survey results make it clear that LCGFT has become a widely accepted part of the bibliographic universe that helps to make genre and form information explicitly accessible to library users.

This study aims at providing in-depth perspectives on the ways in which cataloging and metadata professionals have coped with RDA training and implementation through an e-mail interview method. Results show that the performance-based, “learn-as-you-go,” peer learning method is found by practitioners to be most effective in acquiring and applying RDA knowledge and skills to real work situations. In terms of local RDA training resources, catalogers in research libraries have access to many special in-house training sessions. In contrast, those working in non-research libraries rely mostly on webinars and other online learning materials. The study shows that different versions of RDA instruction and training materials produced by the Library of Congress and other organizations have contributed to some confusion among practitioners. This indicates that it is critical for practitioners to access up-to-date, standard training materials that include concrete examples, best practices, and practical workbooks. The study also points out that there is currently a gap for practitioners between their day-to-day cataloging practices and RDA principles based on the FRBR framework. As RDA moves us to a Linked Data world, there will be a critical need to bridge this gap. The results also indicate that considerable efforts need to be made to provide more training materials in relatively “blank” areas, such as special, non-book formats, and foreign language materials.

The speakers discussed practical steps that smaller institutions could take to develop their own institutional repositories (IRs) from scratch using local resources. Yuji Tosaka spoke about the overall context and problems that IRs can present for smaller institutions; Cathy Weng then gave an overview of The College of New Jersey's efforts to develop an IR and discussed the college's MUSE project, a college-wide mini-grant program for working with selected undergraduate students on research and creative activity, and how this internal opportunity led to an IR pilot project. Tosaka ended by speaking about life after MUSE and the still-ongoing IR development.

The authors created a research method to identify local users’ needs and explored how well currently available e-book content might meet those needs. Using circulation records, interlibrary loan (ILL) requests, and in-house use as a gauge of patron demand during a three-year period, the study compared these records to e-book offerings from the major aggregators. The resulting data were analyzed by subject and publication date. The authors found that e-book content that might meet users’ needs was not uniformly distributed across disciplines and that more recent publications were more likely to have e-book equivalents. The highest percentage of e-book equivalents was for titles requested via ILL, suggesting that this might be the best place to begin e-book collecting. The results suggest that e-books may meet only a fraction of the demand for monographic scholarly output and that libraries cannot yet rely on e-book content to entirely supplant print, although e-book coverage is growing dramatically.

The goal of this article is to analyze problems in citation outputs generated by Web-based bibliographic management software RefWorks in order to illustrate how existing library data in the WorldCat.org database can be repurposed effectively to interact with new Web-based technologies and services. Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study finds that, in addition to numerous, repetitive problems that might be easily overcome with improved formatting on the software side, the quality of citations suffers critically from a wide variety of problems in original metadata, such as authority control issues in a multiple-database environment, the presence of legacy data, and the lack of relationship information in most MARC records. The results of the study indicate a pressing need to develop a new, common data model for library services and applications if we want library data to support and integrate easily with a myriad of potential uses on the Web.

This article evaluates practices on metadata quality control in digital repositories and collections using an online survey of cataloging and metadata professionals in the United States. The study examines (1) the perceived importance of metadata quality, (2) metadata quality evaluation criteria and issues, and (3) mechanisms for building quality assurance into the metadata creation process. The survey finds wide recognition of the essential role of metadata quality assurance. Accuracy and consistency are prioritized as the main criteria for metadata quality evaluation. Metadata semantics greatly affects consistent and accurate metadata application. Strong awareness of metadata quality correlates with the widespread adoption of various quality control mechanisms, such as staff training, manual review, metadata guidelines, and metadata generation tools. And yet, metadata guidelines are used less frequently as a quality assurance mechanism in digital collections involving multiple institutions.

This study uses data from a large original survey (nearly one thousand initial respondents) to present how the cataloging and metadata community is approaching new and emerging data standards and technologies. The data analysis demonstrates strong professional-development interest in Semantic Web and Linked Data applications. With respect to continuing education topics, Linked Data technology, BIBFRAME, and an overview of current and emerging data standards and technologies ranked high. The survey data illustrate that personal continuing education interests often varied from reported institutional needs. These results reflect the fact that library services and projects in these emerging areas have not yet progressed beyond the exploratory stage. They also suggest that cataloging and metadata professionals expect to be able to exercise a mixture of core professional skill sets including teamwork, communication, and subject analysis, and the ability to adapt and accommodate Semantic Web standards and technologies, digital libraries, and other innovations in cataloging and metadata services.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center In interwar Japan, urban middle-class audiences patronized Hollywood movies rather than domestic native films that should have appealed to them as native and culturally familiar. The rise of militant nationalism and cultural nativism fueled the growth of official movements that celebrated an indigenous Japanese essence and eschewed allegedly foreign, modern “contamination.” The alleged Americanizing influence of Hollywood cinema became an increasingly worrisome problem for Japanese officials beginning in the early 1930s. This article examines Japan's efforts to impose tighter restrictions on American films during the 1930s, culminating in a total ban on film imports following the onset of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

Four kinds of oil shale were heated below 1673 K under a nitrogen atmosphere, and the porous structures in the residues (spent shales) were examined by use of a mercury porosimeter. All spent shales consisted of considerably homogeneous porous structures. The maximum pore volumes, 0.25 to 0.33 ml g−1, were obtained after heating to 1073 K, and the average pore radii ranged from 34 nm to 340 nm. Micropores are not included in view of their small BET surface areas. These results are discussed on the basis of X-ray diffraction, SEM observation, carbon content, and so on.