> To add to the reasons: leadership. For example, the mentality that the changes (enhancements, corrections)
> aren't important, not locally, not at all. We've got a somewhat confused discussion in the profession these days.
> Many call for acceptance of whatever data can be purchased while others are talking about a continuous,
> or at least a somewhat long term and sporadic, enhancement process to the data. I support the latter,
> which is the only way the first is reasonably functional. But many in administrative roles
> (for the most part in that arena, but not solely) call for the acceptance approach to lousy data.
I call for both! Get data wherever you can, so long as where you get that data from has a license (or no license) that allows you to improve the data and share those improvements with others. And then incrementally/continuously, we all cooperatively improve that data (using systems that allow us to make as efficient use of human time as possible to do so), and share it in systems such that we all get everyone elses improvements in a cheap and efficient manner. (And incorporate as large a community as possible in making those incremental improvements; whether it will work to have "open public wiki-style" editing or not is an unanswered question (worth some experiments), but certainly more library staff can be involved than is now.)
We lack the systems to support such a vision right now -- both software systems, and social/organizational systems, and business-model "systems".
I agree that the library/metadata/cooperative cataloging community lacks effective leadership.
Received on Sat Aug 07 2010 - 13:03:16 EDT