We use "Choice" and similar publications for suggestions of quality Web sites to include in our catalog. I have no trouble with the limited number of resulting catalog entries since our catalog is not a Web search engine and I don't think our students expect it to be. I've added 5-600 Web sites in the past year or so. These sites are good resources that happen to be on the Web (and free).
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: Monday, June 28, 2010 3:54 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Problems With Selection in Today's Information World
Following Eric's slap-down (just kidding!), I have decided to pose a question that has not been very well addressed, so far as I know: how selection of digital resources, and especially open-access materials, can be achieved on the web.
Here are some of my own observations concerning the issues:
1) The non-librarian does not understand traditional library selection;
2) Library selection has traditionally meant being responsible for a limited budget and adding materials based on a limited amount of resources, both money and shelf space. In essence, it is a process of *inclusion* of specific materials, based on specific policies and limited resources;
3) When it comes to web resources, the public wants selection of another type. They are very concerned about getting "bad" information. Faculty and scholars are just as concerned as students and the regular public. While they like to know what is "recommended by the most people" this is not enough and they still have concerns;
4) When we have millions of free materials and no problems with shelf space, library selection becomes something fundamentally different from what it has been; in essence, it becomes (I believe) a process of *exclusion*, i.e. taking the "best" and excluding the "worst", much as the traditional "bibliographies of best books" have tried to achieve (for examples, search the subject: "Best books" in Worldcat);
5) While it no longer makes much sense to catalog the same text over and over and over in each library, I don't think it makes much more sense to "select" the same thing over and over and over in each library;
6) The traditional library selector has had a lot of help from book dealers and library profiles. Without them, it would be pretty much impossible to do the work in any sort of comprehensive manner. Book dealers get paid to do this work through approval plans and other ways when libraries buy the physical books (or other resources). It is naïve to believe that similar organizations will do a comparable amount of work for materials that are available for free;
7) Selecting materials on the web is being done now to a limited extent through heroic efforts in cooperative projects such as Intute, Infomine and other projects (to see the tool I created for my own "selection of web materials" see: http://www.galileo.aur.it/opac-tmpl/npl/en/pages/news/latestwebsites.html). If you look at these sites, you will see many items selected that are not in our library catalogs, plus there is metadata work done twice on these sites and in our catalogs. The resources found through these projects are not nearly all of the worthwhile digital sites however;
8) In the everyday practice of library selection, many people feel ignored and/or left out since you cannot make everyone happy. Now, since there is not the concerns of a limited budget, or of shelf space, each faculty member, teacher, whoever, could equally be a selector. This has obvious advantages as well as drawbacks.
This does not at all exhaust all the concerns, but I think they represent a good beginning. Perhaps others are discussing these matters as well, and if so, could others point me in the right directions. I can envision a cooperative tool that could solve these concerns technically at least, but getting agreement on the huge number of issues would be the challenge, not the least being the explosive question: who will select?
What do others think? And yes, in such scenarios the "catalog" will change, but I think will still be the key to it all.
James Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu<mailto: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
Received on Mon Jun 28 2010 - 09:05:59 EDT