Metadata Enrichment Task Force Announces Report and Seeks Comments

The ALCTS Metadata Enrichment Task Force (METF) has announced the availability of the final draft of their report, Improving User Access to Library Catalog and Portal Information, for public review at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/actionplan.html. The document comprises a state of the art review and recommendations regarding section 2.3 of the Library of Congress Bicentennial Action Plan: "Explore ways to enrich metadata records by focusing on providing additional subject access mechanisms (e.g., front-end user thesauri) and increasing granularity of access and display (e.g., by enabling progression through hierarchy and versions and by additional description information including summaries)."

The METF is a task force appointed by the American Library Association's ALCTS Division and is directed by priorities stated in the LC/ALCTS Action Plan. Dr. Marcia Bates, the report's author, is a well-established consultant in the areas of system search strategy, user-centered design of information retrieval systems, and information seeking behavior. A professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, she has more than thirty years of experience in libraries and information science research.

Bates' recommendations include the development of a clustered vocabulary approach to melding natural language terms utilized by users, with the many controlled vocabularies assigned to the works they are searching for. Her approach combines the use of subject specialists to build the vocabulary with input from search terms being used by users. The vocabulary database would then be available to libraries and commercial firms for the price of a share in its maintenance. Such cooperative members would be able to install the vocabulary in their catalogs, portals and websites in a manner suited to their individual needs.

In addition, Dr. Bates proposes a staged, cooperative approach to bibliographic families based on Bradford distribution, to identify the largest and most problematic bibliographic families and to provide relationship information for objects within them. Such relationship information could be shared in much the same way as bibliographic records are. The report further provides an extensive review and bibliography that spotlights issues and research in the field of information seeking behavior.

The Metadata Enrichment Task Force welcomes comments from readers regarding the report and its recommendations. The Task Force is particularly interested in knowing whether the library community has confidence in this approach, whether it would be willing to participate in the construction of the recommended tools, and whether vendors would be interested in using the tools. In addition, any comments on parallel approaches to these issues and how they might interoperate with the report recommendations would be welcome. Please direct such correspondence to: 2_3@worktools.si.umich.edu.