Public libraries in Switzerland: RDA and the FRBRization watershed
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-08-2017-0074 |
| Published date | 14 January 2019 |
| Pages | 98-112 |
| Date | 14 January 2019 |
| Author | Elisa Banfi,Arnaud Gaudinat |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,HR in libraries,Library strategy,Library promotion |
Public libraries in
Switzerland: RDA and the
FRBRization watershed
Elisa Banfi
Faculté des sciences de la société, Universite de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland, and
Arnaud Gaudinat
HES-SO/HEG Geneva, Information Sciences, Geneva, Switzerland
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Swiss public libraries are experiencing a
normative revolution connected to new cataloging standards, such as RDA and the FRBRization of catalogs.
Design/methodology/approach –Thanks to semi-structured interviews, the paper analyzes the current
positioning of Swiss public libraries on the “bibliographic transition”issue by using a case study of the
network of municipal libraries in Geneva.
Findings –In Switzerland, the federal and multi-linguistic structure of the library networks increases the
organizational obstacles to the adoption of new cataloging principles and formats. At the local level, the Swiss
municipal libraries have to cope with this complexity to transform their structures and continue to offer
competitive and effective services to their users.
Practical implications –The paper proposes six scenarios of technology watershed for the analyzed case
study and their consequences for cataloging standards and rules.
Social implications –The paper shows how the adoption of technological and conceptual innovations has to be
done in the face of real organizational and administrative constraints, especially in the case of public lending libraries.
Originality/value –The paper analyzes at the empirical and theoretical levels how, especially in
Switzerland, the variety of governance levels and linguistic areas have made strategizing more complex for
public lending libraries.
Keywords Switzerland, Public libraries, FRBR
Paper type Case study
Introduction
During the last two decades, several factors –mainly due to the growing importance of the
digitalization of documents and the advent of search engines such as Google –have changed
the nature of library cataloging (Bermès, 2013; Chambers, 2013; Christensen, 2013).
Concerning public lending libraries, these transformations have revolutionized two main
areas: the management of bibliographic records and the rules and formats used.
Traditionally, records were produced or controlled by librarians and exploited by users
and professionals within libraries. Nowadays, the majority of bibliographic records and
metadata are produced by external entities and subsequently imported into library catalogs.
Librarians, therefore, only sporadically continue producing bibliographic data by ensuring
that their bibliographic records are exportable to the web. They remain, however,
intermediaries among the metadata, the physical location of documents and readers.
According to some researchers, we are witnessing a paradigm shift from “[…] document-
centric data to data-centric metadata”(Alemu et al., 2012). This shift is more relevant for
public libraries, for which non-digital documents still play a crucial role for their services.
Unlike scientific and heritage libraries, public lending libraries have a mission to ensure the
Library Management
Vol. 40 No. 1/2, 2019
pp. 98-112
Emerald Publishing Limited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/LM-08-2017-0074
Received 7 August 2017
Revised 26 February 2018
Accepted 27 February 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
© Elisa Banfi and Arnaud Gaudinat. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and
non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full
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