The IFLA ISBD Review Group has just published the recording and slides of its webinar titled “From ISBD to ISBDM: a bibliographic standard in transformation”, held on 26 January 2023.

IFLA has a variety of councils, committees, sections, and special interest groups. Some work at the strategic level while others focus on individual areas of the library and information services profession. To become a candidate, a volunteer should receive the required number of nominations for that position, and complete the nominee form for that position. The deadline for these submitted items is 24 February 2023, 17:00 CET.

Increasing the amount of high-quality data available through the Europeana website is a continuing priority as the Europeana Initiative starts to deploy the common European data space for cultural heritage. Explore how aggregators are using the Metis Sandbox to deliver high-quality data.

This news post is the second in a series with a focus on the Metis Sandbox.

Based on the relevant provisions of the Public Library Law of the People’s Republic of China, this article introduces the roles and functions of the  National Library of China (NLC) in 8 areas, including compilation of national bibliography and union catalogue. Furthermore, this article underlines the related work carried out by the NLC according to these functions.

Melanie Schlosser, library publishing librarian, explains for her perspective how the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) has evolved in each of their strategic areas, where they have made significant progress, and where she sees untapped potential.

You can also read and download the LPC annual report 2021-2022.

Currently the API delivers public data from the Royal Danish Library’s newspaper collection. Data from the Danish newspaper has to be older than 140 years to qualify af “public data”. The API is presented in the Swagger UI and can return data in JSON, JSONL and CSV. Requests to the API are based on search queries in the Mediestream-platform. Go to the Newspaper API

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are being widely used across academic publishing, how can we make informed assessments of these utilities? We need evaluations of AI tools within the context of how they are actually used – by checking with users. Information professionals are ideally placed to carry out these evaluations. The author suggests an outline of where AI is currently being used successfully, and outlines a methodology for assessment of new tools. The goal is not to endorse or to discredit AI, but to enable us to make intelligent and informed appraisals, without the need to learn coding.

A recent white paper describes the three key challenges faced by information professionals when working with R&D groups, along with tips on how to tackle these challenges. Springer Nature partnered with information industry expert, Bates Information Services, who interviewed four information professionals working within STEM fields, to learn more about their experiences of working with R&D departments. The findings from those interviews were brought together not only during the Special Libraries Association session 2022 Annual Conference, but also in a new white paper, addressing some of the key challenges faced by information professionals when working with R&D groups.

The Library of Congress has selected the open-source FOLIO library services platform for its next generation library management system. FOLIO’s innovative architecture allows for maximum flexibility and extensibility, which will enable the platform to grow as LoC’s needs evolve. The Library’s FOLIO implementation will be supported by EBSCO FOLIO Services. Most importantly, BIBFRAME is a mandatory requirement, meaning native support for the creation, storage, and indexing of BIBFRAME descriptions. This is a major milestone for the BIBFRAME Initiative.

The ICOLC Strategies for Open Collaboration in Library Consortia Task Force was initially formed to develop strategies for consortia and libraries to interact with vendors and the open source community to address pricing, standards/interoperability, and access challenges. This report, Strategies for Collaboration: Opportunities and Challenges to Build the Future We Need, has articulated a broad vision for how libraries and consortia should radically rethink operations long-term. Suggestions are provided for immediate steps to be taken – with existing vendors, with the open source community, and with each other – to move libraries  toward that future. While this report  is aimed primarily at library consortia, the strategies described will also be useful for individual libraries.