Suzanne Pilsk said:
>
>I think what I took away from the meeting at LC was that I need to give up
>on the touch the record once and walk away. Instead, the record might be
>touched and retouched over and over as more data becomes available. But
>that sounds very expensive.
It is certainly very expensive if the only way you think about
"touch" is our old one-at-a-time way of doing things. However, there
are other ways to approach the problem. There are automated methods
to add or change or "enhance" information that we have not taken much
advantage of in the past. Some of these methods have been used by
OCLC and (formerly) RLG as they worked with the data, others are
being developed outside of the 'mainstream' distribution channels of
traditional libraries.
Other possibilities stem from methods such as the enhance
capabilities that have been available on a limited basis for many
years through OCLC--what if they were more broadly available? What if
we stopped worrying so much about the "integrity of records" and
"master records" and started thinking more about what we could do if
descriptive information were more granular and could be recombined
and "mashed up" with other sources of information?
It must also be said that sometimes we develop local processes that
get in the way of sharing information. I remember being astounded
back in the day when I was an authorities librarian to realize how
many libraries modified authority records locally then didn't bother
to add that information to the NACO record because it was "too
expensive" to do so. At the time Cornell was doing all its authority
work in the NACO file and downloading the changed record for the
local file--no more work really but much more useful for the
community (and it sure improved our NACO stats!). Sometimes we just
don't think clearly enough about the implications of our local
decisions on the information we maintain in common.
And, of course, sometimes decisions made by vendors and utilities
don't serve us well either, but I think we should take them at the
word (as "membership organizations" and "responsive vendors") and do
a bit more brainstorming about how to take better advantage of the
common efforts for the benefit of all. There's a lot that could be
done, and a lot of creativity out there in libraryland.
>Yet still, I go back to my cubical and I do.... what? Go fast and hope that
>what I've decided was good enough is actually okay and that later I won't be
>cursing myself because I can't provide subset of my data by something that
>seems so obvious to that future me?
You shouldn't need a crystal ball to be able to improve data over
time. A machine readable descriptive record is not carved in stone.
Particularly for digital materials where machines can "look" at files
and index information with minimal human intervention we should be
able to take advantage of that much more than we do.
I do think we'll figure this out, particularly if we take a few steps
back and consider what it is we really want to accomplish.
Regards,
Diane
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Diane I. Hillmann
Research Librarian
Cornell University Library
Email: dih1_at_cornell.edu
Voice: (607) 387-9207
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Received on Wed Jul 11 2007 - 21:05:24 EDT