I'd been waiting tor everyone else to comment so wouldn't duplicate. A few added comments below.
Show Up, Suit Up, Shut Up, and Follow Directions
dan_at_riverofdata.com
Dan Lester, Boise, Idaho, USA
----- Original message ----------------------------------------
>On Mar 15, 2007, at 7:50 PM, Rocki Strader wrote:
>> Speaking from an academic library point of view: The catalog would
>> contain "something in between," i.e., content that the library
>> owns, absolutely; but also Internet resources that have been vetted
>> by subject specialists for their suitability at supporting a given
>> institution's curricula, other programs, and overall mission.
Absolutely right. We vet things we purchase or license (and instead of "that the library owns" above I'd say something like "that the library pays for" or "that the library provides access to", since many things aren't "owned" in the usual sense of the word).
>If we assume the above is somewhat true, then we might ask ourselves
>more specifically about this metadata and/or data. Obviously it will
>include the metadata describing physical/non-digital items.
>Traditional books. Microforms. Sheet music. Etc. Less obviously it
>might include items "born digital" and/or digitized versions of
>items, not just metadata surrogates. For example, the full text of
>the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Images of the Washington
>Monument. Genome #7653. And just as importantly, if not very
>importantly the full text of journal articles.
Yes, all of the above. And OCLC provides some of that now with the cataloging of internet resources that many libraries contribute.
>Just think of the possibilities. Suppose you wanted to create a
>library to support a well-rounded liberal arts education. Some
>advocate all you need to do is read, discuss, and write about the
>Great Books. A superset of the Great Books is represented by the
>content of Project Gutenberg. Step #1 in creating your library might
>be to collect all of Project Gutenberg. Next, the journal literature,
Why "collect"? Don't you mean "provide access to" or "provide records that link to"?
>compared to books, represents a bit more about the here and now.
>Current and new ideas. Open access journals and open access
>repositories for full of such content. Step #2 might be to
>systematically collect content, not just its metadata, from these
>sources as apropos. A traditional library research process includes
>defining your topic and doing introductory reading in an
>encyclopedia. Step #3 might be acquire a copy of Wikipedia. (There is
>probably an electronic dictionary or two one can collect as well.)
>Step #4 is to dump all the content into a pile, index it, and provide
>access to the index.
Again, why "collect" if that means copying to your own servers. You lose the updating among other things. And you'd also be installing a lot of sofrware that runs these specialilzed tools. Now these comments do assume that the content in question is being archived somewhere safe, just as some of us participate in LOCKSS to archive ejournals.
>All of our discussions to date has focused almost exclusively on Step
>#4 without much thought regarding the content of this "thing". In the
>current environment it does not make sense for the "thing" to only
>describe items owned or licensed by a library. At the same time it is
>unrealistic to introduce the content of the entire world into this
>"thing". Such a process would not save the time of the reader nor put
>the content into the reader's context.
Absolutely right. And it is a "value added" service. If we, or someone doesn't provide the added value, people might as well just answer all their questions from googling the net.
>To what degree is the content of this "thing" just metadata, and to
>what degree does it contain (not just point to) digital versions of
>content like the full text of books, journals, encyclopedias,
>dictionaries, specifications, standards, manuals, music, images,
>sounds, movies, PowerPoint presentations... Just think of the
>possibilities.
As noted, I don't think we should "collect" (copy, store) major resources like wikipedia. Should we archive, or make sure others archive, various electronic versions of other things? Of course. Whether we use a CMS like CONTENTdm, or archive materials in other ways, we should do it. But just like the "cataloging" has to be selective, the archiving has to be selective too.
dan
Received on Fri Mar 16 2007 - 13:56:18 EDT