Here's labor-intensive for you:
In the mid 1970s I was working on a special project for the University of Illinois Library and they assigned me to an empty desk in the cataloging department. I remember my first day on the job watching three catalogers meet for 90 minutes, debating which subject headings to assign to a specific book...yes, three professional librarians, an hour-and-a-half, subject headings, one book. And this was not uncommon...everything was original cataloging to them. They had a huge backlog.
This was at the time when Hugh Atkinson became University Librarian at UIUC. He increased the use of OCLC for copy cataloging and eliminated the backlog in an amazingly short time frame.
Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates
Bloomington, IN
--- On Wed, 4/22/09, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> From: Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu>
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 7:25 AM
> I haven't read it all either, but one point (p. 60)
>
> "Subject Headings and Subject Information
> When end-user survey respondents selected “more subject
> information” as an
> enhancement priority, what did they mean? It is unlikely,
> given the relatively few
> unique subject-rich words contributed to a catalog
> description by controlled subject
> headings,9 that they mean more controlled subject headings.
> Given end-user survey
> respondents’ top choices for catalog enhancement and what
> end-user focus group
> participants reported, “more subject information” is
> more likely to be interpreted as
> subject-rich data elements not generally included in a
> standard catalog description."
>
> I don't know if I agree with the conclusion here. I
> think it would be just as likely that when people said they
> wanted "more subject information" it could be that
> they wanted more subjects to click on.
>
> They go on to say:
>
> 'At the same time, controlled subject terms and phrases
> serve end users in a number
> of ways: as subject-rich index terms; to support
> multilingual subject searching (when
> records contain subject headings in more than one
> language); as facets for refi ning
> or expanding searches; for browsing; as words or phrases
> linked to classifi cation
> or other terminologies; as a factor in determining
> relevance ranking; and more.
> To support these features, today’s catalogs rely on
> labor-intensive practices for
> producing controlled subject headings. Given the growing
> concern that these
> traditional methods are not sustainable going forward, it
> may be necessary for
> libraries to fi nd more economical means to achieve the
> benefi ts to end users that
> controlled subject vocabularies provide."
>
> These conclusions certainly betray the researchers' own
> biases, repeating the old saw that "it's too
> labor-intensive" without providing any alternatives,
> such as, making tools to help catalogers become vastly more
> productive than they are now.
>
> Most of the time an experienced cataloger can provide basic
> subject headings highly efficiently and is not that
> time-consuming, although some items can be more difficult of
> course. Certainly there are many possibilities today, but
> the unquestioned attitude is that almost everything we do is
> too labor-intensive. I wish somebody would research: what
> wouldn't be too labor intensive? What about subject
> headings made in 10 minutes? 5 minutes? 2 minutes?
>
> And of course when products of our work is shared widely,
> the labor savings is that much greater.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
Received on Wed Apr 22 2009 - 11:43:53 EDT