On 7/28/13 10:48 PM, Peter Schlumpf wrote:
> And yet, most of the world seems to go to Google for their information
> anymore.
>
> Have to wonder why.
Well, they haven't really been offered an alternative. Google's initial
advantage was that keyword indexing and counting web links can be fully
automated. (I recommend Ken Auletta's book "Googled" for a history of G
development and an analysis of "Google think.") Libraries are still in
the artisanal, hand-crafted mode. This latter is untenable in today's
world due to the increase in publishing (of all kinds). The former is an
approach where the words used mean more than the ideas expressed.
However, what Google has ended up being is a huge crowd-sourced info
retrieval machine, using (for free) web pages created by the millions
(billions?) of creators of content on the Internet. Want to find love
poetry? There has to be a page where someone has written about love
poetry because Google's algorithms can't interpret individual poems.
Images? Google uses the text provided by web page creators to interpret
the meaning of the images; it doesn't interpret the images themselves.
Google rides on the backs of content providers, and then turns around
and sells them to advertisers. It's hard to imagine NOT seeing that as evil.
Yet none of this "organizes information" in the sense that library
classification intends to. The Google motto of "Organize the World's
Information" is insulting because THEY aren't organizing anything, they
are running algorithms over text. There are no interrelations between
texts in Google's universe, just a linear display of items that are
individually retrieved based on a query. Is one of these "more general"
than the other? Where should a researcher begin on this topic? (In
Google the answer is ALWAYS Wikipedia.) Are any of these intellectually
suitable for 5th graders? (Have you seen the sites set up by teachers,
trying to help each other find suitable materials? It's not easy.)
Unfortunately, now that Google is a behemoth it will be extremely hard
to present an alternative. But we can't blame Google's users for using
Google. (I do recommend DuckDuckGo, however, if you want to opt out of
being tracked as you search.)
kc
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 3:27 AM, James Weinheimer <
> weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Apologies for cross-posting
>>
>> Bernhard Eversberg mentioned somewhere along the way that RDA means
>> "Resource Description and Access", but on the email lists, we have seen
>> lots and lots of discussion among catalogers about the "D" (Description)
>> but relatively little about "A" (Access). The public however, is and has
>> always been, far more concerned about Access over Description. Even the
>> RDA changes for the headings, e.g. "Dept." to "Department", or "fl." to
>> "active" or getting rid of O.T./N.T. for individual books of the Bible,
>> are not actually increasing or decreasing access over what people had
>> previously, the only change is how the headings display. To me, the "D"
>> in RDA is the same as "old wine in new bottles" or in other words, it
>> only seems to be new and different but in essence, it is the same old
>> thing.
>>
>> The only changes to access that I have noticed are: the elimination of
>> the rule of three in favor of the rule of one, which will lead--in some
>> wondrous way I am waiting to see--to the release of pent-up cataloger
>> "energy" that has been contained over the centuries, so that there will
>> be an *increase* in the number of access points. :-) There is also the
>> addition of the relator codes to the headings, which is supposed to lead
>> to a different search experience from the traditional one, since people
>> will be able to search by the activities of the individuals: as director
>> vs. actor, editor vs. author, stereotyper, transcriber, or any of the
>> roles in the long list at
>> http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relaterm.html. (As an aside, I have
>> wondered that if someone were to catalog the result of a Google search,
>> would it be correct to use: 110/710 2_ Google,$ecensor) There are also
>> the newly-expressed FRBR relationships among works/expressions etc.
>>
>> And yet, for the relator codes to *increase* access, it will clearly
>> demand updating the earlier records to include the relator codes on
>> those headings, just as with the recent RDA-mandated updates to the
>> authority files. The level of complexity to do the same for the relator
>> codes however, must increase several times and will make the recent
>> updates look incredibly easy in comparison (and those are already beyond
>> the resources of many libraries). Therefore, it is only reasonable to
>> assume that any *increased* access arising from relator codes will have
>> to wait for the far, far future, if ever. (Refer to my podcast
>> http://blog.jweinheimer.net/2012/09/cataloging-matters-no-16-catalogs.html
>> for more thorough discussion)
>>
>> And yet novel means of *access* is what is driving much of the web:
>> through keyword, through references, through increased "metadata" on
>> you, your friends, your friends' friends, and those with a similar
>> "profile" as yours, and so on.
>>
>> So I think that Bernhard is exactly right and that "A" as in "Access" is
>> the more important part for the public.
>>
>> Finally, (in my round-about way) I come to my question: what about new
>> methods of access *using the data we already have*? What do people
>> think? Are there ideas percolating in people's minds out there?
>>
>> --
>> *James Weinheimer* weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
>> *First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
>> *First Thus Facebook Page* https://www.facebook.com/FirstThus
>> *Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
>> http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
>> *Cataloging Matters Podcasts*
>> http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
>>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Mon Jul 29 2013 - 11:08:04 EDT