Weinheimer Jim wrote:
> Jan Szczepanski wrote:
>
>
>> > What do you do?
>> I will make a small part of these titles part of my catalog
>> > How do you select from that?
>> As I said. As usual, just the most important and just what my customers
>> needs.
>> > How do you "get control" of that?
>> What do you mean by control?
>> > Do you look at item #1 somehow, make a decision, go to #2, make a
>> decision, then send the selected items on to cataloging?
>> The same procedure as usual, yes.
>> > It seems to me that everyone is swamped already, and in any
>> case, *nobody* will wait for us to make a selection from 8,000,000 items,
>> catalog them and organize them in some way. Everybody (including me) will start
>> in with Google Books, using whatever tools are there, and they will refuse to
>> wait several lifetimes while we do our work.
>> >
>> It will be hard work. But the marc-records are there and the selection
>> will not take much time if we work together.
>> > So, while I agree that people want and need selection, the old methods for
>> doing it break down completely in this new environment.
>> I can't see that. I have collected and cataloged nearly 35.000 free
>> e-books and collected more thant 10.000 free e-journals. With a couple
>> of friends using the old methods we can make it. Maybe it will take a
>> couple of years but we can.
>>
>
> I don't know how long it took you to select the 35,000 e-books, but let's just say that you were able to select those 35,000 books in one year. With 8,000,000 books, that comes out to 228.5 years. If you could select 350,000 books in one year, it would only take 22.8 years. Selecting from 8,000,000 items in a couple of years means 4,000,000 items selected in each year, and even with 100 selectors, each selector would have to deal with 40000, or about 110 items per day, every day.
>
We shouldn't forget that the collection is growing very fast as well.
And what about the poor catalogers? Let's say that you can select at
that rate and you would only select say, 15% of the total, but that
comes out to 1,200,000 items. The catalogers will be jumping out the
windows, screaming!
Neither was Rome built in one day. Of course it will take time and of
course people will use The Big Google Deal. We have an enormous task
before us.I may be just one but how many are we together? In Europe
there are more than 350.000 and I think there are some in US also. Shall
we say 500.000?. How many minutes would it take for say 1.000.000
librarians?
> In spite of all of that, I don't think our users will wait 228 years, 22 years or even 2 years. They will use it from the beginning, and then, why do we expect users will stop using those tools for our "better" ones? I don't see this as having the slightest chance of success.
>
Of course it will take time and of course people will use The Big Google
Deal but that will not stop us from building collections that will be
valuable for our users. We can give them one correct answer to many
questions while the machine will give them a choice of at least 144.000.
> Much better would be to work with Google to construct useful queries into the database, perhaps being able to tag certain items in specific ways. Plus, the task of selection today is too vast to remain only in the hands of librarians. Lots of other partners need to be involved including faculty, and today, I think it can be done.
>
Faculty? They are not paid for that! They are no experts! Of course they
will build big private libraries but that is for their own use but I
wouldn't say no if they donated these pdfs to the library.
> Jim Weinheimer
>
>
--
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 Wed Sep 16 2009 - 07:07:16 EDT