Is our only goal to make cataloguing faster? I know that huge loads of
ebooks need to be dealt with and that faster would certainly help for
that task ... but ultimately don't we want better and by better I mean
better for our users. Its not about faster or finding the level of good
enough by copying Google, its about making our catalogues do what our
customers need them to do. Is there a difference between searching a
public library collection and searching an academic library? Jane
Jacobs pointed out earlier today (Subject: [NGC4LIB] "To everything a
purpose ...") the answer to that question is sometimes yes, sometimes
too. Surely that's the origin of Simple search and Advanced search, and
a reason to continue to provide both???
We just need to make our catalogues easier for our customers to use, its
not about dumbing anything down or giving up our professional
principles, its about serving our customers whether they're searching
for a book by Stephen King or doing research in nano robotics!
There is a difference between us and our patrons (its time we got off
the CS vs MLS track :) and focused more on the real purpose of this list.
Eric Lease Morgan said, in Mailing List Moderation:
Questions to ask ourselves include but are not
limited to:
* What is a library "catalog"?
* Who is its primary audience?
* Who are its other audiences?
* What are the needs of these audiences?
* What kind of content does a catalog include?
* What sorts of services does a catalog suppport?
* What sorts of questions can a catalog answer?
* How is a library catalog different from other indexes?
* What types of skills are necessary to create and maintain a
catalog?
* Considering time as well as money, what are reasonable costs
for a catalog?
Hear hear. As a newbie to this list, I have to say that while I find
the topics of discussion fascinating, they're not really helping me in
my quest for a new ILS. I need more practical discussion.
Cynthia Williamson
Collection Management Librarian
Hamilton, Ontario
----- Original Message -----
From: David M Guion DMGUION <dmguion_at_UNCG.EDU>
Date: Thursday, September 6, 2007 10:21 am
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] can a computer program uniquely identify an author?
> When I was in graduate school, a hot topic in musicology was the
> authorship of a set of quartets known as Haydn's opus 3. There were
> goodreasons to suppose that Haydn did not actually compose those
> works. To
> make a long story short, many scholars argued that the real
> composer was
> someone named Romanus Hoffstetter. A friend of mine used this
> controversyto develop techniques of computer-aided analysis of
> music. Analyzing the
> op. 3 quartets along with a set undisputably by Haydn and another
> undisputably by Hoffstetter, he found a high statistical
> probability that
> Hoffstetter was the composer. He successfully defended his
> dissertation in
> 1977.
>
> There is no question that a computer can uniquely identify an author.
> There is also no question that whatever computers could do thirty
> yearsago, today's computers can do faster and with less cumbersome
> programmingtools. The only question I have is whether they can do
> it quickly enough
> and on a large enough scale to give librarians a really practical
> tool. I
> suppose it is only a matter of time if it is not possible already.
> Butthen that brings up another question: at whatever time it becomes
> technologically feasible to use a computer to identify an author,
> will the
> same sort of people who gave us our crummy OPACs be doing the
> programming,or will we get a really useful product?
>
> ^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
> David Guion
> Music Cataloger
> University of North Carolina, Greensboro
> Jackson Library
> 320 College Ave.
> Greensboro, NC 27412
> (336) 334-5781
> dmguion_at_uncg.edu
>
> The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
>
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Received on Thu Sep 06 2007 - 09:22:57 EDT