On 9/2/07, Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> In any ways, I don't think
> anyone on this list have ever questioned what the LIS people *have*
> done, in fact it's been stated over and over the wonderfulness of our
> legacy. The question is what they're doing right now apart from
> maintaining the status quo, what the high-end research is up to, what
> our current thinking is, and what our direction should be like. What
> are the leaders driving at, and, when it comes down to it, will any of
> it save the librarian world if you agree it needs saving?
I thought your question was what CS can learn from LIS and I discussed one thing in some detail that CS cannot do. It is a method of searching that I believe is important to retain somehow. Part of the very definition of a library involves reliability and trust, which involves what I wrote. Many think CS already knows these things, but based on all my experience, I certainly do not agree with that.
But, if you are asking about new trends and directions, I don't think there is anything coherent yet. There have been incredible changes in the last 15 or 20 years, with the introduction of the ILMS, the decimation of many technical service departments, vast retrospective conversions and the wild west of the internet, and so on, so I think many librarians are still reeling from these changes. To be honest, it's not just libraries. In my experience, the entire bibliographic apparatus in the world has been going through a great big blue funk, and it's not over yet.
If you are asking my opinion, I'm not very good at foretelling the future but there is one thing I simply believe. People want some kind of trusted place where those who work there care about them instead of just trying to get them to buy some other product they don't want or get them to swallow their propaganda. People want to be able to search things like "dogs" and not have to look at a bunch of offensive things about women, but they don't want their results censored either. You can do this in a library now. It is my belief (or maybe hope!) that even if libraries disappear, they will be recreated sooner or later by some businessperson who will probably make a lot of money at it.
If we are to survive as a profession, we have to cooperate--that is, really cooperate, and provide a trusted, reliable service. When it comes to catalog records, it is our standards that make us unique. They are all we have and if we give up those standards, then we are competing with automatic cataloging, which is a race we will lose. If you take away the standards from our catalog records (bibliographic/metadata/ records, whatever you want to call them) we have nothing that anyone will want.
> > At a certain level, the catalog can answer that kind of
> question, or at
> > least it should. for the Dostoyevsky, if there were a book about that
> topic,
> > and the cataloger did the job right, you would be able to do it.
>
> Hmm, what does that mean, if the cataloger did the job right? What
> does it mean to do it *right*? We cannot possibly foresee every
> question to every context of an item, can we?
That is a *huge* question, but it involves standards. If it is done right it is findable, otherwise, it can be found only by chance.
> > The second
> > could be done probably right now with good searching.
>
> Do you mean librarians doing the searching for them, or the mum in question?
>
> > I am convinced that if users understand concept searching,
> > they will demand it, if they demand it, it will be done.
>
> Doesn't Google already provide much of this? And aren't people already
> wanting us to be more like Google (in terms of better searching)?
> (People, not librarians, mind you)
Yes, and we need different interfaces to our catalogs. But they do not understand the pitfalls of searching google. This is something we must show them.
> > Users are good at finding funny videos on youtube, but when they
> > try to do something serious, they are completely lost, and .... they know
> > it.
>
> Hmm, not sure I follow this one. Why are they lost? Because they suck,
> or because the tools they use suck? I'm having a lot of "fun" lately
> helping primary school kids use their local library / catalog, and
> you're right in that they're lost in an almost unusable library
> catalog. :)
Because the tools we provide them suck. We must solve that. Maybe one thing that CS can learn from LIS is that the "catalog records" and the "catalog" are not the same thing. It is the catalog (our "expert system) that needs to be fixed.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Mon Sep 03 2007 - 09:20:44 EDT