FW: Next Gen Catalog and FRBR

The use of the article "the" is actually one of great relevance to the
discussion of the next gen catalogue.

Traditional cataloguing has actually solved a lot of problems, maybe
imperfectly, but a vast number of issues have been addressed. The ILS I
use has all the bells and whistles in terms of skip-in-filing indicators
and stop words and nonfiling characters. Other database products and
services lack these features, and I think that's instructive in looking
at external examples as models to emulate. AACR2 and MARC have solved A
LOT of problems, and we should be careful about unnecessarily
re-inventing the wheel, throwing the baby out with the bath water, and
other appropriate metaphors.

I suppose I should have stated that what is needed is to have the
solutions found in existing catalogues integrated with even more
rigorous ways of structuring our data, such as FRBR. I think that IMDb
has, perhaps unwittingly, stumbling into a natural (i.e. FRBR) way of
doing things by sorting results by FRBR-like entities. There are many
shortcomings otherwise, but when those are avoided, I find there is an
"easy-on-the-eyes" effect in IMDb that is lacking in most library
catalogues I've used.

The current AACR2 application in an online catalogue is handicapped I
think from the traditional view of treating the heading as only just
that-- a heading. If I see an author, that author is only a heading in a
record or at the top of a result list. I'd rather see a full web page
dedicated to that author, as in LibraryThing and IMDb, with all the
details and results sets and authority information and related works and
social networking data attached.

We can't do that now in most library catalogues, but the FRBR model
seems to invite that type of approach.

I think a result set should disambiguate keyword searches by matching
what the user searched on to the various entities in the catalogue--
what IMDb attempts to do. I don't think the traditional result set
mirroring the headings on library cards (really manifestation records)
is the right result to show people on their first attempt to search the
catalogue when they want to do open-ended browse- and discovery-based
searches.

I think a specific bibliographic entity, especially a person, a
corporate body, a subject heading, or a work, should have its own web
page-- an anchored, permalinked web page that can be built upon, shared
and integrated with many services, including local inventory systems in
each library (if you note, the FRBR entity of "Item" is not dealt with
by IMDb, but that would be an entity of great concern for a library).

Thomas Brenndorfer, B.A, M.L.I.S.
Guelph Public Library
100 Norfolk St.
Guelph, ON
N1H 4J6
(519) 824-6220 ext. 276
tbrenndorfer_at_library.guelph.on.ca




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Orr
> Sent: May 14, 2007 3:00 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Next Gen Catalog and FRBR
>
> Ted Gemberling wrote about the difficulty of finding the 2001 movie
The
> shaft in IMDb.
>
> I had a similar problem when I went to IMDb looking for the entry on
the
> tv show The office.  If you type in "the office" the US version is
> listed as the first choice and the UK version the second.  However, if
> you simply type in "office" (as library folk tend to do), nothing
comes
> up except a keyword match and a movie match for something in 2005.
> Their catalog, for whatever reason, does not ignore "the" in a title
(at
> least, not if it appears at the beginning of the title, I don't know
> about an embedded "the").
>
> BTW, I went to IMDb and typed in "the shaft" and was directed to the
> "down" title, although it does have a brief message after the title
> "Down" which  reads: aka "The Shaft" - USA (video title).
>
> (and just for fun, I went to netflix and typed in just "shaft" and The
> shaft (2001) comes up fourth after three Shaft crime drama films.
They
> seem to have a better system, although I couldn't tell you why that's
> so)
>
>
> Sandy Orr
> Non-Print Cataloger
> Paul Meek Library
> University of Tennessee at Martin
> (731) 881-7072
> sorr_at_utm.edu
>