Re: Open Reply to Thomas Mann

From Jim's reply, below:
> I think there are solutions, and these solutions need the skills of
> librarians and especially catalogers. But I don't know if doing things
> the same, old way (making full-level MARC21/LCSH/LCC/LCNAF records) is
> a genuine, sustainable solution.

I'm not so sure traditional librarian & cataloging skills are the solution, either. 
One possible solution could be mad SEO skillz, affecting the defacto "where the users are" (Google) search results.

-Aaron
:-)'

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
> Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 9:07 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Open Reply to Thomas Mann
> 
> Till Kinstler wrote:
> 
> > We don't need a German Digital Library. There is already a Global
> > Digital Library, so "GDL" is already taken as a trademark, sorry (ok,
> > the German version uses DDB as label): "the net". We just need to put
> > these cultural heritage things on the Web in a usable way, not into a
> > centralized German national portal. That's hard enough, as we see in
> our
> > daily work.
> > There are sentences like "[...] digitalisiertes Kulturgut [...]
> zentral
> > über das Internet zur Verfügung zu stellen" (my translation: provide
> > central access to digitized cultural heritage over the Internet) and
> > "Aufbau und Betrieb eines zentralen nationalen Zugangsportals" (my
> > translation: development and operation of a central, national access
> > portal) in the formal agreement that make me wonder whether they
> finally
> > understood the decentralized nature of the Internet. The Internet
> works
> > so well (eg as a digital library) because of its decentralized
> structure.
> > That "German Digital Library" approach sounds like the next big
> > libraryland silo to me... Haven't we finally learned those don't
> work?
> 
> This sounds good, but then we run into the problem of finding
> materials. As only one example, there is a gorgeous, important sites
> put up by the Biblioteca Hertziana here in Rome (with the Max Planck
> Institut) and they put up a selection of their early printed guides to
> Rome (an important collection).
> http://www.biblhertz.it/deutsch/opac/dignel/digi-bhr-200.html
> 
> These are some of my favorite scanned books on the web, and the
> Hertziana did it right, but how you find them without knowing about
> this site, I don't know, e.g. the very first one: Mirabilia Roma (1475)
> gets lost in a regular Google search. As a result, these valuable
> materials are swallowed up in the depths of Google.
> 
> I think there are solutions, and these solutions need the skills of
> librarians and especially catalogers. But I don't know if doing things
> the same, old way (making full-level MARC21/LCSH/LCC/LCNAF records) is
> a genuine, sustainable solution. I also don't know if we need a single
> database to search, or more of a federated one, such as at the European
> Library: http://search.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/en/index.html or
> even something different like a torrent engine, or something I don't
> know about.
> 
> James Weinheimer  j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
> Director of Library and Information Services
> The American University of Rome
> via Pietro Roselli, 4
> 00153 Rome, Italy
> voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258
> fax-011 39 06 58330992