Negin Shokrzadeh Hashtroudi, Mohsen Haji Zeinolabedini

Feasibility of implementing PRESSoo model in organizing Persian serials

Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the degree of compatibility of Persian serials with the PRESSoo model. Methods: This paper describes a survey study conducted on a population consisting of 90 Library and Information Science (LIS) serials from the National Library of Iran. Firstly, a mapping table was produced consisting of ISSN data elements and PRESSoo classes, as published in the last PRESSoo report. Secondly, this mapping table was adapted to fit UNIMARC fields, and used to determine to what extent Persian LIS serials are compatible with the PRESSoo model. In order to be sure about the accuracy of the checklist, reference was made to ISSN manual 2015 in some cases. Results: results of this study showed that bibliographic records for Persian LIS serials are compatible with 5 classes and 18 properties of PRESSoo. The reason for this low compatibility is due to library software problems, leading to inattention to some key UNIMARC fields. Some important classes are absent in the studied records. In order to have adequate catalogs, some important classes such as end of publication, storage units for cumulative works, supplementary works, and their properties should be added to Persian serial catalogs. Value: PRESSoo is a new conceptual model for describing important elements of serials and continuing resources. In 2017, this model was designated as an IFLA standard. However, this model has not been used in Iran. This study has analysed the feasibility of implementing the PRESSoo model for organizing Persian serials.

Background In order to overcome the problems of library catalogs, IFLA and other international

organizations developed new models. One of the most important of these models is FRBR, which was created in 1998.

FRBR obeys entity-relationship formalism. Oliver (2017) notes that the "decision to use entity-relationship modelling was also an important step in changing the library’s perspective of bibliographic information, from strings of information embedded in paragraphs to data that can be handled efficiently in digital environments. Entity relationship modelling has to be understood outside the traditional library record structure. Entities not held together by being in the same “record”. Libraries working in a MARC environment are accustomed to pieces of information being held together within the shell of a bibliographic or authority record. There is no record in the entity -relationship model. The entities are held together in a meaningful way solely through the relationships".

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Problem statement FRBR is used for modelling different resources, but serials are always absent from

these studies, regarded as being too problematic. One reason why serials are not usually seen as convenient for implementing FRBR is that they are aggregate works. Each serial is composed of smaller independent works that are intellectual works in their own right. This leads to a modeling challenge when applying the FRBR conceptual model. (Ballegooie and Borie 2014). The FRBR model appears not to be flexible enough to accommodate serial relationships and, above all, its static nature can lead to inconsistent assertions when applied to serials (Le Boeuf 2014).

Definition of works and their manifestation in serials, changes in title, publisher, frequency of serial, among other issues, require more attributes and relationships. As a result, FRBR is not well suited to the dynamic nature of serials.

In Iran, catalogs are produced according to Anglo-American cataloging rules. Because of such rules and the flat environment of MARC, the position of each work and its relation to similar works in the bibliographic universe is not explicitly stated, and existing catalogs do not provide users with the links between works.

There are many additional problems with serials. Few libraries completely catalog their periodicals. The lack of consistency as regards receiving periodicals and their absence from libraries is one of the main reasons for neglecting their importance and not organizing them in a coherent and complete way.

However, the benefits of cataloging such resources should not be ignored. One such benefit is that it enables more access points to a publication, while also facilitating information searches in publications.

PRESSoo seeks to introduce a new concept of bibliographic information applicable to continuing resources. This model is based on the high-level concepts of FRBR and attempts to provide further details and attributes for such resources. Accordingly, PRESSoo is used as a valid ontology to express the semantics and relations of continuing resources. However, these benefits require conducting research in order to implement this model in serials and, identify appropriate models for these resources.

Functional requirements for object-oriented bibliographic records The problems of implementing FRBR in serials were stated during a harmonization

meeting held between representatives of ISBD, RDA and ISSN in 2011 (Le Boeuf 2014).

These problems were discussed by different FRBR experts (Françoise Leresche and Patrick Le Boeuf from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Philippe Le Pape from ABES, and Gordon Dunsire (IFLA consultant). During a technical meeting in Paris, in April 2012, held in conjunction with the General Assembly of the ISSN Network. Patrick Le Boeuf’s presentation of FRBRoo (FRBR model based on object-

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oriented modelling) showed that this model could be a possible solution (Bequet, Howlett and Willer 2015).

In order to understand FRBRoo, one should be familiar with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model. CIDIC CRM is an ontology to facilitate the interchange of cultural heritage, developed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). Work on CIDOC CRM started in 1996 with the primary role of enabling information exchange and integration between heterogeneous sources of cultural heritage information. It aims at providing the semantic definitions and clarifications needed to transform disparate entities (CIDOC CRM final report 2017).

Because the contexts in which FRBR and CIDOC CRM were designed could not have been more different, libraries and museums fall under the common umbrella of “cultural heritage institutions". By the end of the 1990s, experts started to talk about “ALM convergence”. Since archives, libraries and museums are cultural heritage institutions, they work together. Thus, in 2003, a “harmonization” between FRBR and CIDOC CRM was formed. The outcome of this endeavor was published in 2009 as version 1.0 of FRBRoo (Le Boeuf 2012).

FRBRoo is a reformulation of FRBR and CIDOC CRM. FRBRoo appeared to provide useful classes and properties for modeling serials. This model is an event-based and object-oriented model, it means that it is able to better express serials, and it offer classes and properties for modeling seriality. However, FRBRoo deals with serials at very general levels and it was not suitable for serials (PRESSoo final report 2017).

At the end of 2012, the ISSN International Center and Bibliothèque Nationale de France agreed to establish a working group in order to develop an extension of FRBRoo that would be devoted to serials and continuing resources. In January 2013, the working group started to draft PRESSoo, whose Version 1.0, endorsed by the FRBR Review Group, was released in June 2014.

PRESSoo PRESSoo is an extension of the FRBRoo and CIDOC CRM models. This model is

a formal ontology intended to capture and represent the underlying semantics of bibliographic information relating to continuing resources, and more specifically to serials. Cataloguing of continuing resources is always a major difficulty in libraries due to the modelling challenges of these resources. Continuing resources may undergo many changes through time. Their bibliographic information, such as publisher, country of publication and publication frequency, may change. These problems, make it harder to catalog a serial than a monograph. In the final PRESSoo report (2017) it was stated that: "The main difference between cataloguing a monograph and cataloguing a serial could be expressed as follows: when you catalogue a monograph, you make statements about the past; when you catalogue a serial, you both make

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statements about the past and assumptions about the future".

Purposes of PRESSoo

To express the common, implicit conceptualization that underlies bibliographic description of continuing resources;

To formalize bibliographic information as economically and appropriately as possible as a set of triples;

To provide a complete set of classes and properties that may be used in conjunction with other bibliographic ontologies to describe continuing resources;

To provide all solutions to precisely express any kind of bibliographic information that is considered worthy of publication.

Implementers of PRESSoo are able to choose object-centric or event-centric models, demonstrating the model’s flexibility. PRESSOO may be used, in conjunction with CIDOC-CRM and FRBROO, as the main ontology to publish a linked dataset. (PRESSoo final report 2017).

Le Boeuf (2015) outlined differences between object-oriented models and former conceptual models. These differences are: Object-oriented models do not mention any user task. This is the first difference

between object-oriented approaches with FRBR, FRAD AND FARSAD; In object-oriented models, the term 'class' is used to refer to the basic elements in

the bibliographic universe. The things that belong to a given class are called instances of that class;

Classes are declared to be subclasses of FRBRoo and CIDOC CRM. Any instance of a class that is declared to be a subclass of another class is automatically also an instance of that other class. This notion is called inheritance;

There are simply no attributes at all. Many notions that were merely declared as entity attributes in FRBR/FRAD/FRSAD are now modelled as classes in their own right, since it emerged that they were more complex than initially assumed. The most striking example is that of Date – an attribute that is declared for several entities in FRBR/FRAD/FRSAD. The initial assumption was that a date is a mere literal term associated with, say, a work or a manifestation;

In object-oriented models, relationships are called properties.

Classes and properties of PRESSoo PRESSoo classes are identified by a letter Z, a number and a noun phrase. PRESSoo

has 46 properties, which are held between a domain and a range. A domain declares the class for which the property is defined, and a range defines the class which the property indicates (Riva, Doerr and Zumer 2008). Classes borrowed from CIDOC CRM are identified by a letter E, a number and a noun phrase. In addition, classes borrowed from

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FRBRoo are identified by a letter F, a number and a noun phrase. Table 1 shows classes of PRESSoo and their super classes.

Table 1: PRESSoo classes

PRESSoo classes Subclasses of Definition

Z1 Serial Transformation

F27 Work Conception

Instances of continuation, replacement, split and merger.

Z2 Absorption F27 Work Conception

Activities absorbed by preexisting instances of F18 Serial Work

Z3 Separation F27 Work Conception

Activities that come into being as the ‘offspring’ of pre-existing instances of F18 Serial Work that continue to be

published after the separation has occurred. Z4 Temporary Substitution

F30 Publication Event

Publication of instances of F18 Serial Work as a temporary replacement for another instance of F18 Serial

Work Z5 Issuing Rule

Change E7 Activity Change arising from Issuing Rule

Z6 Starting of Publication

F30 Publication Event

Publication of the first issue of a given continuing resource.

Z7 Ending of Publication

F30 Publication Event

Publication of the latest known issue of a given continuing resource.

Z8 Metadata Management

E7 Activity Activities of ISSN centers, involving responsibility for the metadata relating to a continuing resource

Z9 Storage Unit F4 Manifestation

Singleton

unique combinations of instances of E18 Physical Thing that are bound together

Z10Sequencing Pattern

E55 Type Anticipated formats to be used in designating volumes/issues, etc. and/or dates for the individual units of

the serial (e.g. Volume ..., number ...) Z11 URL E51 Contact

Point Identification of servers from which digital files can be

obtained online Z12 Issuing Rule E29 Design or

Procedure Specification of the issuing policy to be followed at a

given point in time for instances of F18 Serial Work. Z13 Monograph F19

Publication Work Instances planned to result in an instance of F24

Publication Expression which should either be completed as a single part or completed within a finite (and

predetermined) number of parts, as opposed to instances of F18 Serial Work.

Z14 Storage Unit Creation

F28 Expression

Creation

Activities through which instances of Z9 Storage Unit are produced.

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Continuing resources also display complex relationships: they may originate from continuations, splits or mergers with other continuing resources; they may be (local, linguistic, special) editions of other publications – and these relationships themselves may evolve in the lifetime of the resources.

PRESSoo takes the notion of E29 Design or Procedure, which in FRBRoo provides complete coverage of issuing policies for continuing resources in all their aspects, specializing it into the Z12 Issuing Rule class, which covers only one of all the aspects of the overall policy of a continuing resource. In FRBRoo all instances of serial changes are modelled as part of just one instance of E29 Design or Procedure; in PRESSoo, the same changes are modelled through different instances of the Z12 Issuing Rule. This makes it easier to account for the fact that not all aspects of a serial may change at the same time; modelling the overall issuing policy as a block requires duplicating all the characteristics that remain unchanged every time a single characteristic (e.g. frequency) is modified. Class Z5 Issuing Rule Change is used to specify modifications made by the publisher (Le Boeuf 2014).

Methodology This paper describes a survey study. To gather the required data, firstly, a mapping

table was produced consisting of ISSN data elements and PRESSoo classes, as published in the last PRESSoo report. Secondly, this mapping table was adapted to UNIMARC fields identified by the ISSN Manual before was then being used to determine the degree of compatibility between Persian LIS serials and the PRESSoo model.

Population The population of this study consists of 90 Library and Information Science serials

from the National Library of Iran which are cataloged in RASA. This software is one of the most important library software packages in IRAN, produced by Pars Azarakhsh. RASA is designed especially for the National Library of Iran and, based on IRANMARC, which is in turn based on UNIMARC.

The pie chart below shows the different types of serials studied in this research.

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Chart 1: Frequently occurring change in Persian serials

Among the records studied, there were 41 newsletters, 40 scientific journals, 4

internal newsletters of organizations, 3 newspapers and 2 special issues. To identify the appropriate model for Persian serials, events occurring in the records

were determined by checklist, including: title changes, changes of publisher, change of publication frequency. The table below shows changes that occurred in the records studied.

Chart 2: Frequency of changes that occurred in records studied

Chart 2 shows that the main change occurring in serials is title changes. The main

title changes are due to continuation, replacement and splits. The frequency of title changes is shown in table 2.

Results The necessary information was gathered from studying the checklist based on

PRESSoo classes and IRANMARC fields. The results are shown in the table below.

scientific Journals

44%

newsletters46%

special issue2%

newspapers3%

internal newletters of organizations

5%

TYPE OF RESOURCES

58

30

1 10

20

40

60

80

no changes title changes publisher's namechanges

frequency changes

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Table 2: PRESSoo classes and their compatibility with the records studied

Classes Frequency of records

Z1 serial transformation Continuation 12 Replacement 17

Split 1 Merger -

Z2 Absorption - - Z3 Separation - -

Z4 Temporary Substitution - -

Z5 Issuing Rule Change - 32 Z6 Starting of Publication - 90 Z7 Ending of Publication - -

Z8 Metadata Management - - Z9 Storage Unit - -

Z10 Sequencing Pattern - - Z11 URL - 16

Z12 Issuing Rule - 90 Z13 Monograph - -

Z14 Storage Unit Creation - -

Chart 3: Compatibility between PRESSoo classes and serial records

As shown in table 2, 12 continuations, 17 replacements and 1 split were recognized

in the studied. The data gathered shows that an appropriate model must pay attention to the kind of changes that can occur in serials and establish a corresponding relationship between two such serial works. Any change that occurred in the serial is modelled through the Z5 Issuing Rule Change class. Another important notion of PRESSoo is its properties. The compatibility between serial records PRESSoo properties are very important since the relationship between two instances of classes is shown by a property.

30

0 0 0

32

90

0 0 0 016

90

0 00

50

100

Z1 Z2 Z3 Z4 Z5 Z6 Z7 Z8 Z9 Z10 Z11 Z12 Z13 Z14

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Table 3: PRESSoo properties already used in records studied

Property Domain of

property Range of

property Number of

compatible records Y1 provided a continuation to (was

continued through) Z1 serial

transformation F18 serial work

6

Y2 initiated as continuation (was initiated as continuation through)

Z1 serial transformation

F18 serial work

4

Y3 provided a replacement to (was replaced through)

Z1 serial transformation

F18 serial work

10

Y4 initiated as replacement (was initiated as a replacement through)

Z1 serial transformation

F18 serial work

7

Y6 initiated (resulting from a split) Z1 serial transformation

F18 serial work

1

Y15 replaced (was replaced through)

Issuing Rule Change

Z12 Issuing Rule

17

Y16 replaced with (was introduced through)

Issuing Rule Change

Z12 Issuing Rule

12

Y17 launched (was launched through)

Starting of publication

F18 Serial Work

90

Y21 foresees use of language (is language foreseen in)

Z12 Issuing Rule

E56 Language

90

Y23 foresees dimension (is dimension foreseen in)

Z12 Issuing Rule

E54 Dimension

10

Y24 foresees use of title (is title foreseen in)

Z12 Issuing Rule

E35 title 90

Y28 foresees URL (is URL foreseen in

Z12 Issuing Rule

Z11 URL 16

Y29 evolved into (continues) F18 serial work F18 Serial Work

Y31 was superseded by (superseded)

F18 serial work F18 Serial Work

10

Y32 was split into (resulted from splitting)

F18 serial work F18 Serial Work

1

Y37 has former or current issung rule (is former or current issuing rule

of)

F18 Serial Work

Z12 Issuing Rule

32

Y38 has current issuing rule (is current issuing rule of)

F18 Serial Work

Z12 Issuing Rule

90

Y44 foresees topic (is topic foreseen in)

Z12 Issuing Rule

E1 CRM entitie

90

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Chart 4: Compatibility between PRESSoo properties and serial records

All the properties used in PRESSoo have a domain and a range. As shown in table

3, 15 properties of the PRESSoo model are used in the records studied. The highest compatibility between properties and serial records are found in the title, publication date and topic fields of the IRANMARC records used in RASA. In the records studied just 30 changes in Issuing Rules were identified, namely: 28 title changes, 1 publisher's name change and 1 frequency change. The Z11 URL class does not have any property but, the Z12 Issuing Rule has a property for associating a URL to a continuing resource, specifically Y28 foresees URL (is URL foreseen in). As table 3 shows, the domain or range of some properties are referred to FRBRoo or CIDOC CRM classes since PRESSoo is an extension of FRBRoo and CIDOC CRM models. Therefore, attention should be paid to super classes of PRESSoo classes so that they can be used in a new model.

Conclusion PRESSoo is a new model for describing the semantics underlying serials and

continuing resources. Work on PRESSoo started in 2013, and the first version of this model was published in 2014. In 2017, PRESSoo was designated as an IFLA standard.

In order to test the PRESSoo model, ISSN Centre with the support of UNESCO, developed ROAD, the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources. This service, launched in December 2013, provides free access to a subset of the ISSN Register, currently gathering around 15,000 bibliographic records.

As Oury (2017) states, PRESSoo may appear to be a complex ontology. On one hand, it inherits its complexity from the CIDOC-CRM, which deals with a huge domain. This complexity also arises from the ambitious scope of FRBRoo; offering a model able to describe any situation occurring in the bibliographic domain, unlike FRBRER which cannot always cover all cases. However, such complexity should be viewed as a strength; the richness of this model offers many usage opportunities.

The records of Persian serials in the field of LIS are compatible with 5 classes and 18 properties of the PRESSoo model. The reasons for this low level of compatibility

6 6 10 7 115 17

90

70

10

90

16 13 101

32

90

68

0

20

40

60

80

100

Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y6 Y15 Y16 Y17 Y21 Y23 Y24 Y28 Y29 Y31 Y32 Y37 Y38 Y44

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are: library software problems and inattention to some important UNIMARC fields. Some important classes are absent in the records studied. For example, there was no end of publication field in the records. Z7 ending of publication is an important class for identifying ceased serials. In order to have adequate catalogs. Some important classes like end of publication, storage units for cumulative works, supplement works, and their properties should be added to the Persian serial catalogs.

Iranian librarians need to become more familiar with these models to identify an adequate model for organizing serials and develop current standards. In the MARC environment, catalogers usually have no alternative for describing changes in serial resources. A linked data environment may offer greater flexibility in representing changing information. By using conceptual models, users can much more quickly receive the best responses, and the combination of library catalogs with ontologies can become a possibility.

Suggestions As stated in this research, PRESSoo is an extension of the FRBRoo model. In order

to identify the appropriate model, it is important to pay attention to FRBRoo and CIDIC CRM classes. It is suggested that further studies be conducted to determine the relationship between these three models.

This study has identified the feasibility of using the PRESSoo model in Persian LIS serials with RASA software. It suggests that further studies are undertaken to examine PRESSoo in other Iranian Library software packages to identify the best context and software for using the PRESSoo model.

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