I really don't think the sky is falling, nor will it when Google books get online. I don't catalog all the books available to our students for ILL now and I won't be cataloging all of Google's content either. I don't catalog the Gutenberg Project content either. I let them provide access to their content. I do catalog some Web sites because they seem especially appropriate for our students or staff. Some are so well done they are worth highlighting. I don't worry that I can't do them all. Don't need them all in our catalog. Like Jan said, we will still select for our users. Even federated searching tends to overwhelm our people with too many choices. We'll have actual books here in the library because that's what many, many of our students prefer. They like to leaf back and forth as they take notes, etc. All in all our future looks bright I think. The addition of Google Books to the mix just increases our value.
Michael Mitchell
Technical Services Librarian
Brazosport College
Lake Jackson, TX
michael.mitchell at brazosport.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:58 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Selection collection out of control
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!
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.
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.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Wed Sep 16 2009 - 09:47:23 EDT