Well, this is really sad. A truly useful and cooperative site that has helped the entire world and saved tons and tons of duplication of effort, all of which naturally translates into saving money.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only serious cut that our British colleagues are enduring, and by extension of course, everyone else.
See: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/mar/09/britain-the-disgrace-of-the-universities/
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
________________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jan Szczepanski [jan.szczepanski_at_UB.GU.SE]
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 1:00 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Problems With Selection in Today's Information World
Without comments
JISC regularly reviews the services that it funds, to ensure they
deliver value for money, quality products
and to test their sustainability for the future. A services portfolio
review takes place annually and in May
2009 the future funding of JISC services, including Intute, was
considered in order to identify the funding
priorities for the academic year 2010/11. As a result it has now been
decided that funding to the Intute
service will cease in its current form from 1 August 2010.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/12/intute.aspx
http://www.intute.ac.uk/faq.html
Jan
James Weinheimer skrev:
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:59:10 -0500, Mitchell, Michael
> <Michael.Mitchell_at_BRAZOSPORT.EDU> wrote:
>
>
>> 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).
>
> But what do students expect to find in the catalog? The local books plus a
> small number of websites, and they still must use Google anyway? I am not
> finding any fault with this--it is happening in every library, including my
> own--but it results in making unclear the difference between the "Web search
> engine" and the library catalog. For example, there are wonderful tools such
> as Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk/ and Infomine http://infomine.ucr.edu/,
> and they should not be ignored, plus there are lots of specialist sites. But
> how do you use these sites?
>
> As a specific example, let's say that the selector decides that all of the
> resources selected for the "Humanities" section in Intute should be added to
> your catalog. I don't know how many there are, but there are a *lot* and for
> some libraries, it could easily be a significant proportion of the yearly
> catalog production.
>
> Every one of the sites in Intute has been selected by a librarian and/or
> expert. Does it make sense to recatalog all of these resources one-by-one
> and then have to go through the hassle of maintaining all of the records
> whenever something changes? And remember, Intute is only one project and
> there are many, many more, and while there is metadata, they do not do
> MARC21/AACR2/LCSH/LCC.
>
> Actually, a site such as Intute provides real quality selection and can be
> pretty well trusted, while a more difficult site to work with would be, e.g.
> the Internet Archive, which has scads of wonderful resources, but does not
> have nearly the quality of "selection".
>
> The old methods and workflows aim at creating new records in the local
> database (although when you are lucky you might find usuable copy), and this
> makes a certain amount of sense when dealing with unchanging physical
> resources located within the local library, but these same methods result in
> endless, and essentially useless duplication when used for the so-called
> "remote accessed electronic resources".
>
> And of course, this includes the duplication of selection.
>
> As a selector, I would not want to burden my cataloging department by
> cataloging materials that are already in Infomine and Intute, plus it could
> take a very long time to get them done. Is there a better and more efficient
> way?
>
> 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
>
--
De åsikter som framförs här är mina personliga
och inte ett uttryck för Göteborgs universitets-
biblioteks hållning
Opinions expressed here are my own and not
those of the Gothenburg University Library
Jan Szczepanski
Förste bibliotekarie
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
Box 222
SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
Tel: +46 31 7861164 Fax: +46 31 163797
E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski_at_ub.gu.se
Received on Wed Jun 30 2010 - 09:33:11 EDT