+ Page 161 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1 (1991): 161-163. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Depth vs. Breadth: Enhancement and Retrospective Conversion" by Walt Crawford 'Way back in 1987, I wrote: "Most patrons will use only one catalog, particularly if they find any results. Adding more material to the online catalog is more important than adding more information to existing records. Budgetary realities suggest that libraries can either include more items in online catalogs or enhance the contents of some items, but probably not both" [1]. I don't believe the budgetary realities have changed all that much since 1987; if anything, they've grown worse. The miracle cure for retrospective conversion has proved as elusive as other miracle cures: doing it right takes time and money, period. The same goes for any miraculous means of enhancing access (e.g., adding chapter titles, tables of contents, or back-of-book index entries to OPAC records). Thus, the easy answer to the question, "if we knew 20 years ago what we needed to do to improve subject access, why haven't we done it" is that it doesn't--and shouldn't--have first priority. If It Isn't in the Catalog, It Isn't in the Collection That's the simplest statement of one problem, but it's at most a very slight exaggeration. If you don't agree with that premise, then there's nothing more to say: we're living in different worlds. + Page 162 + Is it more important to have in-depth access to a small part of the collection, rather than normal bibliographic access to all of it? Some people apparently think so. Some of the most dogged advocates of enhanced access have suggested eliminating all subject access for materials more than 10 years old--and possibly taking 20-year-old materials out of the catalog altogether. So much for retrospective conversion--and you can save big bucks by shutting down preservation departments as well! To be fair to these advocates, I think they're trying to solve a different problem--the fact that precision goes down as recall goes up, and at some point lack of precision makes recall worthless--but the effect is the same: they're proposing something akin to discarding older materials in the interest of better access to the new. I'm a bit suspicious of the idea that every discipline (or, for that matter, any discipline) reinvents itself every decade. Perhaps that's because my degree is in rhetoric, but even cellular physicists might be a tad uncomfortable with the idea that nothing published prior to 1981 is worth reading. Let's not talk about where that leaves librarianship; at least all those who have never read Ranganathan, Cutter, or Dewey would no longer be bashful about it. If we're not willing to off the old books, then we must grant them the respect they're due, which means inclusion in the online catalog. Once that's completed, and once we're sure that new materials will get into the online catalog promptly, then we can and should spend more time enhancing certain categories of records. The USMARC format already provides good storage mechanisms for some such enhancements; all it takes is time and money. Meanwhile, I find it hard to fault real-world libraries for their current priorities: putting it all into the online catalog at current levels of access, rather than giving some material (who chooses?) special treatment while leaving other material out altogether. That's responsible librarianship. Notes Walt Crawford, Patron Access: Issues for Online Catalogs (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1987), 21. + Page 163 + About the Author Walt Crawford The Research Libraries Group, Inc. 1200 Villa Street Mountain View CA 94041-1100 BR.WCC@RLG.BITNET ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is an electronic journal. It is sent free of charge to participants of the Public-Access Computer Systems Forum (PACS-L), a computer conference on BITNET. To join PACS-L, send an electronic mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-L First Name Last Name. This article is Copyright (C) 1991 by Walt Crawford. All Rights Reserved. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review is Copyright (C) 1991 by the University Libraries, University of Houston, University Park. All Rights Reserved. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. ----------------------------------------------------------------