Stephen McLaughlin wrote:
> Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> "3) The name authority record contains virtually nothing that could
> interest a user -- no bio about the author, nothing to help the user
> know who it is we are talking about."
>
> I guess this idea bothers me because a lot of discussion centers around
> how we don't have time to do this or that current cataloging function,
> and now we're supposed to spend time compiling author biographies? Is
> that really our job?
No, actually it's a job for subject experts. Which is why we should
allow them to interact with the catalog -- it's a way they could share
their knowledge with each other. Imagine, the catalog as knowledge, not
things. And it shouldn't happen "in" any catalog but in a way that it
can be accessed from any catalog, so it only has to happen once.
Yes, there will be conflicting views. We should want conflicting views,
or at least we shouldn't be maintaining that there is ONE RIGHT VIEW of
the knowledge universe, should we? We expect that there are multiple
reviews available of a book, some pro, some con, and that's a good
thing. So there will also be multiple views of authors.
(I'm reading a book I picked up at the Berkeley PL called "Cataloging
Heresy", 025.3 C28 1992 -- it has a great chapter on the fallacy of
cataloging neutrality. You might want to ILL it -- I'll have it back in
a week or two ;-))
>
> If the response is, "No, we won't write it, we'll link to something on
> the web," that really opens up a can of worms. Which web sites?
> Wikipedia? What happens when the website vanishes? Or will we buy an
> author database from a vendor, in which case everybody who wants
> authority records will have to buy access to the same database.
Uh, none of the above? The era of "hard links" and adding enhanced data
into the catalog is hopefully coming to an end, for some of the reasons
you give. That's where web services come in. As an example, for those
using an OpenURL resolver, you can "pre-search" before you offer a link.
And you can offer the user more than one resource, as many resolvers
do today. The information you link to will be outside the catalog, since
having everyone hold copies of the same data is really very inefficient.
>
> I can see a lot of ways in which authority headings could be improved,
> but this just doesn't seem like a useful direction to me.
I guess I was thinking broader than authority headings, to the data that
we provide about "authors" and other creatures that fit into the
"entities" of FRBR. As we begin to view them as entities in their own
right, possibilities open up. For example, the OCLC Identities project,
which uses datamining to provide information about authors. It ends up
with some very rich information.
kc
>
> Steve McLaughlin
> San Francisco Public Library
> smclaughlin_at_sfpl.org
>
> The views expressed in this message do not necessarily represent the
> views of the San Francisco Public Library.
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
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 Aug 23 2007 - 07:53:24 EDT