Columbia

Over the years, the museum and library communities have developed separate descriptive cataloging practices even though many museums hold library objects and many library collections contain museum objects. Libraries have frequently used their ILS system and the MARC 21/AACR2 cataloging tradition to describe these art objects along with the traditional library materials. Now the library community is moving beyond the MARC record into the realm of linked open data. The Library of Congress began to develop the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) in 2012 and a first version of the BIBFRAME model and vocabulary was made available for testing. Much of the testing to date, both planned and already under way, has focused on traditional library formats, even though the paper (released in November 2012) by the Library of Bibliographic Framework as a Web of Data Congress stated that: "The goal of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative is to develop a model to which various content models can be mapped. This recognizes that different communities may have different views of their resources and thus different needs for resource descriptions. This is especially pronounced as one leaves the book/text media and considers images (still and moving), cartographic resources, archival collections, and ultimately cultural artifacts and museum collections. Many content models define hierarchical relationships that need to be restated in RDF graph terms and then simplified to the BIBFRAME model."  The Columbia BIBFRAME test is comprised of staff from Columbia University Libraries and utilizes works from Columbia University's Art Properties collection at the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, and will therefore focus testing on the BIBFRAME schema's suitability for the description of art objects.