Ah yes. And if yours are an example of the people skills associated with Information Science then I'm sure you'll have no trouble moving the world into your corner. I think I'll keep this rant of yours to demonstrate the biggest difference between Library Science which is based on people and society and info sci which is basically math. And we know how much everyone loves math.
You know my posts may sound simple and uninformed to someone outside of librarianship but I don't think the problems are actually too difficult to figure out. Info scientists can make some new digital tools and we librarians will adapt them and apply them to what we do in libraries. Info sci and librarianship are not one and the same and I don't believe they ever will or should be (despite some obvious overlap).
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 Alexander Johannesen
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 7:26 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] After MARC...MODS?
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 19:32, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> But on the other hand, when the layman neither "needs nor cares" about
> it, is that really the correct attitude? After all, a layman, by definition, doesn't
> know very much about it. I guess it depends on who the layman is. If the
> layman is just an interested spectator, that may be one thing, but if the
> layman is helping to build a house or something important, I think they
> should need and care to know about it.
Well, in our case there is no mystery; it's librarians vs. everybody
else. The librarian domain is something that's in the interest of most
people, and as much as most people "needs or cares" about the reason
we have librarians and libraries, they don't give a monkey's bottom
about the minutiae of the twilight-zone between AACR2 and ISBD; that
stuff is only interesting to people who are several steps removed from
both reality and the evolution of information science. It's nonsense,
it's piffle, it's caring about where you put the life-guards flags up
on the beach when the tsunami hits. This stuff is something nobody
needs nor cares about, not anymore, except die-hard catalogers who
find some sadistic pleasure in rules and regulation that don't mean
anything to anyone else. They don't help us find things better;
they're not computer friendly. They don't aid in searching; they don't
aid in textual analysis. They don't help us build collections; they
don't capture knowledge. Why?! Why are you doing these things?!
Aaaaargh!
Yes! Yes, we understand they they perhaps *were* useful. But they no
longer are or are only now for just a few moments more, so if
catalogers value their arcane knowledge and would like to either have
a job or aid the human development of knowledge management (or both,
hopefully) they need to justify their knowledge in light of the
direction of the future, and definitely shape it accordingly. Saying
that some ways of doing meta data capture and markup is important
*doesn't*make*it*so* when it's so easy to point to computerized
alternatives. There's a reason Google and friends aren't employing
librarians en masse, and it's *because* the arcane knowledge within
means nothing when meta data value (as opposed to its content) can be
recreated better through computer analysis.
Yeah, yeah, you're all going to pipe up with how terrible computers
are at meta data harvesting. Get real, or you'll be out of a job. Take
a look at what's happening *right*now* with eBook websites popping up
and the same rate as the hundreds of eReaders. This is no game, this
is no fad, this is no temporary fashion statement; these are the very
real beginnings of what the future will look like. And when the full
texts are available, when publishers and writers of their own
materials gets tools with meta data capabilities, the job of
cataloging stuff will be on par with the level of which we today
catalog blogging; zilch!
What I just don't get is that catalogers and librarians know so darn
well how their knowledge is needed, how the future needs people who
can guide and help us all in through the informolasses, yet there's no
movement towards doing so on a grand scale! You all sit and dick
around with quibbles of whether to use MARC or MODS, and talk about
how FRBR and RDA fits into your world. I'll tell you how it fits into
*our* world;
Not at all.
...
> There are many more rules than that. When I worked at FAO of the
> UN, they have their own AGRIS rules, there are EAD rules, zillions
> and zillions of rules, and then other places that follow very few or
> no rules at all. Look at the vast majority of sites on Google with
> no rules whatsoever.
And friggin' frustrating bloody crazy stupid thing is that I find the
books I'm after through Google, not the catalogs! I do tons of
research all the time on all kinds of strange things. I give catalogs
the benefit of doubt *all* the time, I think, they've fixed them up,
they must have made them better, surly if I pop in just the right term
in the right field, I might get to where I want to go. But no, it
doesn't work that way, because the library infra-structure isn't
designed that way. The catalogs are to rigid to give good results on
fuzzy terms (and yes, I'll admit I'm a fallible human being rather
than a fully trained reference librarian!). For me these days, the
only thing the catalog is good for is to find a specific paper or book
that may or may not be found locally. But most of the time I'll find
it online for a could of bucks, or sent to me for keeps for cheap.
*shrug*
...
> And that is one reason why I initiated the Cooperative Cataloging Rules,
> to try to create a new "community." Still don't know if that one will fly.
And I support you all the way, but I wish you good luck because to me
it looks like the people you really need to jump on this are too stuck
their own backsides to notice.
Anyway, sorry to be in a bit of a ranting mood today. This
conversation is the same one I had when I begun my bibliophile life
all those years ago; nothing has really changed, except that OPACs
have been dragged up to a sub-par level with the tools everyone else
is using. We're still talking about MARC and AACR2 and RDA and FRBR
and MODS and all that technological nonsense that won't make a dent in
how people see the library. The internet has already changed
everything, and you're just too slow to keep up with it, to keep up
with technology. People will leave you behind and forget the culture
that shaped humanity and probably made us going into the information
age even possible.
So sorry, but this is depressing. I think I need to take some time off
again from the list. :)
Regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Thu Apr 22 2010 - 09:13:24 EDT