From MARC to BIBFRAME 2.0: Crosswalks
Abstract
One of the big challenges facing academic libraries today is to increase the relevance of the libraries to their user communities. If the libraries can increase the visibility of their resources on the open web, it will increase the chances of the libraries to reach to their user communities via the user's first search experience. BIBFRAME and library Linked Data will enable libraries to publish their resources in a way that the Web understands, consume Linked Data to enrich their resources relevant to the libraries' user communities, and visualize networks across collections. However, one of the important steps for transitioning to BIBFRAME and library Linked Data involves crosswalks, mapping MARC fields and subfields across data models and performing necessary data reformatting to be in compliance with the specifications of the new model, which is currently BIBFRAME 2.0. This article looks into how the Library of Congress has mapped library bibliographic data from the MARC format to the BIBFRAME 2.0 model and vocabulary published and updated since April 2016, available from http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/docs/index.html based on the recently released conversion specifications and converter, developed by the Library of Congress with input from many community members. The BIBFRAME 2.0 standard and conversion tools will enable libraries to transform bibliographic data from MARC into BIBFRAME 2.0, which introduces a Linked Data model as the improved method of bibliographic control for the future, and make bibliographic information more useful within and beyond library communities.