Er, ok, obviously referring the bookstore was a mistake because people
are focusing on the wrong point. I am not saying we adopt a bookstore
model. I am not saying that bookstores don't shelve things in a model
similar to libraries.
I'm saying this building is chock full of books (by the way, bigger
than a big box store/smaller than The Strand) with no catalog and
people are able to find things.
I would also wager in our much bigger collections, where a catalog
/is/ necessary because 'browsing' would be too inefficient, people are
still using extremely crude searching methods and finding things.
I asking if (and betting probably yes) a vast majority of them are not
using any aspect of the MARC record that couldn't easily be rendered
in an unqualified Dublin Core and if this is true, is the effort of
descriptive cataloging being expended most appropriately.
-Ross.
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Kyle Banerjee <kyle.banerjee_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> After all, in my home town we have a very large used book store. It
>> has no publicly accessible inventory of their 'collection', and yet it
>> is always crowded with people that seem to have found what they want.
>>
>> Somehow, people have a knack for finding things even in the crudest of
>> classification.
>
> Just out of curiosity, how big is "very large?" I often hear of using
> bookstores as a model to emulate. However, the number of books in a
> very large bookstore is minuscule compared to a decent library
> collection. It's one thing to arrange tens of thousands of things,
> mostly on popular topics. It's another to arrange millions of things
> that come in different formats, publication patterns, etc.
>
> People may use libraries differently than they do bookstores. For
> example, in an academic library, a huge percentage of the patrons are
> trying to find numerous very specific materials (since they're working
> from a bibliography). In a used bookstore, they're probably searching
> for only a few specific things and might just be browsing to see
> what's interesting. In this case, you can be well served by a much
> looser system.
>
> I'm no cataloging fanboy since I think many of the most time consuming
> procedures amount to fidgeting with no benefit, but the bookstore
> experience is overrated. Besides, many bookstores use cataloging data
> (publisher created, CIP, etc) whether they state it or not...
>
> kyle
>
Received on Wed Feb 11 2009 - 14:54:01 EST