Stephens, Owen wrote:
> Jonathan raised a few issues. Firstly, he agreed with me about the way
> we express holdings data, and the fact that the physical holdings data
> in the ILS cannot be evaluated by software. Ross also mentioned this
> problem and how it lead to users having to wade through lists of print
> holdings. Ross also said they had decided not to put their print
> holdings in SFX. So - my question would be - why are we still doing
> this? Why haven't we just dumped our print holdings into our link
> resolvers?
Well, the ILS has support for work flow built into it for the staff that
enters this information. Our link resolvers do not. And as me and Karen
suggested before, we do not think current link resolver products are
actually up to it. And if it were entered in the link resolver database,
it would still need to be displayed in the OPAC of course.
I'm pretty confident an 'entering it in the link resolver software'
solution isn't right now ready to work. Why aren't we working toward
this solution? I'm not convinced it's the right solution to work for,
using our existing commercial link resolver products to try and control
physical serial holdings. But certainly, some solution is required....
> Or re-expressed them in the ILS to allow computers to read
> them sensibly?
I do not know. I wonder the same thing. To me, an energized cataloging
field and profession would be working on solutions to such things, and
would have solved them by now. Perhaps the cataloging field has been too
decimated by job cuts and de-professionalization. For whatever reason,
as far as I can tell, the cataloging field is rarely mobilized to work
on the problems that to me most effect our users experience.
By the way, I am putting quite a bit of work into Umlaut myself,
building on what Ross started with. Despite Ross's current lack of time
for Umlaut (a situation which may hopefully change in the not too
distant future), Umlaut is a continuing project. Which I hope to get
other libraries involved in. It's definitely something that still
requires _some_ tech expertise, although I am working to lower the bar.
If you are interested in deploying Umlaut at your library, feel free to
contact me. Some time in the next couple months, once I've got Umlaut in
a state where I'm comfortable doing it, I'm going to start trying to
aggresively recruit more Umlaut participants.
Jonathan
Received on Tue Sep 11 2007 - 09:08:03 EDT