Karen,
I am sorry if I offended you by those comments. They really weren't
directed at you personally. But whether you intend to be or not, you are
one of "spokespersons" for the Calhoun viewpoint, and that is what I was
referring to.
One might ask why I would see the situation as so polarized between two
"viewpoints." After all, Jonathan and others have stated that they
aren't totally in agreement with Calhoun. The people who wrote back to
me yesterday made a convincing case that they were primarily concerned
with serving users and not saving money. I assume you could make the
same case. Maybe Calhoun could, too.
Of course any time someone sees issues in a polarized way, "us vs.
them," he is oversimplifying to some extent. There are almost always
"grays," positions in between those two poles. But I think the poles are
worth considering. One thing that promotes the polarization to some
extent is that Mann is not a cataloger or tech services person:
ironically, a reference librarian who thinks the most important concern
in libraries now is the catalog. He speaks from the perspective of
someone who has many years of experience helping people. But sometimes
his lack of first-hand knowledge of cataloging leads him into some
errors of detail.
Maybe I promote the polarization, too, since I'm not a "software" or
"systems" person. That means that to some people, my posts may appear to
show no understanding of what people on this list are talking about. But
I think it's important to consider the limitations of computers as well
as their power.
You wrote: "You can't innovate unless you are willing to start over from
scratch. Grudging incrementalism won't get us anywhere."
But our present online catalogs were set up pretty "incrementally."
That's the striking thing about them, that they aren't really that
different from the old card catalogs. Contrary to his image as someone
who is nostalgic for everything traditional, Mann emphasizes that they
have a lot more power than card catalogs had. I don't think he's
necessarily saying we shouldn't change them at all. Rather, he just
thinks that a lot of the changes that are being suggested at this point
are a serious threat to their basic value.
You also wrote: "The only sustained critique of Calhoun came from a
union-sponsored report by Mann designed to keep things 'the way we
always done it.'"
I'm not sure how you're defining "sustained," but there have been a
number of other critiques. Okay, maybe I shouldn't say they're all
exactly critiques of Calhoun, but just cautionary statements about
overconfidence in the power of technology. For example, this from Walt
Crawford in the June/July 2004 (I suppose this couldn't be a critique of
Calhoun since it was published before hers):
"By now you should be realizing that technology won't solve the real
problems that libraries face now and in the future. Technological
advances provide useful new tools, but too many new tools come with
unintended consequences (and sometimes intentional consequences) that
need to be coped with. In some cases, the cost of the tools may outweigh
their benefits.
"... Librarians work most effectively when they recognize that most
users are less devoted to constant technological change than they are to
the heart of libraries: Good people offering effective access to varied,
worthwhile collections that center on books."
Or take a look at this article, "Stop the war on metadata" by Jeffrey
Beall in Library Journal of July 15, 2006:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6349014.html
"Ironically, many of the top generals in the war on metadata are
librarians and information managers themselves. These managers are
making drastic cutbacks in personnel dedicated to metadata creation.
They have created databases and repositories that rely on full-text
searching for access to their content. Yet while they've proven
themselves "efficient" and "fiscally tight" project managers by creating
such search-based systems, the reality is that such systems strive to be
only good enough rather than striving to be of the highest quality.
"As other professions, such as medicine, engineering, and architecture,
promote and insist on the highest quality standards, librarianship
should be no different. A defeat of metadata as a tool for information
discovery will mean that "just good enough" full-text searching will
replace the high-quality discovery ability that metadata can provide."
The economic element is very clear there. Or consider this thoughtful
statement by Herbert S. White from the March 15, 2006 issue of American
Libraries:
"We now hear and read a great deal about how some corporations,
universities, and communities are no longer able to afford quality
libraries. Every manager knows or should know that this kind of
propaganda has been spouted at all times, good or bad. If it were really
true, then, obviously, there must be a reduction in the quality of
service being provided. If not, aren't we simply setting the stage for
the next budget cut?
"Of course, everyone must pay lip service to doing more with less. It
seems, however, no one except librarians actually does this. When police
budgets are threatened, dire consequences are predicted and that seems
to work. When a faculty line is removed, a school provides fewer
courses. No one ever volunteers to add extra sections. Yet, when our
budgets are threatened, we promise to work harder so no one will notice
the difference. Weren't we working hard before?"
That doesn't say anything about catalogs as such, but it does show the
impact of economics on our profession. I think it is relevant, and there
are lots of other relevant pieces.
Back to Calhoun: maybe there haven't been many "sustained" critiques of
her report. But remember that she was paid to create hers, and perhaps
Mann was paid to create his response, too. It's hard to write a real
"sustained" critique if you have to do it all on your own time!
I have read BSTF as well as the Calhoun report. I am now reading Markey.
I think I'll close by quoting an excerpt from something I wrote to a
coworker that shows I actually looked into the details of what BSTF
proposes:
"I think this passage is particularly important:
"Page 31: "Cut back on controlled vocabularies for topical subjects; put
extra effort into controlled vocabularies for name, uniform title, date,
and place."
"On p. 34-5, it is added: "As large portions of our collection become
digital, eliminate descriptive metadata and controlled vocabularies for
topical subjects for textual items that are self-describing through
search and display of full text. Put extra effort into controlled
vocabularies for name, uniform title, date, and place. Add geographic
fields with lat/long to all applicable records..."
"In other words, the report is assuming that keyword searching of full
texts can replace controlled subject vocabulary. It's also quite
interesting that they think we should put latitude and longitude
coordinates on records, in addition to controlled place names. I can
hardly imagine how we'll have time to do that or even why they think it
will be valuable. You currently have to put lat/long coordinates on
NACO geographic authorities you create ... That is necessary, but the
idea of using them more widely boggles my mind.
"One thing the report comes out for is automated "relevance ranking" for
all resources. They give an example on p. 32 of a hypothetical person
named Santos doing a search on www.redlightgreen.org for the term
"Social memory," which is not an LC or MeSH heading. I tried the
search. Redlightgreen got either 27 or 379 hits, depending on whether
you put quotation marks around the phrase, and I looked at how well the
"relevance ranking" did. It wasn't too bad. Using quote marks, it
basically retrieved any book that had "social memory" somewhere in the
MARC record, though there were about 4 totally extraneous hits, such as:
Mapping tourism / Stephen P. Hanna and Vincent J. Del Casino Jr.,
editors. The book Social memory, by James Fentress and Chris Wickham,
was near the top at #2. (Though curiously, Fentress and Wickham are not
among the authors the report says were relevant.) It has subject
heading: Memory--Social aspects.
But one of the authors the report lists as relevant, Sir Frederic
Bartlett, doesn't show up unless you don't use quote marks. It is then
#22: Remembering : a study in experimental and social psychology / by
Sir Frederic C. Bartlett, with subject headings: Recollection
(Psychology) and Recognition (Psychology). It probably should also have
Memory--Social aspects, like Fentress and Wickham's book above. But
almost immediately after it is #24: Catalogue of the Marx Memorial
Library, with subject headings Marx, Karl,
1818-1883--Bibliography--Catalogs, Marx Memorial Library--Catalogs,
Communism--Bibliography--Catalogs and Socialism--Bibliography--Catalogs.
This is an irrelevant hit that only got retrieved, I assume, because of
the word "memorial" in the library's name and the heading Socialism.
#25 is International approaches to problems of undeveloped areas, with
subject headings: Industrialization and Puerto-Rico--Social conditions.
Apparently it is retrieved because of "social" in that second heading
and the fact that it's published by the Milbank Memorial Fund. That is
another irrelevant hit, somehow put before something Santos would want,
#28: Contested pasts: the politics of memory, with subject headings:
Memory--Social aspects and Memory--Political aspects. That doesn't show
up in the group retrieved with question marks. Shortly after at #32 is
Taos : a memory / Miriam Hapgood DeWitt, which seems to be retrieved
only because it has heading: Taos (N.M.)--Social life and customs.
"Browsing through the first few pages of hits, I never did find another
author the report says was relevant to Santos's research, Jeanne
Halbwachs Alexandre. But whatever she wrote is considered by the
ranking mechanism to be less relevant than the book about Taos, N.M. I
doubt that Santos got much help from the mechanism. Clearly, it did
some good, since that highly relevant book was at #2 (or #8 if you don't
use quote marks), but would it do any more good than just looking up
some authors he saw cited somewhere through author searches? I don't
think a computer is capable of determining how relevant something is.
That requires human judgment. The reason is that language is arbitrary
for the most part: verbal symbols have no necessary connection to the
things they represent, but represent them because we agree that they do.
So there will be lots of irrelevant similarities between character
strings, such as "socialism" and "social" and "memory" and "memorial,"
that a mechanism will pick up. Of course there's some connection
between "socialism" and "social" and "memory" and "memorial": socialism
puts a priority on social rather than individual interests in politics,
and a memorial preserves memories. So the concepts are related, but not
in a way very helpful to Santos.
"It strikes me that the subject heading Memory--Social aspects was a
more helpful indicator of a book's relevance than the character string
"social memory" or any combination of those two words. So cutting back
on subject headings seems like a bad idea."
--Ted Gemberling
Received on Sat May 19 2007 - 16:41:47 EDT