International recommendations – 2010 – New factors
New Factors
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Web publishing, new formats and media have changed the scope of the ‘national published output’ by:
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Lowering the barriers to publication
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Offering even individual publishers a global reach
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Raising user expectations on instant access to content rather than just a description of it.
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Traditional cataloguing practices, predicated on book-in-hand analysis of resources by professional staff, are not scalable to the new era of Web and electronic publishing.
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The proliferation of digital media and formats raise new challenges for the organisation and presentation of information and provision of access
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National bibliographic agencies must target increasingly limited resources as efficiently as possible to achieve comprehensive coverage while satisfying existing user needs
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Electronic resources pose new challenges for resource description and access since they may:
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Be related to existing printed resources, but differ in scope or content
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Be available in multiple formats
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Contain multiple components
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Be constantly updated.
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However, since IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) is derived from a detailed analysis of resource discovery user tasks it has identified the basic metadata structures required to support resource discovery and could be used to address this growing requirement.
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The confusing multiplicity of resources to be conveyed to users in a meaningful way creates new challenges for those developing online bibliographic services or supporting resource discovery using national bibliographic records.