This list makes me think of the following tools: 1) a library catalog;
2) a bibliography; 3) the Social Sciences Citation Index (which a
history professor who taught at an institution I worked at in the 1990's
used all the time). Ideally the next generation catalog, it seems to me,
would be able to do all these things and more, equally well, for any
type of search, user, or library, and would produce instantaneous
results that are manageable in number and directly and immediately and
understandably relevant to what the user is searching for.
Is there such a product out there that does all this which libraries can
afford to purchase, maintain, and upgrade?
David
David S. Iversen, MLS, MA
Cataloging Librarian
Gordon B. Olson Library
Minot State University
500 University Ave. West
Minot, ND 58707
Phone:(701) 858-3859
Fax: (701) 858-3581
Email: david.iversen_at_minotstateu.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:58 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Prof. Burke's wish list
This is from my blog notes on the first LC meeting, the one at Google.
After describing how he does research and why he does research
(everything from moving into new territory to looking for an inexpensive
book to require for his class), he gave these as things he needs to help
him with research:
- tools that recognize existing clusters of knowledge; if you find a
book using lcsh, you probably already know it existed. tool that
recognizes the conversation the book was in. those that were written
after the book came out and have continued the conversation.
- tools that know lines of descent; chronology of publications; later
readers determine connection between texts
- tools that find unknown connections (full text search; topic maps?)
- tools that produce serendipity -- hidden connections.
- tools that inform me of authority
- tools that know about real world usage (those who bought x bought y;
how many people checked this out?)
- tools that know about the sociology of knowledge; the pedigrees of
authors: who were they trained by, how long ago; how trustworthy is this
institution?
As he spoke, I was thinking that his ideal tool is what I would call a
bibliography. It would give the "best books" in an area of study, would
describe various branches of thought, would put a document in an
intellectual context, would tell you what item was most cited, most used
in classes, most read. Authors would have "reviews" -- the founder of
this line of thinking; Harvard PhD; journalist writing for the NY Post.
They could also have "popularity" ratings, such as the timelines that
WorldCat Identities uses.
I can also see things on his list that could be machine-generated, such
as topic maps based on full text that would bring together documents in
a serendipitous fashion.
I think his criticism of LCSH is that it is atomistic -- it gives you an
entry into a topic but it doesn't relate items in the library to each
other. Call numbers do that but for some reason we haven't played much
with giving people an interesting navigation of the classified catalog,
something that I think has potential. It would undoubtedly be easier to
do with Dewey, which is more hierarchical than LC classification.
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 11:02:34 EDT