2025-10-22

2025-10-22

Date

Oct 22, 2025

Attendees

  • Paloma Graciani-Picardo (facilitator)

  • Melanie Cofield (note taker)

  • Katie Pierce Meyer

  • Hannah Moutran

  • Josh Conrad

  • Elliot Williams

Recording

  • Zoom recording (link, includes chat)

Agenda

  • Housekeeping (review action items from last meeting, announcements)

  • Updates from the field

  • Future planning

  • Wrap-up, action item review

Discussion topics & notes

Item

Who

Notes

Item

Who

Notes

Housekeeping

 

Action items from last meeting:

Support Katie, Hannah, and Devon (and possibly Josh) in sharing the SABN project - Devon practiced SABN project presentation for DCMI conference in special session last week
Think about co-facilitation of this group going forward and potential changes to frequency or format in 2026 - for discussion today

Announcements:

  • Hannah pleased to report she figured out the Alma batch item update process for the AI-assisted music cataloging project she’s been working on (see notes from last month’s meeting for more details on that project).

Updates from the field

 

17th Semantic Web in Libraries Conference coming up Nov 17-19 - FREE and online

  • challenging to watch live due to time difference in Europe, but recordings should be available after

ExLibris/Alma/Primo updates:

  • LOD features in November release of Alma focused on BIBFRAME records (UTL does not currently have BIBFRAME support enabled)

  • LOD features in November release of Primo VE focused on Next Discovery Experience (NDE) for early adopters - UTL plans to transition to NDE next year.

  • ongoing discussion of potential improvements to Person Pages in Primo on ExLibrs LOD listserv (Stuart Yates)

European BIBFRAME Workshop:

UNAM XXII Conferencia Internacional sobre Bibliotecas Universitarias:

  • Spanish language conference with theme of Interoperability and Linked Data

  • Presenters from places like Cuba, Peru, and Mexico

  • National libraries and vendors engaged in collaborative conversations about supporting interoperability

  • Paloma invited to participate in round table, had a great experience at conference

  • Paloma presented on BIBFRAME profiles and how to ensure interoperability of use, avoid unique institutional customizations that maintain data silos

  • Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Discussion around question raised during updates from field: Is now a point of transition for libraries to choose BIBFRAME use? How do libraries know when it is time to start learning/implementing?

 

  • LC is fully engaged in implementation and migrated to FOLIO recently

  • PCC is fully engaged

  • Vendors are getting involved

  • Hybrid MARC/BF environments are emerging & necessary during gradual transition

  • Are you RDA or are you BF institution/implementer? is an emerging distinction

  • Interoperability is critical

  • New editors & tools designed so that users don’t need to know technical aspects/tags/etc like MARC cataloging requires 

  • Historically late adopter stance at UTL - Melanie and Paloma have been engaged in BF conversations/training/etc for 10+ years, progress is happening in field, but not yet being taken up actively at our respective institutions

  • Value of investing in LD is creating semantic structured data that already has meaning for LLMs/AI to use more effectively

  • Shifting the way we’re thinking about our library/archival data is a big conceptual shift/leap, but necessary for us to get data that works in the evolving systems we want to use 

  • Converting messy data to linked data statements carries a lot of risk (inaccuracies or data loss)

  • Traditional MARC-based cataloging/descriptive practice vs. new descriptive practice augmented by AI/automation is major shift, may take generational turnover in the field, may cause existential crisis among long-time practitioners

  • Katie has spent lots of time doing research & creating authority records recently

    • Difficult to handle ambiguity/maybe

      • No mechanism for qualifying a triple in RDA

      • Wikidata has mechanisms for qualifying statements

    • Taking pains to include original data in notes field, as provenance

    • Josh adding so many people to wikidata has helped immensely 

    • Could there be new properties like “potential DOB” or “probable DOB”? 

  • Look how far we’ve come in this group, which was originally established as a venue for learning/building confidence with linked data

Future planning

 

  • What will we lose without this group?

    • A space for workshopping ideas, sharing knowledge, seeking feedback that doesn’t otherwise exist in our daily work routines

    • A place to process implications fo emergent work (local and in field more broadly)

    • A place to focus on emerging features in tools/systems/platforms we have access to

    • Space for inter-unit and inter-institutional sharing/exploring

  • Identify new co-facilitator

    • discuss at next/last meeting of 2025

  • Leadership, structure, and goals of future meetings?

    • plan 2026 roadmap in next meeting

    • Suggested theme: what does linked data work look like for each of us?

    • More screen-sharing processes, how-to sharing, show & tell beyond the presentation

      • Seeing people’s interfaces & how they are working with their data is so helpful

      • Doesn’t have to be formal

    • Peer learning/sharing

    • Would a more broad DATA/DESCRIPTION focus (not exclusively LD/LOD-specific) serve our community-of-practice needs right now?  (including LD, AI, data processing, etc.)

  • Determine date of last 2025 group meeting

    • December 3, 10-11:30am

Topics for ongoing discussion

 

  • Entity reconciliation for place names and venues

  • Partnering with UTL Research Data Services on Linked Open Data efforts

  • Wikidata work

  • Unique Resource Identifiers for Archival Resources

  • Hanlin’s Wikidata research Project

  • BIBFRAME and Linked Data in Alma/Primo

Wrap-up

 

Action item review

Action items

send out invitation for December 3rd, 10-11:30am meeting - Paloma
review/update group files & platform ownership and permissions ahead of Melanie’s departure - Melanie and Katie