I wanted to send another message to address the second half of your
email.
In the paragraph before the paragraph we've been discussing, Calhoun
writes:
"Pressure on technical services staffing budgets is occurring at the
same time as ARL materials expenditures continue undiminished [11]. This
is an important point, because technical services staffing is declining
while the number of materials needing processing is not [12].
Furthermore, the manpower for processing physical resources (books,
serials, audiovisual materials) continues to demand a large share of
technical services' salaries and wages; ARL libraries continue to
acquire tens of thousands of printed books each year; and 85% of
WorldCat is still books (e-books account for less than 1% of this
number) [13]"--p. 4.
I think, maybe, what Calhoun is driving at in these two paragraphs is
that more libraries are going to have to start doing either shelf-ready
processing or buying vendor-supplied records to lighten the load of
technical services staff. I think she's pointing to how serialists have
faced the challenge of more work and smaller staff as a success story. I
think that Calhoun is arguing that serialists, by embracing
vendor-supplied records, have provided more (and quicker) access to the
information that users are looking for.
The problem, as you point out, is that the records you might buy aren't
as "good" as the work you might produce. I think that Calhoun would
argue that users want access to the information, even if the records
conveying that information isn't perfect. Calhoun might say that users
don't care as much about subject access as they do about whether or not
the URL is in the record or if the record can be found at all.
Erin Leach
Catalog Librian
Washington University in St. Louis
eleach_at_wustl.edu
(314) 935-4823
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 8:30 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Calhoun at FoBC
Thanks for the responses. I guessed it was something like what Erin
described. Erin, what kind of cleanup do you do after the loads? Does
this mean having to accept a lower quality record than you would've had
otherwise? What have been the gains and losses from this arrangement?
I understand one problem with "cleanup" of such records is that if the
vendor, such as Serials Solutions, changes them in any way, your changes
will generally be lost. You can ask them for certain general kinds of
things, but you can't really "customize" individual records for the most
part.
As I think Charley suggested, though, the situation with monographs,
even e-books, doesn't seem to be very comparable. Since they're not
"continuing resources," after you acquire them, the records themselves
should be stable and open to any cleanup you need to do. Though it is
true, as with e-journals, that access to e-books is generally dependent
on an external vendor.
I worked in a library that bought monographic records from vendors for
e-books and microfiche titles. They did require quite a bit of
"cleanup": sometimes the original cataloger had done a pretty cursory
job of subject analysis. Subject headings were real generic, as if the
records had been done "on the fly."
Sometimes they completely misstated the subject content of titles. For
example, a number were microfiches of religious tracts belonging to the
Anti-Slavery Collection, held at Oberlin College. Some had nothing to do
with slavery, never mentioned it at all. They were on traditional
religious topics like the need for salvation. But the cataloger had put
"Slavery" on as the subject heading. Apparently, he wasn't sure what
they were about and didn't have time to research the proper headings but
had to put a subject on, so he used the most general heading for the
entire collection of thousands of titles. It would've been better to
have no subject.
I think the real purpose of including those tracts in Oberlin's
collection was to show that the same publishers who were publishing
against slavery in the 19th century were also publishing on traditional
religious topics. So I think that sort of "quick and dirty" subject
cataloging doesn't do a service to researchers. But I'm not saying all
vendor-supplied records are necessarily "quick and dirty." I suppose
there might be lots of good ones.
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Erin Leach
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 9:48 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Calhoun at FoBC
Long time reader, first time commenter...
When I read this, I wonder if she's referring to the fact that
institutions can buy vendor-generated MARC records for electronic
serials.
I'm a serials cataloger and my institution just purchased
vendor-generated MARC records for our electronic serials holdings. Each
month we get a file with new records, records that have been changed,
and records to be deleted. These records have a generic note in the 856
field, where our holdings statement used to be, and a URL that
re-directs users to our A-Z list. The A-Z list is now where our holdings
information sits and where the URL to the resource is. Having these
records allows us to have individual records in our catalog for all of
the titles we have access to at any given time--including aggregator
databases. After each monthly record load, I do cleanup to our catalog.
These records have certainly provided a change in my job description. I
have moved from cataloging electronic serials and updating holdings
statements to doing cleanup after monthly record loads.
I suppose, if we assume that this is what Calhoun means, that catalogers
will move from creating and editing records in a global database of
shared records to doing database cleanup when purchased records are
added to their catalog. I'm not sure how this is revolutionary, though,
as libraries are already buying vendor-generated records for monographs.
Erin Leach
Catalog Librarian
Washington University in St. Louis
eleach_at_wustl.edu
(314) 935-4823
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 5:32 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Calhoun at FoBC
I'm curious to hear from a serials cataloger what the "enormous wave of
change that passed through serials librarianship in the last ten years"
is. Apparently it involved "bringing new automated techniques for record
creation and maintenance and demanding new job descriptions, skill sets
and tools," writes Calhoun. So, I guess she's saying a similar thing is
going to happen with monographic cataloging, but we'd need to know what
happened with serials cataloging to know what she's saying exactly.
Jonathan
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jul 11 2007 - 08:32:29 EDT