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Implementing discovery tools and getting them to work with existing library services often leaves very little time for their promotion and for the thoughtful, ongoing evaluation and curation of their content. However, the expectations and experiences that users have about discovery tools are often directly related to the content and the way that content is described. In our efforts to work with vendors to resolve the underlying business issues that prevent us from having all of the metadata for our resources included in our discovery tools, we may have lost sight of our role in curating and evaluating the usefulness of the content that is already included in them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For e-resource librarians, maintaining e-book and e-journal holdings within electronic resource management systems is a labor intensive and often manual process. In 2014, with the aim of saving library staff valuable time and effort, the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) launched a service to provide automated holdings management within the WorldCat knowledgebase. For a select group of content providers, including some of the largest e-book aggregators, holdings information can be populated and updated automatically within the knowledgebase without intervention from library staff. At the University of Toronto Libraries, we conducted a study to assess the accuracy and efficiency of these automated holdings management services. This presentation outlines the results of the study and provides suggestions for further improvement to the current services offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This conference report examines the entire lifecycle of scholarship from a digital perspective through the lens of Georgetown University Library’s institutional repository (IR), DigitalGeorgetown. It focuses on digital curation and creation of digital resources and scholarship using automated workflows and integration with vendor subscribed discovery service platforms. Specific topics covered include use of open tools like Open Researcher and Contributor ID and SHERPA/RoMEO, integration with Academic Preservation Trust, enhanced discovery through Summon and Schema.org, and use of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Together these tools have helped improve the complete lifecycle of how digital resources and scholarship get ingested, disseminated, and enhanced within Georgetown’s IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourced metadata available in iTunes is too often insufficient or even incorrect for classical music recordings. Listeners find themselves frustrated when the only options iTunes provides are illogical. What we need is a group of professionals who are experts in musicandinformation organization to clean things up. Enter the Music Library Association. The author proposes that this national group with ten regional chapters divide the work of providing improved metadata for classical recordings, using an open source program such as freedb. Working with Gracenote, individual music librarians could also correct existing data and reduce instances of a user encountering poor information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Protocol for Exchange of Serial Content (PESC) is a recommended practice developed under the auspices of the National Information Standards Organization. Every day, literally millions of journal articles are exchanged between organizations in the serial content supply chain—organizations like publishers, content processing vendors, publisher hosts, database vendors, and discovery service vendors. The PESC recommendation addresses how the serial content is packaged and exchanged and allows organizations to process content more efficiency. While libraries and their users may not be directly involved with the use of this recommended practice they ultimately will benefit from better quality online collections where information is updated in a more timely manner and with fewer errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes the approach to bibliographic metadata developed at the University of Michigan Library for journal articles published and archived in HathiTrust using the mPach toolset, which allows journal editors to create born-digital Open Access journals and create their own metadata as a byproduct of the publishing process. Specifically, mPach allows a journal editor to convert edited manuscripts from common source formats such as Microsoft Word into Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) Z39.96-2012, XML and embed structured metadata about the article and journal. Since HathiTrust currently uses machine-readable cataloging (MARC) as its common-denominator metadata format, JATS metadata are automatically mapped to MARC fields, creating one analytic record per article but without normalizing to follow Resource Description and Access rules for transcription from primary sources of information or creating entries according to name authorities. For each new journal, a serial record for the journal is created manually by a serials cataloger. This serial record and each analytic record for articles in that journal link to a “collection” for the journal built using the HathiTrust Collections feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Portal to Texas History (http://texashistory.unt.edu) and the University of North Texas (UNT) Digital Library (http://digital.library.unt.edu) contain more than 445,000 items collectively, hosted by the UNT Libraries. These collections include a variety of serial publications such as newsletters, magazines, scholarly journals, annual reports, and yearbooks. Many of these serials are key resources for the user groups of both repositories. In this article, we discuss the importance of serials within our collections, some of the challenges, the standards we use, and how we leverage metadata to facilitate access to serials for diverse global users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As electronic serials have shifted from being the exception to the norm, libraries are becoming increasingly reliant on knowledge base-driven systems to help manage electronic serial holdings. In 2011, the University of Toronto Libraries migrated its electronic resource holdings from a local database to a commercial electronic resource management (ERM) system. With two years of experience using a commercial ERM system, the presenters endeavored to analyze how the library is coping with e-serial management within this new environment. This study reveals many of the benefits and pitfalls of managing electronic journals within a knowledge base–driven system and highlights the need for greater standardization within the data supply chain, better communication with publishers and knowledge base providers, and increased collaboration to improve the e-resource management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This session focused on migrating from a traditional electronic resource management system to OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.’s cloud-based WorldShare Management System, where e-resource data is created and maintained in a global environment. The session highlighted how implementing a unified, global system allowed the University of Nebraska Omaha Library to streamline e-resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four standards and best practices recently released or currently underway at the National Information Standards Organization were presented: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools, Presentation and Identification of E-Journals, Open Discovery Initiative, and Open Access Metadata Indicators. Basics outlining the creation work and deliverables were shared for each project. Applicability of these standards and best practices for different stakeholders of the information community were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The session explored how collaboration among libraries, suppliers, and the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) cooperative can address some of the problems being faced with the management of electronic resources. Examples of specific challenges that impact budgets and services are: libraries’ reliance on multiple non-interoperable systems; the difficulties in getting and maintaining high quality and timely metadata; and the issues with managing workflows that cross system and staff boundaries. As work continues to introduce and enhance integrated systems for electronic resource management, these cooperative efforts can improve both the quality of the services and the associated data and workflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important current challenge for research information providers is ensuring the automated discovery of Open Access (OA) content in hybrid journals. We found no evidence of discovery services that are able to systematically identify the crucially important free full-text availability of OA articles regardless of where and how such articles have been published (i.e., in fully OA journals or in hybrid journals). A solution is important because hybrid journals are proliferating and consequently the chances of missing OA articles is real and is happening. Nearly all of the major publishers now provide such journals in order to take advantage of recent changes in research funder requirements, and to be competitive in the new OA business model. By working with a group of scholarly publisher partners and by using standard metadata elements that publishers are already familiar with, we show a systematic and standardized manner to identify OA at the article level. Our proposal is to embed OA-related elements in the metadata freely exposed by publishers for aggregators and discovery services. For example, in the Table of Content (TOC) Really Simple Syndication feeds the publishers use to announce new journal issues and content. Based on the initial results obtained, we discuss the capabilities of our solution, and evaluate the impact produced by our application in the systematic discoverability of OA content from the participating hybrid journals, using an implementation done with the freely available journal current awareness service—JournalTOCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the January 1994 issue ofThe Cornell Veterinarianeditor Maurice E. White wrote, “THIS is the last issue of The Cornell Veterinarian. The Cornell Vet has a proud history, dating back to June, 1911 …” In 2013 Cornell University Library began efforts to improve the “afterlife” forThe Cornell Veterinarianjournal by leveraging a number of disparate initiatives and metadata sources. While attempting to build article-level linking to full text in HathiTrust (functionality currently unavailable), limitations in the metadata captured during the scanning process were uncovered. This article will include a delineation of these metadata findings with strategies (some scalable, others highly labor intensive) for gathering the necessary metadata for creating direct links to articles found in HathiTrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge Base and Related Tools (KBART), initially founded with a focus on improving OpenURL linking through the definition of best practices for exchanging title-level metadata, continues to gain traction and has the potential to be an initiative that improves not only link resolver quality but also improves discovery services, electronic resource management (ERM) systems, and even Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) usage reports. In this column we quickly review the history of KBART from its inception in 2007 through the creation of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 best practices. Then we investigate how KBART can positively influence the quality of discovery services, ERM systems, and COUNTER. Finally, we put forward some suggestions on how KBART can become the key to standardizing the exchange of holdings data within the information supply chain to address needs beyond link resolvers and eliminate some redundant holdings maintenance tasks in libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

E-books play an important role in library collections; however, the sheer number of books and the nature of access models, such as limited simultaneous use, create some significant challenges for their discovery and access. For this column we asked Nettie Lagace from the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) to tell us about some of the work NISO has been doing in this area and highlight some of the initiatives designed to provide more interoperability among parties in the e-book supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that Chris Bulock is the recipient of the 2014 First Step Award, Patrick Carr is the recipient of the 2014 Esther J. Piercy Award and Magda El-Sherbini is the recipient of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Outstanding Publication Award for 2014.

The Spotlight on Serials Standards column has discussed a number of different standards over the past few years. In many cases the standards were still evolving at the time the column was written. Since then some may have changed significantly, some have been successfully utilized in the scholarly information community while still others may need continued work. In this issue I will revisit four of these standards initiatives to provide the latest information on each, and, highlight any important changes that may have come about. The initiatives I will cover include: Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) Code of Practice, Institutional Identifiers (I2), Open Access Metadata and Indicator, and the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the transition of government publications from print to digital over the last decade, the State Library of North Carolina saw the need to implement a content management system for the state’s digital publications. The State Library formed a Digital Information Management Program (DIMP) in 2006 to address the challenge of managing their digital collections. The library chose to utilize OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC)’s CONTENTdm software to manage their digital materials and associated metadata. The presentation described below outlined the processes and challenges in managing their collections with this software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between institutional repositories and hosting journals, many libraries are becoming responsible for scholarly content in new ways. While Portable Document Formats (PDFs) are the most common formats today, the unique, local, serial content could be in a variety of formats. These items might be digitized text, born digital text, audio, video, images, or multimedia. This article discusses formats that will remain accessible through time (PDF/A, txt, xml) so that contents are not locked into proprietary formats. It will also discuss options for backing up items and associated metadata, including simple backups, off-site storage of files, Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS), Private LOCKSS Networks, and Portico. The article offers suggestions for how your library might best preserve local content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linked data have the potential to expose descriptive metadata about serials and serials relationships on the open Web and allow creative connections between library information about serials and the seemingly infinite elements of Web data. Linked data may also hold the potential to solve some classic serials dilemmas including latest versus successive entry and single versus multiple records for print and online. How do these possibilities mesh with the evolving current state of linked data projects in the commercial and library sector as well as with the Library of Congress’ Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME)? The three sections of this article will present different viewpoints about linked data and serials. An “early experimenter” and member of the group modeling BIBFRAME serials will discuss her experiences and thoughts on future directions. The head of the United States International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) Center will take an ISSN perspective, looking at ISSN’s potential in the linked data environment as well as discussing international work modeling serials according to Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (object-oriented) (FRBR-oo) and how ISSN fits into the development of BIBFRAME. Finally, a publisher from a company that has reorganized some of its infrastructure and processes to facilitate linked data will share the goals and provide examples of the benefits of that project. The two constant themes throughout the article are linked data and serials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As resources have become ever more complicated in a digital world, it is evident that cataloging practices and the metadata standards we use to guide these practices are becoming more constraining. Recent developments within the library community can have a significant impact on serials cataloging and may help improve information retrieval for the end user. While the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) holds some promise for improving the representation of serials, linked data principles may further transform the way in which resources and the relationships between them are captured and presented to our users. By taking description out of the current record constraints, serials librarians will better be able to express the relationships between multiple versions of the same publication, and how a particular journal has changed over time. The linked data model also opens up many opportunities for the provision of value-added content to bibliographic descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a report of a concurrent session presented by Katherine Hill and Maria Collins of North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries at the 2013 North American Serials Interest Group conference. NCSU Libraries is a participant in the Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb) project, which will provide an openly available knowledgebase for Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE). Results from a survey conducted by NCSU librarians are discussed, which focus on the e-resource management community and their expectations of the data provided in knowledgebases. The survey investigates problems and improvements in respect to data quality. Respondents also commented on their expectations of a community-managed project as well as the viability of a project like GOKb. Future directions and initiatives in the knowledgebase space were also summarized in the presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the support of the library, the faculty, and the administration, Allegheny College recently adopted the strongest type of Open Access policy, a mandate for all faculty scholarship to be placed in the college’s institutional repository. The library’s Head of Technical Services tells how the policy came to be approved and how it is being implemented by the library. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As open access material becomes more available across the scholarly information space, a need has arisen for creation of special metadata indicating this open access status, and for that metadata to be standard through the supply chain in order to be shared and communicated most effectively among a number of players. The National Information Standards Organization has recently launched a new work item, the Open Access Metadata and Indicators working group, which will specify a standardized set of metadata elements to detail article accessibility and license permissions. By defining how to tie availability permissions to an object useful to humans and machines, the group intends to support improved communication of this information and affect better use of open access material overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, academic institutions have established and maintained institutional repositories (IRs) to collect, preserve, and showcase their institution's research and scholarly output. Tammy Sugarman, Associate Dean for Collections at Georgia State University Library, presented “Library Technical Services: Key Ingredients in the Recipe for a Successful Institutional Repository” at the Mississippi State University Libraries eResource & Emerging Technologies Summit held at Mississippi State University, Mitchell Memorial Library on August 3, 2012. Sugarman provided historical background on IRs and explored the professional and organizational changes taking place in academic libraries to support IR programs, focusing on contributions of technical services units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated indexing--using a computer to look at individual documents and assign metadata without a person looking at every document--was used to build an interactive online database to store and retrieve pages from a loose-leaf resource (i.e., a resource that changes state over time). A database was designed and more than 30,000 pages in the database were indexed. Digitization, optical character recognition, and computer scripting to extract metadata were the methods used to assign most metadata. In places where the computer program could not assign metadata, a person looked at the document and assigned metadata. The index was audited for errors. The computer script and the human indexer had comparable error rates but computer indexing spent much less time per value assigned. It is recommended that automated indexing be considered in indexing projects, especially where a large number of similar documents are to be indexed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nothing can function well without standards and best practices, including the information world. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) works with the information community to develop standards and best practices to improve interoperability and workflow efficiency in a wide range of areas from metadata transfer to information retrieval. To ensure a community consensus, NISO brings every interested party into the process of developing standards and best practices through working groups. Current work and updates from two NISO-sponsored working groups, Open Discovery Initiative and Presentation and Identification of E-Journals, were covered in this presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes two serialists who use skills honed in their respective serials departments to show how those skills adapt to the world of e-publishing. The presenters discussed their roles in e-publishing and their respective university presses and library publishing programs. How have their libraries reorganized to provide resources for supporting these new roles? The daily work of an e-publishing librarian was reviewed, including an overview of working with Digital Commons and Open Journal Systems, two e-press platforms. The presenters also discussed funding and sustainability of the programs, and working with open access and subscription titles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics (IOTA) initiative was formed by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) in 2010 to continue a Mellon-funded project on OpenURL quality begun at Cornell University. IOTA's objective is to develop a scoring system for measuring the quality of OpenURL links generated by content providers at the citation level. OpenURLs have a history of failing to resolve correctly, but no method has been devised to benchmark them even a decade after the introduction of the underlying standard. The proposed system would generate scores based on specific evaluation metrics and thus rate providers' OpenURL quality. The system's analytical approach would also enable OpenURL providers to pinpoint linking problems and thus optimize OpenURL improvements. A public OpenURL analysis tool, which relies on link data contributed by OpenURL providers and libraries, is currently in use. Recently, IOTA approached the Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) initiative about a possible collaboration on a related project, which would investigate OpenURL linking not at the citation level, but the full-text level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration between Ulrich's and the National Serials Data Program began more than ten years ago. Today the names have changed but this partnership continues to benefit publishers, libraries, and vendors who provide access to electronic serials. Many challenges are presented by differences in the metadata collected. A commitment to common goals and sharing metadata has made the partnership work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the complicated process of journal title transfers in the electronic environment. A detailed look at summary title transfer data from the past two years outlines the untimely nature of the title transfer process. Also addressed are how two National Information Standards Organization (NISO)/United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) Working Groups, Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) and Transfer, are working to address some of the problems and streamline the process. Last, an automated and standardized method by which electronic holdings data could be processed is proposed for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on international series and electronic resource management, including information on vendor and publisher services and topics related to library schools and continuing education. The article presents abstracts from several journals including the July 2011 issue of "Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community," the June 2011 issue of "Serials Review." Topics include the awarding of the SAGE travel grant to librarian Patrick Carr to attend the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) International conference in England on September 14-16, 2011, a basic serials cataloging workshop at Pepperdine University on August 3, 2011, and the New York Public Library's (NYPL) online catalog changes implemented by software company Bibliocommons.

This article discusses problems in the management of library e-resources and attempts to identify potential solutions to the problems. By describing an e-resources enhancement project taken by Rutgers University Libraries, this article points to the importance of providing contextually rich metadata and reorganizing the accessibility of e-resources on a library's website. It introduces how this Rutgers project adopted the National Information Standards Organization Metasearch Initiative to support the identification of appropriate e-collections for metasearching. The outcomes of the project have facilitated a dynamic display of relevant e-resources to library users as an effective way of automatic access to library e-collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) project is an initiative of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG), and has established a set of best practices for the exchange of electronic resource holdings metadata between content providers and knowledgebase developers. The benefits of KBART are that it relieves information professionals from the time-consuming process of actively reconciling e-journal title lists, and addresses the many inadequacies which are common in title holdings lists. As of June 1, 2010, KBART has been endorsed by the American Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, Serials Solutions, and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). Information professionals can facilitate the further endorsement of KBART by requesting accurate holdings lists from providers up front and referring providers to the KBART recommendations to encourage broader adoption of these best practices. Looking forward, the KBART Working Group hopes to achieve universal acceptance of these best practices and the expansion of the practice to more varied electronic resource formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this session, Holly Mercer presented a case for finding global solutions to improve the metadata that are available for journals, particularly small, independent, open-access journals. She discussed the scholarly communication lifecycle and described how in her view the metadata value chain underpins the scholarly communication system. Examples of the importance of metadata to discovery, access, and use of publications were provided. Suggestions of how librarians can help editors and publishers enhance discoverability and usability for patrons were also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this session two veterans of the international information standards community discussed the National Information Standards Organization's (NISO's) soon to be released Institutional Identifiers, or 'I2' standard. When adopted and implemented the I2 standard will create a standard unique identifier for each institution, one that can be used by publishers, agents, and online hosts. Once adopted, use of the standard bodes well for improving processes in managing electronic resources, particularly access and activation issues, throughout the information supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) is actively involved in key industry initiatives to study issues affecting the scholarly information chain. The Transfer project, Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART), Journal Usage Factor, and the Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (PIRUS) project complement one another by wrestling with related aspects of core metadata issues. Problems with metadata transmission and use affect how librarians provide access to and maximize return on investment for resources that are purchased, collected, and archived. How those problems are addressed has a direct effect on how scholars and users access, and qualitatively and quantitatively assess the value of online resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Online Computer Library Center's xISSN Web service is an application program interface (API) that enables libraries to retrieve serials metadata from WorldCat in a parsable form. The service allows libraries to use a script language to 'mash' or combine the metadata with local serials holdings information, thereby enhancing their Web-based catalogs, databases, or A-Z lists. This tactics session provided an overview of the xISSN Web service, and provided two examples of how xISSN metadata has been used with scripts to improve the functionality of academic library A-Z lists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines four Google search products (Google Advanced Search, Google News Advanced Search, Google Books Advanced Search, and Google Advanced Scholar Search) and shows how each uses metadata to enhance or improve search results. In addition, the article shows how metadata can increase search precision and recall in information discovery systems. From a library perspective, this article analyzes some of the metadata-enabled features of Google's advanced search pages and compares these features to those found in a typical online library catalog. From a serials perspective, Google News Advanced Search demonstrates how Google indexes news websites, sites that are essentially continuing resources. As Google incorporates more and more metadata functionality into its advanced search pages, they increasingly begin to function more like online library catalogs and less like search pages found in a traditional Internet search engine. The simple search box has many limitations, and like libraries, Google is increasingly creating and offering metadata-enabled search features that improve search precision and recall in its products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tagging is the practice of assigning common terms to digital objects such as websites, photos, or articles. These tags serve as metadata for easy organization and retrieval. Many libraries have begun incorporating tags into their catalogs in various ways. This presentation considered the practices of a few select libraries as examples of how tagging can be used in conjunction with more traditional cataloging practices to add value to the library catalog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) is a project concerned with the optimal implementation of the OpenURL specification. As a collaborative effort between the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and co-chaired by presenter Peter McCracken, its goal is to establish best practices to be used by content providers, aggregators, electronic resource management (ERM) system vendors, and libraries. Their concerted efforts are ultimately there to improve access to electronic resources for the end user, that is, the library patron. The KBART working group is identifying and pointing out problems in the use of OpenURL to those who provide the data and is further engaged in education and advocacy to assist the involved parties in finding solutions to those problems. A report is in progress that includes best practice recommendations on what type of data to provide and how to deliver the data. There are also topics under discussion related to error reporting, the methods of educating the involved parties, and how to incorporate the specific needs of individual libraries. The report to be delivered by the KBART working group is well under way but remains at the same time open for discussion and future input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metadata is critical to finding content. However, the expansion of digital content, rapid changes in access and use, and transitions in the digital supply chain pose tremendous challenges to the effective organization, description, and management of this information. Seven speakers from different communities in the digital supply chain addressed various aspects of this important topic. Participants in this preconference session gained a valuable overview of and an insight into the many issues associated with creating and distributing metadata in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation and widespread adoption of the OpenURL standard has improved the visibility, and therefore the usage, of libraries' online holdings, although there are some times when OpenURLs fail to resolve. To better understand why problems occur and encourage network-level solutions, librarians at Cornell University have begun working on a study of OpenURL metadata quality. Their goal is to create a systematic approach to assessing and validating metadata quality so that libraries and content providers may collaborate on solutions for metadata problems. One member of this project team, Glen Wiley, shared details about the types of problems this approach seeks to remedy and the status of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this tactics session two Library of Congress catalogers and one former Library of Congress cataloger discussed how metadata issues with journal title presentation on provider and publisher websites can be problematic. Through a series of examples, the speakers demonstrated how lack of metadata and citation practices result in users not finding content and libraries not getting access to content for which they paid. Reactions from publishers and attendees were welcomed with the goal of enhancing communication among stakeholders and generating interest to form a collaborative effort in establishing a NISO working group to develop best practices with journal title display and citation practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future is not perfectly predictable. However, as serialists it is our job to predict the future in some very real ways, and current trends give us valuable tools for at least figuring out a range of possible future scenarios. Certain trends in particular point to highly likely developments in the near future, and wise libraries will position themselves to deal with those developments. They include a continued drift on the part of researchers away from printed resources, from the library catalog, and from non-unique collections, with a concomittant rise in the importance of unique collections and locally-produced scholarships. Libraries can future-proof themselves by, in part, turning decisively away from resources and services that patrons are abandoning and towards those resources and services that are likely to grow in importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses digital preservation and the changes the practice brings to librarianship. The author makes comparisons between digital preservation and archival preservation, focusing on the principles of provenance and original order. Connections are drawn between the provenance of digital documents and their trustworthiness as well and reasons are provided for retaining collection-level documentation within the metadata for a digital collection. It is the author's opinion that librarians should think like archivists when planning digital preservation projects in order to prevent loss or corruption of data.

Is main entry still relevant in the catalogs of the 21st century? This article reviews the role of main entry in a card catalog and the changing nature of main entry in the electronic environment. Arguments for and against abandoning main entry are examined through the lens of Cutter's principles for a catalog. To achieve Cutter's objectives, the use of main entry is no longer needed in modern catalogs. A comparison of Resource Description and Access (RDA) and other metadata schemes regarding main entry is investigated and reveals that librarians' unwillingness to retire main entry may limit RDA's use vis-à-vis other schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital versions of the library are proliferating as information becomes ever more electronic. Traditional methods of library cataloging are inadequate to fully describe digital objects in this new dynamic environment. Thus, new standards of metadata are being devised to provide access for objects in digital libraries. These new standards extend beyond mere description; there is also a need to include other metadata functions that provide administrative, access, preservation, and structural information. This preconference provided an overview of newer metadata formats, as well as current trends in the field, and encouraged librarians to engage with their information technology partners to ensure optimal use and development of digital libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many libraries, academic institutions, governmental agencies, non-profit and for-profit agencies, and other groups around the world have implemented institutional repositories (IR) in the past few years. In her pre-conference presentation, Carol Hixson, from the University of Oregon, provided an overview of the issues and challenges in implementing an IR. In keeping with the open access communication model, the full-text of the pre-conference is available from University of Oregon's Scholars' Bank: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/2484. Additional resources for institutional repositories can be fotmd at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/Catdept/irg/IR Resources_NASIG. htm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]