Which library is collecting every book produced? The bookwire figures
are just not relevant.
Quality selection makes it possible to handle. Secondly, more and more
countries are now
joining OCLC and more and more metadata are shared.
I wouldn't say that metadata is the problem. The real problem is that
noby cares about the
open acces resources out there. Who is making quality selection of the
hundred of thousands
free e-books? We can't just rely on the Google machine we have to build
our own collections
and connect the collections with good metadata that are out there
already. What we have done
during the lat hundred years has to be repeated once more and that is
possible to don within
say ten years because we can build on the metadata already done. But the
point is that no
library is interested in collecting free e-books.
Jan
Karen Coyle wrote:
> Tim Spalding wrote:
>>> 1. Quality collection building and metadata production is becoming
>>> unsustainable.
>>>
>>
>> This I wonder about. Librarians aren't getting more expensive. If the
>> data is good, it's good. How does it become unsustainable?
>>
>>
>
> It's unsustainable because the rate of information production is much
> higher than it was 100 years ago when the library practices were
> developed. Many times higher, I would say. Although book sales are
> down, the number of book titles being published has risen greatly in
> recent decades. [1] In addition, libraries need to incorporate music,
> films, and even web sites into their collections. At the same time,
> cataloging departments are being down-sized because library budgets
> aren't keeping up with the rate of inflation, much less the increased
> rate of document production and pricing.
>
> Before the use of machine-readable cataloging, libraries had huge
> "back logs" of uncataloged published materials. One mid-western
> librarian boasted that his back log was the second largest library in
> his state. We got rid of the backlog through online cataloging, which
> greatly sped up the production of catalog data. That caused many
> libraries to think that the problem had been solved, and they shifted
> their personnel from cataloging to ... well, it's not clear, although
> if you look at the ARL statistics, spending is up for systems and
> technology, and generally down for staff (proportionally). It used to
> be that staff was 85% of a library's budget, now it's around 65% in
> some cases. That was then... before computers made it possible for
> more people to produce more documents.
>
> Clearly what needs to happen is that metadata production has to be
> even more shared that it is today, and that means shared with
> publishers and information creators. But the arcanity (is that a
> word?) of library cataloging practices make it nearly impossible for
> anyone not deeply steeped in library practices to participate in
> creating library data. We need to give up the arcane practices so that
> we can popularize the practice of metadata creation, or at least move
> some of it outside of libraries.
>
> kc
> [1] http://www.bookwire.com/bookwire/decadebookproduction.html
>
--
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
those of the Gothenburg University Library
Jan Szczepanski
Förste bibliotekarie
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
Box 222
SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
Tel: +46 31 7861164 Fax: +46 31 163797
E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski_at_ub.gu.se
Received on Mon Mar 02 2009 - 02:22:12 EST