> I was talking about some of this cataloguing stuff with Jodi Schneider.
> Today we were wondering how much of the cataloguing problems that can't be
> solved by machines could be broken down to simple tasks and handed over to
> the Mechanical Turk.
Or a Turk who loves what he does. LibraryThing members are doing
*6,000* FRBR acts per day now. That's a minimum of 12,000 works
combined. Similar effort goes into author combinations, identification
of "distinct" homonymous authors, etc. etc.
> I'm starting to think an Internet-scale open bibliographic metadata commons
> (with complete FRBRization) is coming soon, and if we're not the ones who
> make it, the rest of the Semantic Web people will make it for us with the
> parts we've made available so far, and lots of librarians will sit in their
> basement cubicles wondering why no-one else listens when they tell each
> other how important their work is.
I think we're at a cusp. Either that will happen or OCLC will button
down bibliographic data, and smart, innovative people will move onto
helping where their help is wanted, and doesn't involve a lawsuit.
Tim
Received on Sat Feb 14 2009 - 11:55:23 EST