On 11/13/12 1:44 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
>
> Where I do not agree is your idea that all that is useful to people
> today is our holdings information. While I agree that there is lots of
> bibliographic information available now, I do not agree that all the
> discovery tools needed by the public lie in the Amazons and similar
> tools.
Jim, I'm not not an absolutist. What I said was that the assumption that
what the Web needs *most* is our bibliographic data is wrong -- it needs
some of our bibliographic data, but flooding the Web with tens of
thousands of records for "50 shades of grey" is not going to solve any
problems. What we *do* have today that no one else has is holdings
information -- information about what materials are available to users
in their local community -- and we should look to where we can make the
most impact for users with the data we have. One possible way is to make
a connection between bibliographic data on the Web and library holdings.
That's not the only thing we should do, but I see that as "low hanging
fruit" and "bang for the buck." In fact, take a look at the "use cases"
page for the schema.org library data group and you will see this and
other suggestions for data we can provide RIGHT NOW.
http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Use_Cases
It's a start, and after that the field is wide open.
kc
> Libraries are *supposed* to provide something very specific:
> ethical, reliable access to the materials in the local collection. We
> should not scoff at that, and we should not kid ourselves that the
> access the web provides is in any way similar. Walking into a library is
> supposed to be different from walking through a market with people
> hawking their wares, or even from walking into a bookstore. The
> difference is not only in the fact that materials in the library are
> supposed to be free to the person who wants to use it, but far more
> important is the attitude of the people who work there.
>
> A librarian does not--and ethically cannot--profit financially by
> leading you to use one information resource over another, or even to
> choose not to use any at all. This is a 100%, completely different
> attitude from what you meet with in the marketplace or when entering a
> store. In those cases, you are a customer with money in your pocket that
> the shop owner and the employees want. There is nothing wrong with that
> since places of business need customers. A library is not a place of
> business and library patrons are not customers. When someone walks into
> a library (physically or virtually), they should realize that the staff
> member who suggests materials that may help you is *not* actually making
> money on the deal. They really are helping you. And if it does turn out
> that, e.g. Elsevier is giving $25 to a librarian every time he or she
> convinces someone to use an Elsevier database, that librarian should be
> fired.
>
> I think most people do realize this, if only subconsciously, and is one
> reason why many feel so comfortable in a library: they can let their
> guard down a little.
>
> When people search the web, I think more and more understand how their
> searches are manipulated in all kinds of ways. They realize that the
> purpose of Google and Yahoo etc. is to get something from them: in this
> case, their attention, and when they have your attention, they can
> translate that attention into money. This is done in all sorts of ways,
> using SEO (search engine optimization--a propagandistic term that really
> means to manipulate a web search to someone's advantage), other types of
> spam, using fake reviews and "likes", click spam and so on. Of course,
> an individual's entire search history is used to "coax" you silently
> toward things you would like--and even more importantly, toward things
> others will try to sell you, be it sunglasses, a vacation, or a
> political opinion. People are now beginning to understand this.
>
> It is natural to ask: is this the only option? Is this the best that can
> be? Is everyone really subject to the pushes and pulls of these various
> forces vying for our attention and/or money, or is there an alternative?
>
> Yes, libraries. I won't go into the reasons why here. Do our methods
> need to improve? Absolutely, and in 10,000 ways--but libraries provide a
> type of access *found nowhere else*, certainly not on the web. That
> should be considered as a positive and not a negative, although we have
> to admit that our methods have been broken for a long time and
> catalogers haven't done that yet. For example, cataloging is now focused
> on the rule changes of RDA and FRBR which is misplaced effort, since
> those projects do absolutely nothing to fix the methods of access to the
> name and LC subject headings, all still based on browsing in
> alphabetical order.(!) To my own knowledge, no one has even addressed
> these issues.
>
> Still, before giving up on all of that and saying that all library
> catalogs can contribute is holdings information, I think that lots of
> other attempts could and should be made, such as fixing our broken
> catalogs. If people still don't use them, *that* is when we can give up.
> But not before.
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Tue Nov 13 2012 - 10:41:07 EST