> Reliability in known-item se arching and FRBR collocation, OTOH,
cannot
> be had without a good code of rules along time-proven ideas. It is
> only discovery searching that can profit from extra verbiage. But what
Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> is the relative importance of discovery searching vs. the other
functions?
> Discussions here seem to indicate that discovery searching is the only
> thing worth talking about, but it may be it is because everybody takes
> the other functions for granted. (Google can't do them - so who needs
> them?)
Karen Coyle responded:
> I think another question is: what is the actual usage of library
catalogs > for discovery? Are we seeing a reasonable cost/benefit
trade-off in
> cataloging for discovery? (With "discovery" in this instance being
topical > searching, not known item searching.)
Karen, first of all, thank you for all your work in this area and your
thoughtfulness about these issues.
That said, can I challenge the last point you made here with an analogy?
I'd be interested to see how you respond.
There may be better tools and technology doctors will use in the future
- but until then people *should* use the existing and proven tools
doctors have discovered and developed if they want good medical care.
Likewise, if anybody wants to do good, responsible, serious research,
that others can look to for guidance, they *should* use not only good
reference and bibliographic materials, but *good* libraries who know who
they are and value what they do, with their consistently applied - and
hence effective - classification and cataloging tools, as well. Insofar
as researchers do not use the tools available to them, they simply do
not do the kind of thorough research that they could do, and hence,
perform a disservice to others. On a more limited level, the same goes
for the high school student who does an oral report constructed on
research that is by no means thorough.
Of course, just as doctors in their field should consistently do new
research do find out methods that work even better, they should also
uphold the value of, and invest in, the best tools that are currently
available for doing the necessary work.
The same rigor and excellence should hold for those in library science,
correct? If this rigor and excellence is currently questioned, I think
more education, convincingly (and I hope passionately) delivered is the
answer.
For example, for a top-notch reference librarian's honest evaluation of
the strengths (and I think he's honest about the weaknesses) of the
traditional library model (when done well), we could all look at former
private investigator Thomas Mann's books "Library Research Models" and
"The Oxford Guide to Library Research". Mann, who's at the Library of
Congress, makes a person go "wow - they can do that?" throughout his
work. Evidently, top-notch reference librarianship is like detective
work - but it would be a lot more difficult without both the existing
intellectual structure (which certainly needs to evolve) that librarians
have constructed. His insights make one realize how helpful and
important, albeit imperfect, the classical systems are to people aiming
to do serious library research.
And people everywhere need this kind of committed inquiry!
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC)
11200 93rd Ave. North
Maple Grove, MN. 55369
Work phone: 763-391-7183
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 8:37 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] What library patrons really want.
Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
>> fixed data elements, these were applied in a rather haphazard fashion
>> among participating libraries, rendering them virtually useless for
data
>> processing.
>>
> Because there was no concept of the value of the
> Had these been covered by the rules (AACR), we'd probably be better
off
> with them now. RDA might learn from that and specify things that ought
> to be coded from the start, like what used to be GMD.
Yes, it is very interesting that there is a considerable portion of the
library catalog record that is NOT covered by the cataloging rules
today. And although I have sat through countless hours of discussion at
the MARC standards meetings, I have to say that I am not at all aware of
any overarching philosophy that guides the development of that standard.
This seems odd coming from a profession that takes standards very
seriously.
>
>> When I look at the RDA process, I see us going down this same road:
the
>> cataloging rules will be determined without any concern about the end
>> system use, ...
> without much concern for coding and format actually, but the latest
> draft for chapter 3/4 has tables to show where current MARC21 places
> things the proposed rules prescribe.
I was thinking of "system" beyond the creation of the MARC record -- I
was thinking of indexing and display and all of the user services that
the catalog provides. The MARC record, after all, was designed to print
cards, not to carry data for an online catalog. In classic IT design,
you first decide what your end product is, then you design the data that
will feed into the system. When our end product was a catalog card, MARC
was the data structure that was developed. Now that our end product is
an online catalog, we should be asking ourselves what the optimum record
format would be.
>
>> and then systems developers are expected to come along and
>> make something out of this data that didn't get any systems design
>> concepts built into it. In the IT world, this is the classic
nightmare
>> of the IT department getting specs written by the marketing
department
>> that basically describe their current hard-copy practices.
>>
>
> But doesn't Google work from a much less coherent base of given
> material, the designers of which still mostly don't care at all about
> structuring their stuff, let alone metadata, despite DC having been
> around for 10 years? (And G. disregards it anyway, as you know.)
Yes, Google does work with a totally heterogeneous data base, and so we
get services based on that. This means that on Google you can't search
for author or title, for instance. Google disregards DC not because they
don't want to use it but because it has been applied (when it has been
applied) so inconsistently as to render it nearly useless. Just like the
fixed fields in MARC records, by the way. Metadata was also being used
dishonestly on the web as a way to influence search ranking, so it
couldn't be trusted. I still think that there are advantages to quality
metadata that is consistently applied. The big question is whether we in
libraries can afford to create metadata the way we have in the past.
>
> The big issue is probably not the rules at all but the fact that any
> cataloging rules will always produce only a small amount of data per
> document whereas search engines work from full document content.
> So, to improve end user results, more meat will have to be put on
> the RDA skeleton anyway. ToC, abstracts, reviews, ...
Right. So here's a question: if you are cataloging an item, does your
cataloging change if you know that the ToC and index terms will be added
to the record? What about a scan of the title page? A preview of the
first chapter? Shouldn't all of this be considered part of the
"cataloging" process?
>
> Reliability in known-item searching and FRBR collocation, OTOH, cannot
> be had without a good code of rules along time-proven ideas. It is
only
> discovery searching that can profit from extra verbiage. But what is
> the relative importance of discovery searching vs. the other
functions?
> Discussions here seem to indicate that discovery searching is the only
> thing worth talking about, but it may be it is because everybody takes
> the other functions for granted. (Google can't do them - so who needs
> them?)
I think another question is: what is the actual usage of library
catalogs for discovery? Are we seeing a reasonable cost/benefit
trade-off in cataloging for discovery? (With "discovery" in this
instance being topical searching, not known item searching.)
kc
>
> B.Eversberg
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Mon Apr 30 2007 - 08:18:27 EDT