Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> If we are to deal with the
> world we need to talk to the rest of the world. Is Amazon's metadata
> less worth to us because it's not in MARC nor created with our special
> bibliographic rules? If you answer 'yes', well then that's our problem
> right there, and may well be the end of the library world as we know
> it.
>
Actually, catalogers (and I know I'm stereotyping here) don't really
care about the data format, so it's not the MARC-ness or non-MARC-ness
that matters to them. Catalogers care about how decisions are made when
creating metadata, and that the decisions be consistent across items and
between systems. This is not a bad thing, in itself. Unfortunately, they
also think that the library cataloging rules are the only suitable ones
for creating metadata. I'm sure that we can all find fault with Amazon
or Google in their metadata creation, and in that sense the catalogers
are right, some of their metadata is really sloppy. What is problematic
about the library cataloging viewpoint is that it is based on some
principles that do not seem to be derived from any study of user
behavior -- there's absolutely no feedback loop from the user to the
library cataloging rules. So we have this gap between the "very good"
metadata that libraries have and the fact that users are flocking to
non-library systems. There isn't much glory in being right if no one
comes to use our systems.
kc
--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Wed Jan 17 2007 - 19:59:01 EST