> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jan Szczepanski
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 4:36 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] food for thought and discussion
>
> I'm collecting free e-books and I have the answer when I'm asked "on
> what shelf can I find
> the e-books". It's our catalog. I'm expecting we will within not so many
> years have hundred
> of thousands of free e-books from many sources. With the help of OCLC
> WorldCat of course
> we will, as we always, make them visible through our "catalog". What's
> the matter with you
> people and your "databases"?
>
> Jan
That day is already here. With the million book project (now called the
universal library), Google books, MS Live Books, plus so many separate
projects around the world, it's already here. This doesn't even count all of
the open access journals, either formally part of the open access movement
or just being put on the web for everyone, as are almost all of the UN
publications and many think tank publications.
My own opinion is that the traditional functions of the catalog of finding
materials reliably by name, title, and subject, are just as important now as
it ever was. This was never enough for everyone and it never worked as well
as many librarians like to think. Here is an example from my own career:
I was Slavic-languages cataloger at a major institution, and when the Soviet
Union disintegrated and the Iron Curtain fell down, it was an *incredible*
amount of work to fix it al. Almost every heading changed. Lots of people
even changed their names. But I and my fabulous staff managed to do it in
the catalog (i.e. the computerized one). Other libraries talked about this
achievement. I was really proud until...
Our library had a retrospective conversion project where all of the catalog
cards made up until 1980 were then put online. Almost none of these headings
were updated, and the situation in the catalog was worse than ever! This
really made me mad....
Until I realized that I had been wrong from the beginning. Although I had
great control over *my little bit* of the entire resources of the library, a
huge amount was simply out of my sight. What I was really angry about was
that I was faced with the reality of the situation--one that *every user*
had seen for a long time. They had had to deal with those cards and their
outdated headings all along, but I could ignore them. I just didn't have
them in my face before. And then I wondered about the journal indexes. And
the old indexes in the books, old bibliographies, and so on. This was a
rather humbling moment for me.
Librarians like to think that they have things more or less under control
now, but that's only because they refuse to deal with monsters like Google
Books, which is really terrifying when you stop to think about it. Those
materials in there are very definitely valuable for our users.
If librarians refuse to deal with Google Books and all of these incredible
projects out there, which are overwhelming, but what our users obviously
want (including myself!), I'm afraid that our users will ignore us.
Our traditional methods of access remain important, but not everything.
James Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 327
fax-011 39 06 58330992
> John Dillon wrote:
> > Though I don't follow these discussions closely enough... it seems to
> > me, especially in the light of a list of functionalities given by Eric
> > below, that "catalog" is mostly a hopelessly old, static, and
> > unhelpfully ambiguous term. It basically seems not up to the job. If
> > the goal is to have a noun or name that does justice to what current
> > library electronic resources can and do deliver, then my sense is
> > "catalog" ought to be jettisoned forever.
> >
> > Off the top of my head, I guess "database" is at least much better.
> > What other terms are being used/considered? Seems even a totally new or
> > foreign word would be better than "catalog" and its old baggage. Or do
> > people think "library catalog" can be rehabbed enough to not be
> > continually limited by association with the inherently simple notions of
> > a mail order or academic course catalog (etc)?
> >
> > I do believe that actual functionality in any given catalog is what
> > really counts, not what you call it, but I also think "catalog" is
> > inherently a stumbling block, lacks essential appeal, and mostly fails
> > to convey appropriate expectations, especially to newer users each year.
> >
> >
> > Though truth be told, our library still helps promotes this word, but
> > maybe we'll reconsider that again.
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> >> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan
> >> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 8:42 AM
> >> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> >> Subject: [NGC4LIB] food for thought and discussion
> >>
> >> When I think about the library "catalog" I think that it will
> >> contain more than just metadata about library materials but
> >> also the materials themeselves. Think mostly books, journal
> >> articles, encyclopedia articles, definitions, images, data
> >> sets, etc. Moreover, the library "catalog" will enable people
> >> to do things with the items in the collection. It is more than
> >> just find and get. For example:
> >>
> >> Add to my collection - Once an item is displayed, select it to
> >> add it your "your library" and optionally add it to a sub-section
> >> of your library. This is like bookmarking.
> >>
> >> Annotate - As you read a text, the system will allow you to
> >> comment on the text, and associate each comment with a particular
> >> word, sentence, paragraph, section, etc. This would function much
> >> like scholarly annotated version of text like The Annotated
> >> Alice.
> >>
> >> Cite - Select a text. Choose an option. Return a citation of the
> >> item in any number of formats. MLA. Chicago. Etc. It would be
> >> nice of each text could be associated with a URI.
> >>
> >> Compare & contrast - This is one of the "kewlest" function.
> >> Select any number of texts. Two. Five. Fifty. One hundred. Select
> >> compare. The system reads each text and analyses the words it
> >> finds. It counts the words (much like a concordance) and returns
> >> a report listing things such as: these words appear in 90% of the
> >> documents, these words appear in 45% of the documents, this
> >> document contains most of the words contained in the other
> >> documents, this document contains the most number of unique
> >> words. By going through this process a person would be able to
> >> see which documents were similar to each other and which
> >> documents were dissimilar. Optionally, the user could seed the
> >> compare & contrast documents with word or phrases to focus on a
> >> particular idea.
> >>
> >> Create different version of - Given a document in TEI, transform
> >> the document into PDF, something designed for your iPhone, or
> >> XHTML. Given a document created for one ebook reader, convert it
> >> into a version for another reader.
> >>
> >> Create flip book - A simple approach it to create an interface
> >> allowing the person to "flip" through the book very quickly
> >> similar to the way a person makes pages turn very quickly in
> >> their hands. Even better, extract all the images from one or more
> >> texts and create slide show of the images. This will allow a
> >> person to scan/browse many texts quickly and select a text
> >> accordingly.
> >>
> >> Create tag cloud from - As a graphic illustration of what a text
> >> (or collection of texts) is about, count the number of times
> >> words appear in a document and lay them out according to their
> >> rank, much like Del.icio.us tag clouds, only bigger.
> >>
> >> Delete from my collection - This is the inverse of Add To My
> >> Collection.
> >>
> >> Do concordance against - A concordance counts words, allows a
> >> person to list the words in alphabetic or numeric order, and then
> >> points you to the location of the words in the text. This is just
> >> about the oldest form of indexing and it was originally applied
> >> to the bible hundreds of years ago.
> >>
> >> Do rudimentary morphology - Given a word and a
> >> dictionary/thesaurus, extract from one or more texts the way the
> >> word was used, both forward and backward. The system would take
> >> advantage of alternations in spellings as well as meanings.
> >> Tricky!
> >>
> >> Find opposite - Determine the "aboutness" of a document. Use a
> >> thesaurus to find the antonym of the "aboutness" and find new
> >> documents.
> >>
> >> Find similar - This is the same as Find Opposite except the
> >> system looks for synonyms.
> >>
> >> Hilight - This is similar to Annotate except the annotations are
> >> graphical in nature. This is similar to using a hi-lighter pen on
> >> books or diagraming sentences.
> >>
> >> Incorporate into syllabus - Link a given document to another
> >> document and supplement the link with a short blurb such as an
> >> assignment.
> >>
> >> Map to controlled vocabulary term - Exploit user tags and/or
> >> statistical analysis to determine the "aboutness" of a document
> >> or the documents' author authority heading, and find the closest
> >> match in a "subject heading" list such as LCSH or Dewey.
> >>
> >> Plot on a map - Given a gazetteer, find all the places in a
> >> document and plot them on a map in terms of both time and place.
> >> Associate each point with a passage in the text.
> >>
> >> Print - Move the document from the screen to paper. It would be
> >> even cooler if the printed version were printed like books are
> >> "suppose" to print -- odd pages appear on the right, chapter
> >> headers appear on odd pages, title page and verso, "properly"
> >> numbered pages, back-of-the-book indexes, colophon, etc.
> >>
> >> Purchase - Own the item in exchange for money.
> >>
> >> Rate - Give the text a numeric rating such as 1 - 5.
> >>
> >> Review - Write a description of the text and its content. This a
> >> verbose version of Rate.
> >>
> >> Save - Copy a version of the text from the remote site to your
> >> local file system.
> >>
> >> Search - Enter a term and return/navigate the user to sections of
> >> one or more documents.
> >>
> >> Search my collection - Query only the documents you have put on
> >> your "bookshelf".
> >>
> >> Share - Create one or more lists of documents and publish the
> >> lists.
> >>
> >> Summarize - This is very similar to Review but is not necessarily
> >> intend to include value judgments. This can be done by a human,
> >> but it can also be done by a computer through various extraction
> >> techniques.
> >>
> >> Tag - Associate with your own controlled (or not so controlled)
> >> vocabulary term.
> >>
> >> Trace author - Determine author(s) of document, and find other
> >> works by or about them.
> >>
> >> Trace citation - Extract citations from text's bibliography. See
> >> who else has used those citations, both before the text was
> >> written and/or after the text was written.
> >>
> >> Translate - Convert the text(s) or passages into other languages.
> >>
> >> What is this thing called the library "catalog" anyway? Maybe
> >> it is more like an index as opposed to a catalog, and maybe it
> >> is really a tool to assist in the work of library constituents.
> >>
> >> Food for thought and discussion.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Eric Lease Morgan
> >> Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
> >> University Libraries of Notre Dame
> >>
> >> (574) 631-8604
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
> --
> De åsikter som framförs här är mina personliga
> och inte ett uttryck för Göteborgs universitets-
> biblioteks hållning
>
> Opinions expressed here are my own and not
> that of Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek
>
>
>
> Jan Szczepanski
> Förste bibliotekarie
> Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
> Box 222
> SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
> Tel: +46 31 773 1164 Fax: +46 31 163797
> E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski_at_ub.gu.se
Received on Thu Mar 13 2008 - 11:03:36 EDT