My unsolicited manifesto...
I think our current metadata environment is seriously and fundamentally
broken in several ways.
I do NOT think the solution lies in getting rid of everything we've got,
or in nothing but machine-analysis of full text. I think the solution
requires continual engagement by metadata professionals, which will be
continually needed. We will always need catalogers---that is, metadata
professionals involved in the generation and maintenance of metadata.
Because that's what catalogers are and have always been.More...
For some reason, in much of the professional discussion of 'cataloging
modernization' certain 'traditionalists' seem unwilling to recognize the
possibility of such an honest position. They seem to believe that anyone
who thinks things are seriously broken /must /really be motivated by
those who think computers can do everything, those who, in recent words
spoken on one listserv, "don't want to spend money on doing cataloguing
properly and neophiliacs obsessed with Google, Amazon, etc. without
considering what the implications of abandoning controlled vocabularies,
complicated frameworks standards (MARC), and international standards
(ISBD, etc.) might be in the real world."
That group of people may exist. But that's not me, and that's not
everyone who thinks our current environment is fundamentally broken. I
think abandoning control in a mis-guided effort to save money would be
disastrous. And I'm not alone, I see many people in many professional
forums sharing my perspective. Our current environment is fundamentally
broken, and the solution lies only in professional attention to
metadata, to apply better, smarter control of metadata. Not to give up
controlled metadata.
Now, this defensiveness, this insistence that anyone who thinks things
right now are fundamentally broken must not be seriously concered with
meeting the needs of users for information access--or must be seriously
deluded about how that can be done--is, someone remarked to me,
recently, perhaps evidence of a "certain bunker metality due to the
serious trend of deprofessionalizing cataloging and reducing cataloging
staff."
This is a good point, and this is a tragedy. The deprofessionalization
of cataloging and decimation of cataloging staff is exactly the wrong
direction, /when we are facing serious problems that can only be solved
by a collective effort from a community of metadata professionals/. We
need to strengthen that community within the library world, not decimate
it. This is a tragedy /because/ our current environment is so broken.
But continuing to insist that everything is Just Fine and /not/ really
broken (and that anyone who disagrees must be malignant, idiotic, or
both), does not help, I think it's the surest path to the continued
decimation of cataloging. Because if THIS, what we have now, is the best
we can do for the money being spent on it--then indeed it is not an
efficient use of resources, and may not be justifiable. But it's not the
best we can do. Solutions to the serious problems we are facing will
take /serious change/, which can in fact /only/ come with the
strengthening of a professional cataloging and metadata community within
libraries.
When people read my comments as exhibiting "little value given to new
entrants [to the field of cataloging] or to cataloging itself", or "the
idea that computers and full texts will solve all the problems" I am
saddened, because it couldn't be further from the truth.
Received on Thu May 24 2007 - 15:43:09 EDT