Karen,
This relates to my earliest email to the list today.
I don't think anyone would deny that there is a cost to users when
materials aren't readily available - would they? After all the talk
about the perfect being the enemy of the good, and being overly fussy
with description, etc., it seems to me that even faceted catalogs which
de-emphasize subject searching in favor of keywords like Endeca are
still relying on LCC and LCSH structures in order to be as useful as
they are - as again, I think Pace's PowerPoint shows users refine their
initial keyword searches predominantly by these things.
Is there not also a cost to the community when people don't find useful
materials that they would have never known existed? If we agree there
is, then the very powerful help from things like LCC and LCSH (which
need to be done well - and which I think are the most intellectually
challenging and time-consuming things about cataloging) - are needed
here.
Again I mention Mann's recent article.
Or is this really unimportant? Is known item searching all that's
important? (and whatever else one can get that looks useful via
keywords). If that is the case, I am not sure what the business of
libraries will be in the future as others find myriad ways to fulfill
those functions more effectively.
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC)
11200 93rd Ave. North
Maple Grove, MN. 55369
Work phone: 763-391-7183
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 9:54 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Rules--was Calhoun at FoBC
Erin S. Stalberg wrote:
>
> There are a few assumptions built into your logic here that, in my
> opinion, need light. There was a bit of discussion at the FoBC the
> other day about these discussions not being about "reducing" costs,
but
> rather about "shifting" costs. Get the publishers more involved at
the
> beginning of the supply chain (shift cost to the publishers), get OCLC
> to pick up more slack, get authors (photographers, in the National
> Geographic Society example) to submit metadata, etc.
>
Another interesting statement at the meeting (I think it was Rick Lugg)
was that we have an odd way of thinking about "costs" -- we only see the
cost of cataloging, but we don't see the cost of having books
unavailable to our users because we have a cataloging backlog. In other
words, we only see our own costs, not the total costs to the community.
So in a sense we have already shifted some costs to the users, albeit
unconsciously.
kc
--
-----------------------------------
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
------------------------------------
Received on Thu Jul 12 2007 - 09:35:32 EDT