In this column series, new Director General Wilma van Wezenbeek is getting to know the KB. Behind the scenes, she meets colleagues who do important work that not everyone is aware of. And work that is often done on an impressive scale. Today: metadata.
Our collection contains millions of books, newspapers and magazines, both physical and digital. However, they are of no use if you can't find them, of course.
Behind the scenes, a lot of people are working very hard to make all these works retrievable. They are registering the so-called metadata: details of, for example, the titles, authors, genres and years of publication. Thanks to this data, you are able to find a book in our catalogue, which now contains a wealth of information. And all you have to do is click on Enter. As simple as that.
This information is provided by the Data Collection Department. Here, some 30 colleagues provide metadata for about 50,000 physical books, newspapers and magazines every year. Quite a job for these cataloguers and metadata specialists!
This week, I met Júlia Kemendi, metadata specialist. I asked her why it’s so important to save all this information. "With metadata, we are making our collection not only findable, but also usable," she explains. "Thanks to the details in our catalogue, people and computers inside and outside the KB will know whether they have found the right book. As well as all the information that’s known about it. So even without seeing the work, you will find out a lot about it. We are actually the bridge between the collection and the user."
We work according to international guidelines. "That enables us to easily share our data with other libraries around the world."
"And I don't want to be dramatic," Júlia continues, "but without our work, the physical collection is lost. Because the catalogue also shows where in the KB the book is located. If that information disappears, the book is no longer findable. And then it counts as lost."
Walking around the department, I see many books lying around. There is unfortunately a backlog. This is still owing to the corona period: the staff were not allowed to enter the premises for months and the work literally piled up. Besides that, there is the switch to a new library system, with a new input standard. Or rather: a whole new language.
The Retrotool is a smart solution for catching up on the backlog. We use it to process the so-called retro collection. These are old books which we once purchased or were given, but which have not yet been catalogued and are presumably missing from our collection. A document camera is used to take pictures of the title pages and colophons of books. The details on these are then entered into a digital tool. Artificial Intelligence is used to put the information into the right catalogue fields. And at the press of a button, this tool searches our catalogue to see whether we already have the book or not. If not, we will add it, with the tool creating a basic description that the KB employee can continue working on. Handy!
The catalogue now describes millions of works. Millions!! Thanks to Júlia and her colleagues.