Tom,
Thanks for your ideas. You're touching on what I think is one of the
issues now: centralization vs. decentralization. The vision you have is
pretty much like the Internet in general, decentralized. But
centralization is also thought to promote quality control to some
degree. I assume that's why LC allows any cataloger who has been trained
to create and edit national "name" authorities, but not subject
authorities. They control that process, probably because subject
headings are a lot more complex. Each subject fits into a hierarchy of
related headings, whereas "name" headings are more independent. So if
you mess up a subject heading, you may affect the rest of the hierarchy,
too.
One of those subject headings you listed for Ambient findability,
"Information storage and retrieval systems," is a pretty mysterious
thing that may not make a lot of sense to anybody but computer science
people. You might notice that on WorldCat, there's no scope note for it.
People who use it are expected to know what it is, and a lot of people
don't. So it's not surprising that when someone cataloged the electronic
version, they decided to use different headings. They retained
"Information retrieval" but not that "systems" heading.
The National Library of Medicine has this scope note for Information
Storage and Retrieval: "A branch of computer or library science relating
to the storage, locating, searching, and selecting, upon demand,
relevant data on a given subject."
One more point on heading consistency. I think one reason you can't
expect 100% consistency is that different catalogers simply have
different insights as to what a work is about. When I've noticed that we
have two editions of a work with different subject headings, sometimes
I've looked them over and decided to use a different set of headings
than either record used--decided both catalogers were wrong. But I think
any of the headings would usually have been helpful to someone to some
degree. Yes, there are some blatantly incorrect headings or
classifications sometimes. (Ironically, at times something can have the
right classification when it has the wrong headings.) But even one that
is approximately correct helps to point people in the right direction.
And subject searches are only one tool people have for finding what they
need.
--Ted Gemberling
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom Keays
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 8:11 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] "Third Order"--was Libraries & the Web
I think what I wrote could be interpreted either way. There's a
central hub but decentralized, collaborative editing of records and
local instances. Is that "third order"? I dunno... I haven't read the
book yet either. But your point is taken.
So, here's another scenario. Swap out central hub and insert
peer-to-peer. Each catalog records its own local updates and posts
those changes (automatically as part of the local update) onto their
local server. The peer-to-peer network detects the changed record and
seeds the change out to all the other libraries that have a record for
that (er, trying to use the FRBR term) manifestation. Again, libraries
have local control to lock records or portions of records to prevent
local changes from acting as seeds and from receiving updates, but
that should be exceptional rather than routine.
On 5/20/07, Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl_at_uab.edu> wrote:
> Tom,
> You wrote:
> "Perhaps the third order way might be to mash things up, pushing
updates
> to subscribers from a central authority."
>
> My understanding, which may be imperfect, is that the Third Order is
> just the opposite: it's total decentralization. Weinberger's book is
> called "Everything is miscellaneous." As near as I can understand from
> Karen's review, that means information control is thrown out the
window
> completely. Full texts are apparently thought to replace that.
--
Tom
Received on Mon May 21 2007 - 14:14:21 EDT