I think there may be some mincing of words here.
I've had the thought that it's all metadata. Everything. If you look at
this in a certain way, the distinction between metadata and "real" data is
arbitrary. Even words in a book are just arbitrary collections of written
shapes that are proxies to concepts, thoughts and things in the real world,
and therefore assigned meaning. Words are organised into sentences to tie
those things together into trains of thought, then logically segmented into
paragraphs, parts, then chapters, then books and then to the structures we
call catalogs to organise these books and so on.
Everything is arbitrary and is a label, or an interface, if you will. MARC,
XML, Dublin Core included. None of those are special in and of themselves
and they will come and go with time. The ideas remain, however, and that is
what needs to be focused on.
Peter Schlumpf
www.avantilibrarysystems.com
On 12/6/09, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Jim Weinheimer pointed out this interesting report in an earlier posting:
>
> Directors' views on the future of cataloguing in Australia/New Zealand,
> 2007: a survey / Jenny Warren.
> http://www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/documents/Warren2007.doc
>
> A couple of excerpts...
>
> "The word 'cataloguer' is, rightly or wrongly, associated with the past and
> with one form of metadata only: MARC records. As one director commented: 'a
> 'cataloguer' is however sadly a bygone relic.'"
>
> "It was expected that the survey would provide evidence that the term
> 'cataloguer' is on the way out, particularly for non-professional staff, but
> some sites are well ahead on that score. Also, many sites reported that
> their cataloguing staff are engaged in various other activities. This
> comment from a tertiary education library: “[We do] not have specific
> 'cataloguers' any more; those professional positions in our Collection
> Management Unit are now 'CMU Team Coordinators' and they may be asked to do
> any professional tasks in the CMU.” And this also from the tertiary sector:
> “There really is no such thing as a 'cataloguer' any more. Cataloguing is
> just one of many tasks that librarians, library assistants and others
> perform. In this day and age no one should have such a narrowly defined job
> title – it’s very 1970's. Even having a separate 'technical services'
> division is extremely outmoded.”"
>
> But I'm not so sure I like the following suggestion about replacements for
> "cataloging" and "cataloger":
>
> "If the words 'cataloguer' and 'cataloguing' are on the way out, then the
> word 'metadata' has certainly caught on, and it should be remembered that
> MARC records are themselves a form of metadata. There really is no suitable
> verb for the noun 'metadata' yet, but in a recent paper, Dick Miller from
> Stanford has used the word 'metaloging' (or 'metaloguing') which is
> appealing, and a good candidate for the next label. It would be a very
> acceptable term to represent the work of describing resources in any of a
> variety of schemas, so that a 'metaloguer' could be working in MARC, XML,
> Dublin Core and so on, or with any taxonomy."
>
> Bernie Sloan
>
>
>
>
Received on Sun Dec 06 2009 - 12:15:39 EST