Karen Coyle wrote:
> Isn't a lot of this the difference between searching metadata and
> searching full texts? Surely the full text search will be richer and the
> results will be more informative. I like the idea of having metadata *in
> addition to* full text, but metadata alone is looking very limited
> compared to full text.
The indexing techniques for full text are much different from those for
metadata, and I'm not sure they are anywhere near mature yet. They
do, however, open up access to the content of texts. Whereas metadata
leave the text as such as a black box you need to obtain first and then
look into for yourself, after you've found it - so much more
time-consuming and inconvenient.
Metadata, and along with it cataloging and controlled vocabularies,
are by now probably an idea whose time has gone. MARC21 incarnations,
certainly. RDA does little more than refine and extend Cutter's objects
and Paris principles, it makes no inroads into content text indexing
like the handling of ToC data as a minimum. It no more than mentions
subject data elements when all OPACs are long since integrating subject
access with name and title indexing plus whatever they can get from
third party sources. To call RDA a code for the 21st century just
looks a hoax, and the 21 in MARC21 a sad joke. RDA and MARC21 are
not exactly bad at doing what they do, but nowadays we would need to
do more and new and different things. Which does not mean all we
used to do is now obsolete and no longer useful, it's only too
expensive in more than one way.
> And we all know that LCSH has huge problems,
> scattering topics all over the catalog, as Tim shows here.
Yes, classification is conceptually better, also more language-neutral
(that's been known for at least a hundred years),
and Tim's new OSC will likely be a huge success. Tim's approach of
outsourcing subject indexing, and most of cataloging indeed, to the
catalog users is probably the only economically viable metadata concept
at a large scale for the 21st century. By default, the "Cult of the
amateur" is taking over, for better or worse. (For scholarly and
scientific matter, it remains to be seen. LT is a virtual public
library.)
Summing up:
1. Quality collection building and metadata production is becoming
unsustainable.
2. Metadata-free information seeking is highly popular.
3. Search has become a pervasive activity in which everyone
consider themselves experts in no need of learning.
Librarians as teachers (Dewey) in this situation? Absurd.
With the mountains of stuff growing ever faster, taking in what one
finds with method 2 absorbs all the time a person has. Which makes
the use of libraries a no-option for this person, and to regard a
library as a potential time saver can't occur naturally to them.
"... immaturity is self-imposed when its
cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve
and courage to use it without guidance from another."
So we have to diagnose a lack of understanding today, but at the same
time a great resolve and courage to use it without guidance from
another.
I'd appreciate Kant's assessment of this situation.
B. Eversberg
Received on Tue Feb 24 2009 - 07:21:50 EST