For LC authorities and bibliographic records from 12/2006, see http://www.ibiblio.org/fred2.0/wordpress/?page_id=10
Not copyrightable in USA; rights may be reserved outside, though they
may have been waived for authorities.loc.gov .
Check with your own lawyers and LC to see what rules apply.
Simon
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 11, 2008, at 1:21 PM, "Charles Antoine Julien, Mr" <charles.julien_at_MAIL.MCGILL.CA
> wrote:
> Jimmie,
>
> I believe I'm one of those programmers...unfortunately the sad fact is
> that there is little or no funding or support for innovative library
> catalogue development.
>
> For example, I still can not get a library to give me data to
> develop my
> application mostly because the local subject authority files are
> commercially protected by LC (and other sources)...meanwhile Amazon
> offers a free Web service to their whole collection organized by
> subject...what's a pragmatic developer to do?
>
> As well, my committee was much more enthusiastic when I suggested I
> could develop an innovative search interface for Web based information
> (i.e., Amazon). The current state of affairs is that funding agencies
> see future in the Web (semantic Web, Web 2.0, 3.0, etc) and library
> applications, as a representative of pre-Web information storage and
> retrieval, receive little attention.
>
> Trust me I wanted to work on library data...I know subject headings
> are
> underutilized and not understood by end users...but there is just no
> incentive to do so...except being a contrarian.
>
> I sure hope there's a way out of this impasse for libraries...it just
> hasn't presented itself to me.
>
> Charles-Antoine Julien
> Ph.D Candidate
> School of Information Studies
> McGill University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jimmie Lundgren
> Sent: February 11, 2008 6:51 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Browsing percentages / analytics
>
> Good Morning,
>
> In reference to the statement below: " Thanks to
> the screwball rules for constructing precoordinated headings, you can
> expect around half (literally) to be unique even in very large
> catalogs which limits their usefulness for collocation purposes," I
> would like to point out that in the superior browse retrieval that was
> available in the old NOTIS catalog results of subject searches were
> not
> hidden behind their headings but able to be seen along with them. Thus
> even though a particular string might be used only once the record
> could
> be seen together with those records before and after it with similar
> but
> not exactly the same strings.
>
> For example, "Corn--Diseases and pests--Algeria" might have only one
> record associated with it in my catalog. In the NOTIS catalog one was
> able to see multiple headings and records simultaneously to easily
> also
> see those titles that might have the subject "Corn--Diseases and
> pests--Albania" and consider if they might also be useful. More
> "modern"
> OPACS force one to separately open each heading to view the lists of
> records associated with them.
>
> This is also a hindrance in considering authors who may have some
> works
> listed with their full names and others only with their middle
> initials.
> The superior catalog would permit viewing of multiple author headings
> together with the titles of their works and cross-references to
> preferred forms. This will become especially critical if catalogs
> increasingly blend article records that lack authority control into
> the
> mix of records.
>
> My ideal next generation catalog would not only offer users the
> fabulous
> faceting such as my catalog now has with Endeca, but also a
> transparent
> and user-friendly browse of headings with associated records and
> cross-references. I've just got to believe there is a programmer out
> there smart enough to understand the value of what I'm saying and make
> that happen.
>
> Thanks and best regards,
> Jimmie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee
> Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 10:40 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Browsing percentages / analytics
>
> On Feb 7, 2008 3:55 PM, Bennett Ponsford <BPonsfor_at_lib-gw.tamu.edu>
> wrote:
>> One of the (many) things that surprised me about our results was how
> seldom our library faculty/staff used the author headings browse
> (2.70%)
> or the subject headings browse (1.05%). Particularly given their
> preference for a nice, traditional, left-anchored title search
> (35.04%)
> over title keyword (6.06%).
>>
> The title is usually the name a work is known by, and calling for
> things by name rather than associated attributes (such as author)
> makes perfect sense. Subject headings browse is for geeks. Thanks to
> the screwball rules for constructing precoordinated headings, you can
> expect around half (literally) to be unique even in very large
> catalogs which limits their usefulness for collocation purposes.
>
> Subject heading searches in most catalogs remind me of constant
> examples in the computer world where we try to mold human behavior
> around the needs of our systems rather than trying to figure out how
> to work with what people do intuitively (e.g. requiring dates
> expressed YYYYMMDD, prohibiting certain common characters for many
> operations, Byzantine password regulations, etc)
>
> On Feb 8, 2008 8:32 AM, Bennett Ponsford <BPonsfor_at_lib-gw.tamu.edu>
> wrote:
>> Thanks for the info, Karen. One of the things I also want to look at
> is response to no hits messages at small libraries. My experience -
> entirely anecdotal - at my previous place of employment is that a
> lot of
> the students, especially grad students and faculty, didn't expect us
> to
> own much and so accepted a no hits message at face value.
>>
>
> The problem isn't just with no hits. It's also about what people do
> when they do get results.
>
> Even in our own literature, it is often obvious which 2 or 3 keyword
> searches where used to locate resources for a "literature review."
> Figuring out the best way to let users know of related works is not a
> straightforward problem. Logfile analysis can be helpful as can
> actually observing users, but if we don't have the motivation of the
> search to give us context, there is an awful lot of wiggle room for
> interpretation.
>
> kyle
Received on Mon Feb 11 2008 - 16:50:14 EST