Re: Copernicus, Cataloging, and the Chairs on the Titanic, Part 1 [Long Post]

Laval,

I took a small- to moderate-sized random sample of people who are either authors, literary magazine editors, literary book publishers, or scholars. The sampling frame was made up of professional membership lists, e.g., MLA, and directories of publishers.

One of the reasons I wanted to look at a particular community is that I'm not convinced that our one-size-fits-all model typified by cataloging is what will work best for users. Also, I wanted to explicitly avoid the assumption that catalogs were the best way to deliver the metadata.

Steve

=====================================
Stephen Paling
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
4251 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706-1403
Phone: (608) 263-2944
Fax: (608) 263-4849
paling_at_wisc.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Laval Hunsucker <amoinsde_at_YAHOO.COM>
Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 5:00 pm
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Copernicus, Cataloging, and the Chairs on the Titanic, Part 1 [Long Post]
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU

> Steve,
> 
> Would you be so kind as to define what it is that you 
> are in fact designating with your chosen term "literary 
> community" ?
> 
> I am more than a little interested, given the the nature 
> of the current discussion and its (potential) ramifications.
> 
> My curiosity was aroused when you first introduced the 
> term a while back, but has now much increased.
> 
> Thank you kindly.
> 
> 
> - Laval Hunsucker
>    Breukelen, Nederland
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Stephen Paling <paling_at_WISC.EDU>
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Sent: Wed, June 30, 2010 4:05:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Copernicus, Cataloging, and the Chairs on the 
> Titanic, Part 1 [Long Post]
> 
> Jim Weinheimer wrote:
> 
> > discussing titles here) So, when you say that you "want the option 
> of 
> > ignoring that kind of searching" I don't understand what you mean,
> 
> Good questions. Here's what I meant by ignoring fielded searching. 
> Even if I go to an OPAC and use a “Search Anywhere” or “Key Words” 
> feature, I'm just searching across multiple fields, 100, 245, 6xx, 
> etc. But what I need isn't there, so that feature, which is the most 
> expansive search offered in most catalogs, does me no good. I need a 
> search method that will allow me to break out of the whole paradigm of 
> compact metadata chopped up into a surrogate. To put it a bit 
> differently, what I want is ~in~ the document, not next to it as a 
> surrogate. The amount of information that is available online now 
> dwarfs the information available in print, and searching within those 
> online resources is typically far more useful to me.
> 
> > What has changed is that the traditional methods for *finding these 
> 
> > sets* has fallen apart completely, e.g. for those looking for 
> > materials related to the set "Railroad accidents--Law and 
> > legislation--Russia (Federation)--Criminal provisions" these terms 
> > would probably never enter their minds. 
> 
> This is a pretty persuasive response. I would agree that a search that 
> needs to be both specific and comprehensive often requires structured 
> metadata. Full-text searching may not get you there because of 
> differences in vocabulary, etc. But we nonetheless need to make some 
> hard choices. How typical is a search such as, “Bulgneville, Battle 
> of, France, 1431”? Is that sufficient for us to maintain a 
> professional identity? If we drew a  pie chart of the information 
> ecosystem, how big would that slice be? For that matter, how big would 
> the entire print slice be? Can we afford to focus only on that slice? 
> 
> 
> I've advocated elsewhere for letting catalogs be catalogs, i.e., 
> sophisticated databases of a library's holdings. I stand by that, with 
> the caveat that static MARC records with no provision for patron input 
> is probably not ideal. But part of the Copernican turn I advocate 
> involves acknowledging that the information solar system simply 
> doesn't revolve around books and book-like objects, or BBLOs as I have 
> taken to calling them in class. A huge majority of information is now 
> available online, and I would rather emphasize what we can contribute 
> to information architecture, harvestable metadata, exploitable 
> document structures, search engine optimization, and algorithms for 
> automation. One of the distinctions that I have the most difficulty 
> explaining to colleagues and students is that contemporary information 
> technologies aren't about ~organizing~ digital objects, they're about 
> ~making~ digital objects. I want us to participate in that.
> 
> > So this is my reply to the part of your second post where you mention:
> > "But library-assigned subject headings? Only 31%.  And 
> classification 
> > numbers? Only 14%." 
> 
> Keep in mind that I was addressing the needs of the American literary 
> community, not users more generally. It turns out that much of the 
> information that members of the literary community want simply isn't 
> in catalog records. Part of the reason for that is that they don't 
> necessarily want literary works aggregated at the level of the book. 
> They would like to know, for example, whether a poem has been 
> anthologized, and who else had work in that anthology. With a 
> well-structured e-book you can do that relatively easily. They just 
> aren't very interested in something like a DDC or LCCS number.
> 
> Steve
> 
> =====================================
> Stephen Paling
> Assistant Professor
> School of Library and Information Studies
> 4251 Helen C. White Hall
> 600 N. Park St.
> Madison, WI 53706-1403
> Phone: (608) 263-2944
> Fax: (608) 263-4849
> paling_at_wisc.edu
> 
> 
> 
>