CIP and shared metadata in the digital environment as new forms of cooperation between publishers and libraries

Abstract

The spread of digital resources and the computerisation of cataloguing procedures has led to the appearance in the library world of third parties, such as publishers and providers of electronic resources, who are the first to produce the metadata relating to their publications. For a long time libraries have been paying attention to this information in order to set up their purchasing policies, but recently the advantages of a closer collaboration also in the field of cataloguing have started to become increasingly clear. The exponential increase of digital publications and the speed of changes in the online universe (changes of platforms, obsolescence of URLs, exponential growth of open access content) is making it impossible to take an immediate census of everything that enters a library and the maintenance that metadata relating to digital publications require. For this reason it is proving necessary, and no longer merely desirable, to define new ways of cooperation between publishers and libraries. The relevance of this issue has recently been emphasised by IFLA in the document Common Practices for National Bibliographies in the Digital Age approved in April 2022, in which an entire section is devoted to 'Cooperation with Publishers and Metadata Producers', who are considered a primary source of information for national bibliographies. In particular, the importance of the Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) programmes is emphasised as a fundamental support for both publishers and libraries. Significant examples of such collaboration worldwide are the Library and Archives Canada, which has developed a programme together with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec focusing on collaboration with French-language publishers based in Québec; the Library of Congress and the British Library. Although these programmes are different in that they seek to meet local needs, they are characterised by the close collaboration established between the national bibliographic agencies and the publishers with whom they agree on metadata models on the basis of which the records included in the national bibliographies are constructed. Next to the development of these forms of cooperation, another way to ensure the full re-use of publishing metadata by libraries is to foster the mapping or elaboration of common standards between publishers and libraries, containing all elements they consider essential to pursue their purposes. A significant commitment in this sense was made by the Library of Congress, which immediately after the publication of the ONIX format, adopted in publishing since 2000, started mapping with MARC21. Also significant in this sense was the desire to ensure interoperability between ONIX and RDA, Resource Description and Access, the first international metadata standard.