On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, K.G. Schneider wrote:
> Make the system friendlier, spend less money on hand-hewn metadata
> and more on books and services, etc. I have to wonder if a tool such as
> LibraryThing wouldn't support such a library's needs better than any
> traditional ILS.
You do realize that LibraryThing is chock-full of "hand-hewn metadata?"
You think Library of Congress has stopped cataloging? What about the other
large libraries with records that people use to generate their own
"library?" Yes, Amazon is a major source also, I realize that. I use a
lot of their data in my own LibraryThing library. The metadata in Amazon
doesn't just magically appear either, though, except in the case of data
about digital objects that is input by the creator at the time of object
creation. Anything in a physical form must have "hand-hewn" metadata input
by a human, whether that human be employed by Amazon or some other
company.
FWIW, I certainly would agree that cataloging as it exists now is much
more complicated, labor-intensive and expensive that it needs to be. So
greatly simplify it yes, but don't pretend that there's no human source
behind the metadata in services like LibraryThing.
Mary
Received on Mon Jun 19 2006 - 14:06:26 EDT