Bibliographic data format

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Example data set in MARC21-XML format ( GND set of the work My Catalonia by George Orwell )
The computer-readable data formats made human-readable catalog cards obsolete

A bibliographic data format (or library data format ) is a data format used to describe books and other media. Libraries use bibliographic data formats to process data over media with computers. Bibliographic data formats also play an important role in the exchange of bibliographic data between libraries. Various standardized formats have developed; today, Dublin Core , MAB and MARC are important .

In bibliographic data formats (and the library regulations on which they are based ) it is specified which information on the media should appear in a title recording . For example, a title recording for a book will contain at least the author, title and year of publication of the book. Bibliographic data formats not only stipulate which information should be included in the title, they also regulate the order in which this information is given and whether information must be given in a certain form (for example, the information on the author may only contain text, no numbers). To reduce the storage space required, the data fields are rarely written with text. For example, in a machine-readable title recording, it does not say “the second editor will follow: Mustermann, Max”, but an equivalent but machine-readable code, such as “105 $ a: Mustermann, Max”.

The most important supplier of bibliographic data in Germany is the German National Library , which in 2011 sold over 31 million records. The DNB data sets were initially delivered in MAB, and in 2013 the changeover to Marc 21 took place.

Vocabularies

There are now many different vocabularies created by different organizations that can be used to describe bibliographic resources. One of the differences between the available vocabularies is their size. Vocabularies used by libraries such as MARC and MAB have hundreds of categories that can be populated with data. In contrast, there are less extensive vocabularies in which only the most important information on the resources described, such as title, author, etc. can be given.

The Dublin Core vocabularies are widely used today. Records created with them contain the most basic information about the resource being described, such as the title, author, and publisher. When using Dublin Core vocabularies, the description categories defined in the standard are often extended by additional categories of other vocabularies that are not provided for by Dublin Core. The vocabularies Dublin Core Element Set and Dublin Core Metadata Terms are well known.

literature

  • Bernhard Eversberg: What are and what should librarian data formats , revised and expanded new edition, WWW version with additions, Braunschweig 1999 ( online )
  • Carsten Klee: Vocabulary for bibliographic data . In: Patrick Danowski, Adrian Pohl (Ed.): (Open) Linked Data in Libraries (= Library and Information Practice , Vol. 50), De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-027634-3 , p. 45-63

Remarks

  1. ↑ A link to this data set in MARC21 XML format can be found here: GND 4820555-2 , accessed on December 8, 2014.
  2. ↑ Engelbert Plassmann u. a .: Libraries and the information society in Germany. An introduction , 2nd revised and expanded edition, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-447-06474-3 , p. 152.
  3. ↑ Carsten Klee: Vocabulary for bibliographical data . In: Patrick Danowski, Adrian Pohl (Ed.): (Open) Linked Data in Libraries (= Library and Information Practice , Vol. 50), De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-027634-3 , p. 45–63, here: p. 45.