1. BIBFRAME Projects at the
University of Washington
Joseph Kiegel

2. Three Projects Conversion and review of MARC records
Mapping of RDA Core to BIBFRAME
Topical collection of materials drawn from CONTENTdm, MARC and EAD, and converted to BIBFRAME
Using LC’s BIBFRAME (bibframe.org)

3. Training as a First Step
Identified a core group of librarians with format and language expertise to be trained as BIBFRAME reviewers
Wrote in-house training with catalogers as the audience
Used Turtle rather than RDF/XML because it is easier to read
Opened training sessions to all interested staff in technical services

4. Three Training Sessions
1) Introduction to BIBFRAME review and training in RDF
2) Training in the BIBFRAME model
3) Detailed reading of a converted MARC record
Later sessions were also held on RDF/XML and on Schema.org

5. Conversion and Review of
MARC Records

6. Goals of BIBFRAME Review
Familiarize ourselves with BIBFRAME
Evaluate the BIBFRAME model
Submit comments to the Library of Congress

7. Core Group of Reviewers
Diana Brooking
Kris Lindlan
Charlene Chou
Helice Koffler
Cate Gerhart
May Rathbone
Theo Gerontakos
Adam Schiff
Joe Kiegel
Steve Shadle

8. Conversion Process
Selected and exported MARC records from the local ILS
Converted the records to MARCXML using MarcEdit
Converted records to BIBFRAME in RDF/XML using oXygen and the Library of Congress converter, accessed in GitHub
Converted the RDF/XML to Turtle using a web service: rdf-translator.appspot.com

9. Review Sessions Chose records by bib format, MARC fields, or language
Posted converted records prior to scheduled meetings
Invited interested staff to attend
Reviewed records in detail (1-3 records per session)

10. Comments for the Library of Congress
Comments were raised as issues on the LC GitHub site
Editorial work was centralized
To eliminate duplication of submissions
To provide some consistency in presentation
A local issues-list was maintained so that staff could readily see what had been reported without accessing GitHub

11. Sample Results of the Review
Over 125 issues were submitted
Types of problems reported
MARC fields or subfields not converted
BIBFRAME properties with problems
Non-roman script not handled well

12. Mapping of RDA Core to BIBFRAME

13. Goals of the Mapping Project
Evaluate BIBFRAME as a carrier for RDA cataloging
Evaluate RDA/RDF as a serialization of RDA cataloging
Focus on RDA Core as a starting point
Expand later to the full RDA element set

14. History of the Mapping Originally posted on April 17, 2015
Updated version posted on June 9, 2015
Change Log details the revisions
Available at:

15. Origin of the Document
The RDA BIBCO Standard Record metadata application profile by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging was taken as a basis for RDA Core
The column for MARC encoding was removed and two columns were added for RDA and BIBFRAME properties
Some editorial changes were made to reflect RDA in a non-MARC environment

16. Details of the Mapping
Some RDA elements do not map to a single BIBFRAME element
Lightweight Abstraction Layer
rdam:titleProper maps to bf:instanceTitle >>> bf:titleValue
Blank nodes
rdam:dateOfPublication maps to bf:publication >> bf:providerDate
rdam:dateOfDistribution maps to bf:distribution >> bf:providerDate

17. Mapping may be conditional, based on the object of the RDA property
RDA permits values to be a URI or a literal, while BIBFRAME requires the value of each property to be either a URI or a literal
rdam:mediaType
bf:mediaCategory
rdam:mediaType “audio”
bf:mediaCategory [ a bf:Category ; bf:categoryValue “audio” ] .

18. Some RDA properties do not map well to BIBFRAME
Series treatment in BIBFRAME needs an overhaul
Technical details are not accounted for, e.g.
Base material
Book format
Video characteristics
File type
Regional encoding

19. Domains of some BIBFRAME properties do not align with the RDA WEMI model
Domain should be unspecified in BIBFRAME, e.g.
bf:notation
bf:formatOfMusic
bf:duration

20. Necessity of a Carrier
In the medium term, libraries, publishers, vendors and utilities still have separate databases
Libraries still require a carrier to move manifestation-level descriptions, at a minimum
With RDA as a descriptive standard, a carrier must fully support the round trip RDA  BIBFRAME  RDA

21. Examples of Round Trip Problems
BIBFRAME does not support round trips for some elements
They map to BIBFRAME well enough, but cannot be mapped back
Five RDA properties for extent map to bf:extent
Four RDA properties for scale map to bf:cartographicScale
Three RDA properties map to one for bf:note, bf:dimensions
Two RDA properties map to one for bf:edition, bf:language, bf:originDate, bf:musicMediumNote, bf:notation, bf:relatedWork

22. Testing and Revision Created RDA cataloging manually in XML
Including a test file of all RDA core elements
Wrote an XSLT transformation of RDA into BIBFRAME
Evaluated the results of the transformation
Posted a revised version of the mapping

23. Topical Collection of Materials in BIBFRAME

24. Goal of the Project
Test BIBFRAME as a common serialization of cataloging data drawn from a variety of sources
Dublin Core
MARC
EAD
Test searching of a corpus in BIBFRAME

25. Materials to Be Used
One or two topically related collections of photographic images from CONTENTdm
MARC records for the collections
EAD finding aids for the collections
Topically related materials from the library catalog in MARC

26. Conversion to BIBFRAME
For CONTENTdm, export metadata in XML, and then transform it to BIBFRAME
For MARC, export records from the ILS and convert them using the LC converter
For EAD, write a transformation to BIBFRAME
This is likely to be the most challenging part

27. Evaluation of the Results
Initial evaluation of the BIBFRAME results will be done in review sessions
Improve the mappings as a result
After a triple store is created, we plan to load BIBFRAME data and test querying it with SQL
Ideally, we would use a discovery interface to test the user search experience