I think there are more than two 'sides' here. The Calhoun report does
not represent my views much, and I consider myself a proponent of
'cataloging modernization'
Certainly, economic resources are a realistic concern though, it's the
real world we live in. But I start from the assumption that providing
good access to information _will_ cost non-trivial money, and libraries
need to be willing to spend that money. The fundamental question is how
we can improve access. Now, when answering that question, it certainly
makes sense to figure out how to use our resources _efficiently_. I
personally think abandoning human applied subject/genre controlled
vocabularly would be a big mistake. But are there ways to make the
application of subject/genre controlled vocabularly we have more
efficient? Almost certainly.
When I've talked about FAST before, I've said that I think it's a big
mistake that it was motivated and is presented as being mainly about
money. To me, something _like_ FAST is neccesary to produce a
subject/genre vocabulary to support the kinds of interfaces we want to
give users to improve their information finding/browsing experiences.
Something like FAST is neccessary to _improve service_, not to save
money. Now, to do that, you need to start from the goal of improving
service (albeit within the real world constraints of doing that within
our means), not from saving money. And you need to motivate your
decisions by analysis and emperical research to that end. FAST needs
more of both of those things. Kelley McGrath recently posted an essay
to this very list beginning to examine the sorts of things you might
want to do with subject/genre controlled vocabulary, and what you might
need in a vocabulary to do those things, which I thought was a good
contribution. McGrath's essay was not about how to save money, it was
about how to have a controlled vocabulary which works better.
I think there are some out there in the library world who are motivated
primarily by saving money, who's questions are always "How can we do
this cheaper? Do we need to do this? Can't we lay off these employees?"
I don't see these people participating on these listservs however. I
think there are a whole bunch of people in the category of 'cataloging
modernization proponents' who are instead asking the questions "How do
we do this better? How do we increase what our metadata can do for us?
How do we make it more flexible?", who are having their reception among
some people unfairly colored by an assumption that they _really_ mean
"How can we get rid of all the catalogers." We do not. I instead mean
"How can we save all the catalogers"? I am not interested in 'saving
money' (of course I'm not an administrator either), but I _am_
interseted in "making our metadata generation more efficient", because I
want _more_, not _less_ from it.
Jonathan
Ted P Gemberling wrote:
> Allen,
> You've brought up a legitimate question. It's appropriate to challenge
> someone when he appears to attribute something to "base motives." But as
> I said before, when I read the Calhoun Report, money always seems to be
> the "elephant in the room," even when it's not mentioned. And concern
> about money is not necessarily "base," as I will explain below.
>
> Here's my view of the situation. When people talk about adding things we
> don't do now (such as the "tagging" several people spoke of), it's not
> about money. But when they talk about eliminating things we do now (like
> controlled subject vocabulary, as advocated in the Calhoun report), then
> I think it is about money. FAST is basically about money, and to some
> extent that's legitimate. It could be that in certain situations,
> perhaps where you have to digitize a tremendous number of things and
> don't have the staffing to do all of that with precoordinate LCSH, you
> have to find a cheaper way of cataloging them, and FAST may be helpful
> for that, since it doesn't require extensive training. Here's a place
> where they did that:
>
> http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/index.html
>
> That's the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive. It's helpful to
> compare it with the University of Southern Mississippi's regular online
> catalog, which has regular precoordinate LCSH:
>
> http://anna.lib.usm.edu
>
> As a person from the University pointed out at ALA several years ago,
> one difficulty is that you can't move the FAST metadata into their
> regular catalog, because it wouldn't index correctly with the
> precoordinate headings. But I assume the use of FAST was helpful for
> this digitization project.
>
> Of course there is another point: if you're going to add something, then
> you do often have to eliminate something else, unless you have abundant
> funding, which most libraries don't have. So the question is, what are
> your priorities? Calhoun and others want us to believe that the coming
> of computers, the Web, and full text means we don't need controlled
> vocabulary any more. (Maybe that's a pretty broad statement, but it's
> close.) Digitizing is a higher priority than providing controlled
> vocabulary. For the reasons I gave before, I question that.
>
> I realize "Calhoun and others" isn't much as documentation, but this is
> the best I know how to do now.
> --Ted Gemberling
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of MULLEN Allen
> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 6:05 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] "Third Order"--was Libraries & the Web
>
> Ted P Gemberling writes:
>
>
>> But what worries me about that is that "letting go" is, at
>> bottom, mainly about money, not about serving people.
>>
>
> An assertion that the sum of the visions, prototypes, full
> implementations, and discussions about next generation library
> information systems that comprise what we are discussing on this forum
> are about money deserves to be substantiated, Ted. Could you please
> help me understand by citing anywhere in this forum, or in the writings,
> addresses, or conversations of advocates for the development of next
> generation library systems that substantiate this statement, especially
> that this is "mainly about money, not about serving people?"
>
> What I find exciting about this forum is that it is made up of people
> who do care about serving people well through bibliographic information
> systems.
>
> Allen Mullen
> Eugene Public Library
>
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
>> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
>> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 3:36 PM
>> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
>> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] "Third Order"--was Libraries & the Web
>>
>> Karen wrote:
>>
>> "The hard part is letting go... which is also about turf,
>> egos, and force of habit."
>>
>>
>>
>> But what worries me about that is that "letting go" is, at
>> bottom, mainly about money, not about serving people. I
>> realize money is a legitimate concern, but I think we should
>> at least face the fact that this is what we're talking about
>> when we speak of "letting go." I realize you may already have
>> done that at some point, Karen, but I just felt I needed to
>> emphasize it.
>>
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri May 18 2007 - 15:30:32 EDT