B.G. Sloan writes
> Nathan Rinne says of library data: "There *is* value. Tremendous value. And scholars and the elites of society know it."
>
> I think that's somewhat of an exaggeration.
I concur.
> Sure, undoubtedly *some* scholars think library data have tremendous
> value. But I'd bet that many of the scholars who regularly and
> succcessfully use library catalogs don't spend much time thinking
> about the underlying data.
Bernie mixes up libary data and catalogs.
> I've talked to scholars about library data (i.e., about their
> experiences using catalogs). While they tend to value librarians and
> value what's in the library's collection, quite a few of them only
> *tolerate* library *data*. One professor even went so far as to say
> that he viewed the catalog and its underlying data as a "necessary
> evil", the only tool he knew of for navigating the library's
> collection. And then there are the scholars who avoid using library
> data. Some studies have shown that using the catalog ranks pretty
> far down the list of methods that scholars use to find relevant
> information.
Bernie continues to treat library data and catalogs together. It's
not astonishing since biblographic data has been tied to one
particular catalog, later to one particular web site.
Starting in 1993 I pioneered the building of a bilbliographic
dataset that can be used in many end user interfaces. That's
the RePEc digital library for economics. In fact RePEc has NO
user interface of its own. It's a point that 16 years on,
still causes some confusion with librarians and scholars alike.
RePEc has been tremendeously successful based on a model
of resource and task sharing. While library catalog data
may become more freely available, and thus increasingly valuable,
I don't see much task sharing and specialization coming from
the library community. Institutional repositories are a timid
first step, we need more in this direction.
Cheers,
Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
skype: thomaskrichel
Received on Wed Sep 16 2009 - 11:54:35 EDT