Alexander Johannesen schrieb:
> You're all to blame, all librarians, catalogers, leaders, managers,
> vendors and associates! You've all put this together because you all
> thought this would be the right thing to do. Maybe it even was, back
> when this manifestation grew out of the 80's and early 90's. Now what?
>
> Now that the world has changed,
That doesn't eo ipso imply catalogs have to change,
> the business model is changing,
nor even this.
> the user expectations are changing, the need is changing,
they are diversifying, of course, and there are new expectations made
realistic by new technology. This does not mean that everything that
used to be expected in catalogs is no longer valid or no longer needed.
Expectations are certainly higher, but legacy metadata cannot possibly
serve them all.
> the playing field is changing,
and we _are_ present im playing fields that didn't exist some
years ago, are we not?
> the competition is changing (and emerging)
yes, but this is more to do with acquisitions profiles and decisions and
collection building rather than cataloging.
> and the
> resources are growing vastly out of manually inclined librarians'
> tapping fingers and trained eyes
Manual, original cataloging input today is around 1% of what it used to
be with catalog cards and before the utilities came. Nowadays,
we are using all sorts of metadata sources we can get ahold of, and
putting them to new kinds of uses. But there are all sorts of new
resources we cannot get ahold of. There are many the possession of
which wouldn't make much of a difference, but there are also many
that are simply too expensive to acquire or license.
> You've all got yourselves to blame for where you are, but here's the
> clincher; only you can get yourselves out of it. No one is going to
> help you, because, frankly, nobody understands why you're so stuck.
>
We are, firstly, not looking for a scapegoat, and secondly, this
holds for everybody, even for Google, should they get themselves
in a mess. (They are beyond that? So thought AIG and Lehman Bros.)
So, I'm afraid, Alex, your rant kicks out in all the wrong directions.
As information providers, libraries can impossibly regain the quasi-
monopoly they once had - but I don't hear anyone saying they should.
For, even when they still had it, they did not satisfy all
user expectations - there was just _nobody_ who did or who would have
been able to or pretending to be able. Since neither back then nor of
course today could libraries conceivably do everything for everybody,
there's nothing very wrong with the competitive situation we are now in.
And I don't think this situation is easy for anyone.
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Feb 16 2009 - 10:09:14 EST