Description
The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) program for Entity Management, or EMCO, will build on current PCC programs for authority control to build an international cooperative program for managing linked data entities from any source PCC member institutions choose to use in their descriptive metadata practices. Participants will contribute and manage linked data entities using practices set by communities with EMCO membership. The PCC Identity Management Advisory Committee (IMAC) is building the infrastructure to launch an Early Adopter Phase. During the Early Adopter Phase, IMAC will limit EMCO’s scope to entities for persons and corporate bodies.
Background
The PCC has experimented with identity management for the better part of the last decade. In strategic plans dating back to 2015, the PCC identified the need to "Provide leadership for the shift in authority control from an approach primarily based on creating text strings to one focused on managing identities and entities". The PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO was charged to investigate issues surrounding a shift from text string-based authority control to identifier-based entity management. In addition to papers and presentations, the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO generated a trio of pilot programs to experiment with identity management in alternative registries: the PCC ISNI Pilot, PCC URIs in MARC Pilot (in collaboration with the PCC Task Group on URIs in MARC), and the PCC Wikidata Pilot.
Despite the formal conclusion of these pilots, both PCC and non-PCC members alike continue to work in alternative registries using PCC best practices documents to guide their work. Meanwhile, PCC members continue to pursue linked data efforts through partnerships with ISNI and Share-VDE, or PCC-led ventures, such as the PCC Sinopia Cataloging Affinity Group and the BIBFRAME Interoperability Group, or through participation in LD4. While most libraries are now and will be working for some time in MARC.
In 2022, the PCC Policy Committee charged a new Identity Management Advisory Committee (IMAC) to chart possible courses for integrating identity management work into existing PCC programs. Action items listed in the PCC Strategic Directions, January 2023-December 2027 reflect the maturation of the PCC’s stance toward linked data and entity management adoption, as well as a desire to "engage with broader communities of metadata stakeholders" that are aligned with the PCC's goals (PCC Strategic Directions 2023-2027 page 2).
In late 2023, IMAC began work to address Action 2.2.3 of the PCC Strategic Directions 2023-2027, "Create and maintain mappings between different metadata schema and ontologies in use by PCC members." IMAC presented some initial thoughts about an Entity Management Cooperative program at the PCC Virtual Participant's Meeting on February 15, 2024 (recording available), and collected feedback on tentative plans for launching an entity management program. IMAC assembled documentation and presented a framework for EMCO. At its April 11, 2024 meeting, the PCC Policy Committee voted unanimously to endorse the EMCO framework and approved the posting of these documents on the PCC wiki.
