2023-11-30 Agenda and Meeting notes

Charlotte Whitt Jennifer Eustis 

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Should the MM SIG take over Entity Management work (or at least be the lead), should it be a new SIG, under another group, etc.?

Historical Documents:

• Entity Management Working Group Use Case Spreadsheet:
• Entity Management Working Group Environmental Scan:
• Entity Management Vision Statement: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/x/cRxH 

The EMWG had 2 cycles back in 2020 and then in 2022. With Jason Kovari as the leader, the working group reported to the Metadata Management SIG. The first round was concerned on creating Jira features for entity management in FOLIO. The second round was creating an environmental scan to see what solutions were already present and gathering use cases. This work has been presented at the MM SIG. The EMWG was set on pause and then MM SIG was asked to take it over.

When is a SIG or working group appropriate? MM SIG has a very broad scope of responsibilities. If there is ongoing work, a successful SIG needs a convener, volunteers, and a relationship with a product owner. What constitutes a successful SIG or working group was developed in the Product Council subgroup working on SIGs. See details on this wiki paged called Special Interest Groups. Is now the right time for entity management to be a SIG? 

It's important to remember that this work is being developed as part of a contract of the Library of Congress with EBSCO.

Laura Daniels feels strongly that entity management must stay with metadata management. A separate SIG for entity management would have the same members and this work is critical to metadata. With that in mind, MM SIG needs to have capacity to do this work. How do we strengthen the existing MM SIG? What do we need to make this happen for MM?

Felix Hemme agrees with Laura. The use cases are all about cataloging. Could this be the case because catalogers did the use cases? The way is MM is structured includes a number of Apps. Should we restructure the MM SIG completely? For example, split out quickMarc and maybe Data Import.

Tod Olson explained that it might be useful to have a conversation with Gloria to explore avenues for community input. On the one hand, this is work being done on contract and has a timeline. On the other, maybe there are things that can be done to facilitate the desired use cases or doesn't close off these use cases from development.

Does anyone talk to Doug or Gloria? Charlotte Whitt has. IndexData is working with Spokane Library which is interested in entity management.

Jason Kovari: Doug and Gloria were very active in the last round of EMWG. The gap in reporting could be because the EMWG has ended. How much feedback from the community can be taken into account in relation to the contract work being done?

Kristin Martin: There is the work going on. We don't know if the community can engage in that work. If theoretically we have people who want to develop an app for entity management. Would that be a good thing? Laura says no. This work belongs in MM and how can we provide MM with the capacity to do this work. What should we do as a community to engage in a respectful way?

Ian Walls: LC is making this happen and there's a contract involved. The community does have a say on what entity management needs to do to be a part of FOLIO. There is a community standard and it is LC's best interest to make sure the work falls within the community standard.

Nancy Lorimer: LC does have a contract. Part of the contract is that to engage with the community. Theoretically LC doesn't want to be on its own. Maybe we should talk to folks at LC to see how the community can help. If entity management was separate, there would be an imbalance. We need to look a MM SIG.

Owen Stephens: Agrees with Nancy and Felix in regards what MM SIG is responsible for. The entity management piece shouldn't be addressed separately. With the serials module in development, this work is being sponsored by 2 groups. This work has taken place outside the community with little engagement. There are less unknowns with serials work unlike entity management. It might be difficult to find the answer to Ian's question because with entity management, unlike serials, there is a lot of new ground to break.

Jason Kovari: There was good intent from Gloria and Doug about community engagement. Entity management includes linked data. There are 3 things at stake: functionality in FOLIO, what makes sense for FOLIO, does it make sense to incorporate data from other data stores. It's really about the 3rd area of what makes sense in the broader area. Are we caching or storing data in FOLIO and how? Clarification: What is entity management and what is linked data? How are they related and different? Entity management is a set of activities for the management of entities. How do we make sure the vocabularies or entities are matching to records, being surfacing to users, etc. Linked data is a technology solution. Making sure our data is up to date and controlled.

Andreas Mace: Hopefully LC and EBSCO's work aligns with what is happening internationally with linked data. We need to make sure their work aligns with what is happening.

We agree that we make sure to engage with the work going on at LC and be involved as much as we can. What are the next steps?

Tiziana Possemato: A possible approach is to start with the use case document and environmental scan. We can send to the providers these use cases document to check what current entity editor can do and what is being developed or not. We can have mapping between our approach and other communities.

Felix Hemme: It would be good to know the progress of the current work.

Jason Kovari: We've been focusing on entity management in this discussion and this work talks about linked data. The work for LC is on making sure FOLIO works according to their needs. Entity management is a particular work area. A linked data working group could focus on how FOLIO engages with other systems. Entity management came up with the advent of authority control. 

Laura Daniels: Agrees with Felix that MM needs to be restructured. How can PC help with that discussion?

Nancy Lorimer: Do we need to refocus this group to linked data and on functionality and technology? We don't hear about what EBSCO is doing and how others will be able to do this too. There may not be an answer now. The relationship with the community is vague. We need to know more specifics and a linked data group can maybe take care of that.

Kristin Martin: In thinking about next steps, there is a MM SIG meeting today. It would be good to know what the MM SIG thinks about these things. Then we can look at different pathways. Whether there is a SIG or working group, you need volunteers that step up to chair the group. There have been some new ideas that need to be discussed. One thing to avoid is to have a group that meets that is disconnected from what is going on. The entity management group came up with deliverables.

Several comments were made about creating a linked data working group. Perhaps it is time to do that now.

There were calls that entity management would stay with MM SIG and that MM SIG could be restructured to accommodate this.

Next steps:

• PC MM SIG Liaisons will report back to MM SIG
• How do we restructure MM SIG?
• How do we get back into the conversation with Gloria and Doug? Charlotte will reach out.

ACTIONS:

• Charlotte Whitt will reach out to Gloria and Doug.
  
• Charlotte Whitt and Jennifer Eustis will bring this discussion to MM SIG and get feedback.
• Product Council will review feedback from MM SIG.

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