Quoting Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>:
>
> Libraries are not about books, but rather what is inside them. We
> have too much identified ourselves with the tools of our trade as
> opposed the core purposes. Changing this perception, both from the
> inside as well as the outside, will be a l o n g time coming.
And yet ... look at the cataloging rules and you will see a culture
obsessed with the THING itself and with very little concern about the
information within the thing. Yes, there are subject headings (3) and
one (1) classification code, but note that those aren't addressed in
the cataloging code and aren't being discussed today the way that RDA
is. Where is our interest in the information? Why aren't we putting
hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of person-hours into
developing new ways to get at content? (And I don't mean expanding
keyword searches over more and more databases with mainly descriptive
metadata.)
kc
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University of Notre Dame
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Thu Jul 14 2011 - 10:51:37 EDT