Towards Standardizing the Library Circulation Metadata

The main purpose of the study is to provide metadata vocabulary (MV) for easy sharing, migration, and analysis of library circulation transaction (LCT) data across the libraries and library management software (LMS) to facilitate evidence-based decision-making and improved library user services. In the context of a library, the practice of using standard MV (e.g., MARC21) for describing bibliographic data is very prominent. We find various initiatives, like BIBFRAME by the Library of Congress which is grounded in linked data techniques for the future of bibliographic data on the Web and broadly in the network world. However, when it comes to managing other kinds of data, e.g., circulation and acquisition transaction data, we do not find any single vocabulary or initiative to refer to. We find the usage of different metadata elements for describing and capturing similar data across the various LMS tools. This leads to several issues and their consequences as are documented in this paper. These issues necessities the development of a metadata vocabulary for circulation transaction data (CTD) which can be referred to and used universally across the LMS. The study is a step towards the development of a reference MV for effective and efficient management of CTD in the library field.