tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73823840184776498222012-01-28T00:01:44.011-06:00A blog about books, technology, and sundry.Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.comBlogger1341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-19717739121841375572011-06-23T09:31:00.001-05:002011-06-23T12:35:38.201-05:00

There is a very large and very old book on my desk. It appears to be coming out of its binding. It has no documentation whatsoever to let me know who placed it on my desk, or how it got here. For all I know, it could have trundled in on its own (hee hee, like that old book could possibly jump onto my desk--maybe if it were 25 cm instead of 40). I submit these kinds of happenings as the most

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-23377649727744850462011-06-16T08:44:00.000-05:002011-06-16T08:44:20.474-05:00

I've been hard on RDA in the past week or so (Sorry, RDA. I know you're doing your best). However, I just had to post this picture. Backstory: I told my boss, as I was leaving the library, that the new RDA print manual was on my desk, and if he was so inclined, he should take a look. This is what I walked into the next day:

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-12612944042892432032011-06-13T10:29:00.000-05:002011-06-13T10:29:03.522-05:00

When I first read through the drafts of RDA, I didn't think it felt very different from AACRII, and I seem to remember telling someone that at the time. It set them at ease, which was nice I suppose. It made me very uneasy. Because there are only two paths from there: either I am an idiot incapable of understanding how fundamentally this is changing everything (terrifying), or there's not that

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-25863812434056133022011-06-10T12:27:00.000-05:002011-06-10T12:27:23.575-05:00

I got a whole bunch of hits on my post yesterday about how terrifying RDA is. I'm really, really interested in what people are thinking about RDA. I've been to the webinars, I've talked to people, but honestly, if you have an opinion on RDA, could you please post it in the comments of this post or the last? I have very mixed feelings, but I'm not gonna be at any focus groups anytime soon, so I'd

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-11282515957559426712011-06-09T09:11:00.000-05:002011-06-09T09:11:08.734-05:00

We received our very own paper copy of RDA in the mail last week. Along with it came the FRBR guide for the perplexed, and Introducing RDA: a guide to the basics. One of my library friends was very amused by the latter ("only librarians would make a guide to the guide about making guides"). I finally sliced into the packaging this morning, as I prepared RDA to go into its own "little" binder (3-

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-73675442332005913922011-03-16T12:04:00.000-05:002011-03-16T12:04:55.084-05:00

One of my friends is on the slate for an ALA committee, and since elections just opened, she's all atwitter about how it might end up for her. On the one hand, she really wants to be elected, and on the other hand, she didn't want to promote herself *too* much because she, like myself and other people I know, really dislikes it when people promote themselves for ALA committees. What a strange

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-81666575465970625012011-02-16T09:08:00.000-06:002011-02-16T09:08:41.644-06:00

In our library, which is smallish, we have the basic departments. Circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, reference, ILL, electronic resources/serials. Each little area has its own little jobs. Here is a story about what happens when the wires get crossed. A few months ago, our director suggested that we do a "popular" book collection. As has probably been obvious from previous posts, we are not a

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-22155746741410194862011-02-02T13:54:00.001-06:002011-02-02T13:56:19.473-06:00

I just turned a library student onto Vannevar Bush's As We May Think. He was not aware of this article at all. I was properly horrified. I also turned him onto Buckland's Information as Thing. What's next, Ong's Orality and Literacy? I felt like such a pretentious twit while I was recommending these things to him. But, I mean surely people need to read these things to feel connected to the larger

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-66397643986268766172010-12-01T11:58:00.001-06:002010-12-01T11:59:34.679-06:00

Today, my boss asked me to tell him about the RDA webinars. So I got my notes together and started to explain what I thought everyone meant by RDA. By the end of our conversation, I was really, really psyched about RDA and its potential. In fact, I’m still pretty darn psyched. I’m usually the pessimist’s pessimist. If this were the turn of the century, I would be the person telling everyone that

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-35420542432536080792010-11-17T13:19:00.000-06:002010-11-17T13:19:47.966-06:00

While working today, a reference librarian handed me a problem. She had a patron come up to her and ask for the "Sacra Pagina." He was not talking about the Bible, but rather an 18-volume commentary, prepared by an international group of scholars, of the New Testament. When the reference librarian looked online at our catalog, she first searched by "title keyword". Eleven titles came up. And not

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-65290291984315356862010-11-12T12:41:00.000-06:002010-11-12T12:41:07.108-06:00

A friend of a friend posted a link yesterday to an op-ed from 1995. I will quote: "Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-34793882318445708032010-11-11T09:09:00.000-06:002010-11-11T09:09:54.501-06:00

I would say something about Chris Oliver's talk yesterday on RDA and it's relationships to FRBR and our current database environments, but unfortunately, our internet went down half an hour into her presentation. Hurray, technology! Once again underscoring the fragile nature of the digital world. If I were reading a book by her, all I would need is a relatively light-filled day. So, screw you,

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-41832217571011328102010-11-08T12:16:00.001-06:002010-11-08T12:17:26.460-06:00

First, the FRBR blog linked to me the other day. It was not especially complimentary, but, there you are. I can't always be thought right. I agree totally that the work being done on FRBR is changing it, though. So we can all agree on that. Also, I was reading First thus this morning. He posted some things about how copyright law is stuck in the past, and how it's not helping anyone that you

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-1934263292189951752010-11-04T10:50:00.000-05:002010-11-04T10:50:33.040-05:00

Remember how I was all excited about this new project I'm working on, and how I thought maybe I should remove my anonymity to talk about it? Yeah, well, I realized that I still need this blog to vent about all the issues that are arising from this project. And I remembered why I always had a blog like this in the first place. To vent about issues. With that in mind.... I don't often comment on

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-89462816112451385562010-11-03T09:50:00.000-05:002010-11-03T09:50:36.993-05:00

The ACRL 2011 flyer arrived in the ol' inbox this week. So I opened it up. ACRL, bastion of academic libraries and research and cutting-edge user experiences--wait, what's this I see? Oh, the keynote speakers for ACRL 2011. I bet they'll be amazing---wait a minute. None of the keynote speakers are in the library business. Or even the publishing business. Or even the library advocacy business. Or

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-90913276446772800132010-11-02T12:27:00.003-05:002010-11-02T12:36:45.904-05:00

I was posting yesterday about public libraries, and I've been reading about the Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA) model. Apparently this model is kind of a huge and headachey success, and so it's sort of a problem to figure out how exactly libraries want to proceed with it. It's expensive on the one hand, and also so wildly successful that it sort of defies any attempts to get rid of it once it's

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-77689385033701109982010-11-01T16:39:00.003-05:002010-11-01T16:55:13.466-05:00

I think that most librarians are aware of the history of the public library in America. Right? Maybe? I guess I don't really know for sure. But, the idea that public libraries are "for" the people, more than "by" the people, is definitely a pillar of the public library. Sure, you can recommend acquisitions to the librarians, but in the end, the library chooses your options for you. I know that

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-80005355128023110442010-10-29T08:45:00.003-05:002010-10-29T08:59:12.931-05:00

"...cracking our brains to force everything into this 19th century view of the world of information called FRBR is a lot like forcing a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't fit. So, instead of whittling the peg down, or boring out the hole, we should open our minds to new horizons because it's a big world out there."James at First Thus posted this little snippet the other day. It made me

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-14427964596470882472010-10-28T08:21:00.002-05:002010-10-28T08:32:27.666-05:00

I don't usually start writings with this, but: OMG.I (virtually) attended the first of three webinars yesterday on RDA and the new directions in metadata creation. It was entitled New Models of Metadata and Karen Coyle was the speaker. She was great, of course. I like her writing; she was also a very good speaker.Anyways, you were probably there, too. There were 300 participants at this thing. At

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-3014685882948630792010-10-13T09:01:00.002-05:002010-10-13T09:17:27.949-05:00

So this morning I come walking into the library, coffee in one hand, prepared to walk right back to my desk and commence the wonderful and magical work of fixing something in the ILS. The reference librarian on duty (and in fact, the head reference librarian) yells at me. Yes, she yelled. Yes, I went over and said "Ma'am, we are in a LIBRARY." We both laugh.Anyway, she directs my attention to

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-38171911140292519292010-10-06T12:23:00.003-05:002010-10-28T12:39:38.236-05:00

Reading about how libraries need to embrace the Semantic Web. Here's my note in the margins to myself:"Isn't there a larger problem with metadata for the Semantic Web (or XML, or MARC) that all these tags are still *text*, and therefore subject to misspellings, misunderstandings, and the vagaries of the human mind? The problem that we have with databases and their inability to catch

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-90991588311931295932010-05-06T09:29:00.003-05:002010-05-06T09:41:54.062-05:00

I've been inundated today with the question of "what is a book?" I heard a piece on the radio where the commentator asked this question. I of course started yelling at the radio: "Librarians have been asking that questions for years, stupid! ASK A LIBRARIAN!" Then once at work in the library, the ILL librarian comes up and we have a talk about connecting traditional philosophical ideas of

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-36890373283586974012010-04-29T09:55:00.002-05:002010-04-29T10:08:10.360-05:00

...A book which has come across my desk has this title. Which reminded me that I haven't posted on this blog since I was 7.5 months pregnant. Well, now our daughter is almost 15 months, I'm working a little bit again, and for the love of God, surely I can get myself back into the world of blogging about organizing information. Right?So, in that vein, I want to write some about a project I was

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-85112873471529118332008-12-22T09:11:00.002-06:002008-12-22T09:20:06.566-06:00

As anyone on Autocat knows, there's been a bunch of posting lately on the difference between bookstores and libraries, and how they organize things. I don't post on autocat much (that's what blogs are for!), so here's what I think:Anyone who says that bookstores do as good a job as libraries of organizing information is clearly insane. I mean, CLEARLY. A comment was made that the reason we

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-84652260228439280582008-11-12T16:47:00.003-06:002008-11-12T17:04:03.553-06:00

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but we had "Symphony" training yesterday. This basically involved just transferring our preferences from Unicorn to Symphony. Everything else is about the same. BUT, I learned that Web Reporter, which previously was just for the Cool Kids who used Horizon, is now available for Symphony (Unicorn), too. Other than that, I didn't see a lot of Horizon in

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-77148387754492516372008-11-07T11:05:00.004-06:002008-11-07T11:27:31.120-06:00

A friend of mine recently said in exasperation, "Librarians are so stupid in their smugness." She was referring to what I call Listserv Divas. Divas is not gender-specific, by the way.This is a real problem with listservs of all kinds, not just library ones, but I think it's particularly irritating in library listservs. Why? Because we are all trained in the same things, and belong to lists that

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-4287428068910838172008-11-04T09:05:00.003-06:002008-11-04T09:08:48.839-06:00

1.If you are in the United States, GO VOTE ALREADY.2.Someone came to this blog yesterday through the google search "Sirsi sucks" (I'm on the first page!). I find this both amusing and comforting. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who gets a little frustrated with Sirsi.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-55542349037644828042008-10-24T15:10:00.004-05:002008-10-24T15:24:40.730-05:00

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this: we're "moving" to Symphony over Christmas. I'd like to revisit what SD calls Symphony:"SirsiDynix Symphony, blending the best of the Unicorn GL3 and Horizon 8/Corinthian systems, offers libraries and consortia the stability, quality, and performance they need to operate productively and efficiently, while equipping them to serve people and entire

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-43417082489999966472008-10-23T16:06:00.003-05:002008-10-24T10:39:46.888-05:00

OCLC had a webinar today. Here's the pitch:"You are invited to attend a special program on innovative, emerging cataloging practices and trends that can help you build next-generation catalogs, expose your library's metadata and make your cataloging workflows more efficient.Your host, Karen Calhoun, Vice President, WorldCat & Metadata Services, will offer insights on how your library can benefit

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-55547871771890948852008-10-17T12:43:00.002-05:002008-10-17T12:50:19.251-05:00

From Autocat this afternoon:"Some staff here are convinced that "youcan't find anything" in our catalog. That it has become an unnecessaryexpense since most patrons browse the collection anyway. If so, is itthe fault of the catalog, or the untrained user? Or both?"What a huge question to just post nonchalantly on a listserv. What amuses me, though, is that this is the question at the heart of

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-59512300919961168222008-10-01T09:03:00.001-05:002008-10-01T09:04:27.548-05:00

I am drowning in original cataloging. I may not survive. If I'm not back in a week, just assume that the LCSH has finally taken me to the Big Library in the Sky.Save yourselves!

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-80877219746964381482008-09-25T15:25:00.005-05:002008-09-25T15:34:00.995-05:00

Sometimes, when I tell people that I catalog books in Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Russian and occasionally English....I think that they think I am bragging. I want to be clear on this, but probably, it will only ruin my credibility. Here goes, anyway:I don't speak any of those languages. Except for English.I read all five somewhat poorly. I know enough to know that I need a dictionary, and

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-2796672408754035512008-09-23T11:50:00.004-05:002008-09-23T11:56:13.956-05:00

Some kind, loving soul posted to the autocat list today, and said (I quote):"...like AIG, libraries are too important to let fail!"Um. Libraries obviously aren't. They fail all the time. They have failed throughout history. People willingly destroy them, or neglect them, or just plain set them on fire.Libraries are certainly valuable. I believe that libraries are valuable. Are libraries "too

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-49378476065124018342008-09-22T08:59:00.002-05:002008-09-22T09:06:01.157-05:00

So, I'm way behind the times, and I know it, but I started reading the drafts of RDA last week. I'm not really that far in, and I know that it's only rough drafts, but I figured I might as well start, since at some point this is going to be a Big Deal.Want to know what I've found so far? I may be simplifying (God knows I'm good at doing that), but I didn't find much that was earth-shattering or

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-22069675336534372282008-09-09T13:29:00.003-05:002008-09-09T13:37:58.992-05:00

You strike again, SD. Our serials cataloger pointed out that when working in Sirsi's Java Workflows, you cannot always get the html links in a marc record to take you to a browser. The link simply will not work. They are speculating that this has to do with links that include special characters, like an ampersand.Our IT guy says, and I quote: "This is a bug at our current Unicorn patch level. it

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-71753745852617332912008-09-05T09:09:00.002-05:002008-09-05T09:16:55.463-05:00

It's been a long time, blog. No, really, like 2.5 weeks! In my defense, I'm coming up on 4 months pregnant and have been feeling "under the weather" (an understatement) for some time. It's hard to think about libraries and metadata and whatnot when I want to throw up all the time.ANYWAY.One of my reference librarian peeps introduced me to a website the other day: Mindomo. It's a way to map

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-91647552008876793552008-08-19T15:31:00.002-05:002008-08-19T15:44:02.319-05:00

I just came back from a meeting about how to implement PREMIS in our institutional repository. We've been working on how to implement PREMIS for months. The result of this meeting was: we don't need PREMIS.So was this the best or worst meeting in history?The case for "best meeting":We came to the conclusion that while PREMIS is probably very good for some things, in this case it wouldn't be

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-2943486162335321172008-08-18T15:33:00.003-05:002008-08-18T15:37:25.056-05:00

I have been cataloging a lot of books by Indian authors lately. So many in fact that I now know the cutter code for the last name Singh by heart. BY HEART, PEOPLE.Luckily I am in the home stretch, the last two books of the 40-odd that I have been set to original-catalog.It says something about the things I get assigned to catalog that I do not know the cutter code for Smith or Johnson or Baker.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-9409730842035148642008-08-14T14:43:00.004-05:002008-08-14T14:57:37.315-05:00

And now let us examine the OTHER side of being forced to learn a new ILS. This is the group of people who shut themselves down in the face of learning a new system. These also tend to be the people who constantly claim that "the computer" made a mistake without them having anything to do with it. I like to call these people "superstitious." As in, they think that computers are imbued with evil

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-47855984008412775992008-08-13T14:15:00.003-05:002008-08-13T14:22:22.020-05:00

We're moving to the java client version of Sirsi Workflows. This means that we're going to trainings and such.Now, personally, I am totally IN LOVE with the java client, because it is so much more intuitive than the C client was. Like, there are actual words instead of small, random pictures to represent things.There are drawbacks, too, like not being able to pull up a true browse list when you

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-79241737658196420752008-08-11T12:21:00.003-05:002008-08-11T12:32:49.169-05:00

Have you ever noticed how the paper card catalog has become a kind of badge of honor among librarians? "When I worked with paper card catalogs" is like a golden stamp that means you are intellectually untouchable. You know All.When I was in library school, all the professors assumed none of us had ever worked with paper catalogs. Sure, we'd used them until we were 15 or so, but we'd never really

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-64353264940425343482008-08-08T14:32:00.000-05:002008-08-08T14:33:23.122-05:00

Sometimes I come across books that make me very painfully aware of how little I know about archival theory. Today, that lesson was hit home when I had a book called "Records, Rules, and Speech Acts" come across my desk. It's by a Finnish archivist, Pekka Henttonen (a guy, by the way, for all of you Indo-European speakers who think that girls' names end in A).The introduction was worth my reading

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-4518020033918788272008-08-06T14:07:00.002-05:002008-08-06T14:09:59.345-05:00

A person (who is very nice, I'm sure) just posted on Autocat asking what skills one must possess so that one might be proficient in "installing, developing, customizing, adding records, and maintaining" Greenstone or Dspace.I just sat here for about 20 seconds, staring at her request. Um....the skill of Knowing Perl? The skill of being able to work around the 1,000 minute details that each of

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-80108367027230538432008-08-01T11:54:00.004-05:002008-08-01T11:58:21.641-05:00

I'm mostly a cataloger, and sometimes I'm an archivist, and I'm always into structuring organization. And now, let's add to the list: marketing/training.What?Yes. I've been put on a team to write manuals, set up trainings on new search tools, and set up usability testing. We're getting one of those new-fangled research discovery tools and I'm apparently going to be part of the implementation,

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-58558604742442860312008-07-21T09:59:00.004-05:002008-07-21T10:03:10.788-05:00

This is just a short post, to give us all something to think about. I don't know if this is true, but when Joel Hahn tells me something over Autocat, I believe him. Silly of me, I know. Anyway, there's this huge discussion going on about how they're getting rid of the 440 series field, and Joel says (and I quote):"...given the programming headaches using the 440 for both transcription and

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-34178446512187238382008-07-18T14:14:00.002-05:002008-07-18T14:33:11.323-05:00

I read The Impact of Digitizing Special Collections on Teaching and Scholarship by Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner. It was good, I recommend anyone interested in the connections between special collections and users check it out. But it has this fatal flaw that made me, at the end of the article, just sigh. Why is it always the librarian's fault that faculty don't care about teaching

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-84138320601073482282008-07-16T15:49:00.002-05:002008-07-16T15:53:42.116-05:00

The University of Texas got a cool grant to give scholarships to four people who want to do a doctoral program in digital librarianship. That isn't particularly up my alley, but it sounds really cool, nonetheless. It got me thinking about where were the best programs for learning about the theory of organization as it's applied to libraries, and metadata more generally. This is shockingly hard to

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-33584624405024680512008-07-10T12:49:00.002-05:002008-07-10T13:09:37.682-05:00

One of my colleagues was at ALA, and sat in on a session sponsored by LITA called "There's no catalog like no catalog," or something like that. She said that she was in a minority by being a cataloger at this session, but that it was the attitude of the presenters that made her the most uncomfortable. She said that catalogers were portrayed as being inflexible, reactionary, and backward-thinking.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-62964053490464297372008-07-08T12:55:00.004-05:002008-07-08T13:07:51.337-05:00

I think the hardest thing about having a career is not letting it define your life. I'm pretty young, but have had a good career so far. I like where my career is going. But. If I were to have a child, I think I would leave my career to "take care of the kids." I know that this sounds crazy to at least some people (judging from the looks of thinly-veiled horror on their faces), but for me it

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-73514092013372725942008-07-03T10:02:00.003-05:002008-07-03T10:05:57.350-05:00

So luckily, we have an awesome IT guy here who can work Java magic, and who installed JHOVE for me. Of course, the user interface is, well, not that great, but it does the job if you can work around the fact that it's not intuitive at all and gives you no instruction or prompting. But I digress.I ran a tiff file through JHOVE, and it pulled out all kinds of preservation metadata. Like, it pulled

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-15343645456387828662008-07-01T09:29:00.003-05:002008-07-01T09:43:07.242-05:00

Okay, I have to say this...we're looking at preservation tools here, to automatically identify formats and spit out metadata about the size of the files, etc. And one of the tools we're looking at is JHOVE. And I quote: "JHOVE provides functions to perform format-specific identification, validation, and characterization of digital objects."Which is right up our alley in terms of what we need. So

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-32758882025808420162008-06-20T12:49:00.002-05:002008-06-20T12:51:25.378-05:00

Dear Blog,I'm going away for a week. Don't cry! I promise to be back in the land of the electronic very soon. If my parents' house had any kind of internet connection (or computer), this scenario would look very different.Keep your chin up,Scribe

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-9317266629912997392008-06-17T11:55:00.004-05:002008-06-17T12:01:18.114-05:00

A LOT. Dear Lord, so much cataloging. It's actually shocking how much I need a meeting every day in order to break the monotony of cataloging. I haven't had even one meeting yet this week. And I like original cataloging, I do, but when you come across the 17th book that simply has no copy of any kind, with no discernible author, published in a city I've never heard of in India, and it's the

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-525745884154303072008-06-12T09:08:00.005-05:002008-06-12T09:19:16.362-05:00

If any of you are also lurkers on the DC-RDA listserv, you've seen this discussion that has bloomed up over the past two days. For those who are not on the listserv, this discussion is totally worth throwing out to the masses.Here's the deal, from the end of the conversation: FRBR and FRAD do not actually define a person in the same way. In fact, their definitions of a person seem to be opposed

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-75301433001853018392008-06-06T09:31:00.002-05:002008-06-06T09:34:02.146-05:00

I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't a fundamental difference between scholars and practitioners that has always been there, and I have been denying.When I started my post-high-school career as a "scholar" (I use the term loosely, since I was after all but a humble undergraduate), I put my professors up on a pedestal. That was wrong of me, of course, because scholars and professors are

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-20310630445177185262008-06-04T08:53:00.003-05:002008-06-04T09:11:13.619-05:00

The grant project that I'm working on just had the first Big Meeting, that lasted two days (yes, I'm exhausted). The Advisory Board met first, then the other group, of all the people who are listed as cost-sharing in the grant. Since I just started here, I didn't have much idea of what this grant was really about, broadly speaking.The first day was marked by intense philosophical discussions

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-57191639652237597362008-05-29T09:53:00.002-05:002008-05-29T10:00:34.758-05:00

I'm on quite a few listservs. The bulk of my email every day comes from listservs. I like them, in fact. They're like little snippets of the world outside of my office. But I have to say, I'm getting kind of tired of the archivists' listservs.How many times can we rehash the same old argument about how digitizing something does not count as "preservation"? I mean, come ON. It happens like every

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-54570934208052894802008-05-28T08:32:00.001-05:002008-05-28T08:33:54.628-05:00

I've been really, really sick. That's where I've been. But now I am back at my desk, with my good keyboard and dual monitors, and things are looking better. No fever! No infections! No nausea!It's the little things.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-40014411778941197402008-05-20T15:50:00.002-05:002008-05-20T16:02:59.298-05:00

I taught a class on cataloging. A tiny little seminar, if you will. It went over REALLY well, much to my surprise (I always want to throw up before I speak in front of people).The class was for techies and scholars who are involved our Big Digital Project, and who literally know less than nothing about cataloging. We went over acronyms, formats, online and paper tools, and "cataloger's judgment."

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-76625038572011259182008-05-14T08:52:00.004-05:002008-05-14T09:04:25.055-05:00

The other day, I'm sitting in a conference call, and we're talking about the creation of metadata for our big metadata project. And someone says "well, of course we won't be putting brackets around the supplied titles."This stopped me in my note-taking tracks. We're not--what? What ELSE aren't we doing and why am I just now getting this sinking feeling in my stomach?So I kind of keep quiet and

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-31607318226282639772008-05-12T08:47:00.002-05:002008-05-12T09:06:37.821-05:00

I want to explore an idea.I've read about four blog posts in the past week that talk about how libraries are going to manage to keep our users "interested" in libraries (of course, there was also a nay-sayer who remarked "they're already uninterested"). We want to make our catalogs more like Amazon, encourage social tagging, et cetera et cetera. But WHY?If we've already resigned ourselves to the

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-48285489461132301322008-05-06T09:08:00.001-05:002008-05-06T09:12:11.157-05:00

So. RDA.In case you didn't already know (and for my own memory later), there has been a lot of activity in the past week or so regarding RDA. Let's see, first LC, NLM, and NAL issued their statement about the Final Report from the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (you can read it here if you haven't read it yet; it's the only place I can find it all written out fully. Which is

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-17190031582715099022008-05-02T08:59:00.001-05:002008-05-02T09:00:17.131-05:00

You should also read the comments from the Devil's Advocate post, because they are actually about the post on Unicorn. In fact, it's a comment from someone at SD, and my reply. FYI.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-91565219630879078342008-05-01T14:06:00.002-05:002008-05-01T14:15:23.236-05:00

I hadn't been hearing much from the SirsiDynix world lately, but today, I heard a whole lot. My boss is on a committee to investigate new search portals to lay over top of our existing GL 3.1 (Unicorn) ILS, and just attended the Sirsi SuperConference. Here's what I learned today:From my boss: Aquabrowser and Primo and even Encore are much better developed than Sirsi's search portal (which is

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-32108798765408424272008-04-30T13:01:00.001-05:002008-04-30T13:03:08.614-05:00

Ranganathan once wrote, of Charles Ammi Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalog: "Rdc is indeed a classic. It is immortal. Its influence has been overpowering. It inhibits free-thinking even today." (Headings and Canons)Ranganathan saw something in Cutter's rules that I think most people don't even see today: that we're still going in the same directions we've been going since Cutter wrote his

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-90511756766026269192008-04-29T08:54:00.000-05:002008-04-29T08:55:21.685-05:00

I've been really busy these past few days....you know, cataloging everything. I've been cataloging a lot of German-language material, which you might find laughable once you hear that I don't actually speak German. Not very well, anyway. It's gotten to the point where I sigh in relief when something crosses my desk that is in French. FRENCH. So you know how desperate my situation has

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-4839740189831607052008-04-24T09:21:00.003-05:002008-06-06T09:35:35.530-05:00

It went like this: I sent our serials librarian the link to the "FRBR for serials" paper (pdf!), which is apparently quite the rage at the CONSER operational meeting. She said, "oh, yeah, it's nice to see CONSER taking this on, since ever since FRBR came out, it hasn't addressed serials."Um....?And THEN she says "It took them about 40 years just to address serials and continuing resource

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-76251104202191328102008-04-22T12:27:00.001-05:002008-04-22T12:30:15.469-05:00

Interoperability is a buzz word. A really, really important buzzword (unlike, say, "paradigm"). And I feel like I'm banging my head against it. I know the old saying: "There's the right way, and then there's our way." I think that this applies to this institution's approach to digitization projects.Now, don't get me wrong: this place is the most awesomely together place I've ever worked with

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-43849370414030856692008-04-16T10:41:00.001-05:002008-04-16T10:44:02.354-05:00

The new paper put out by Richard Gartner this month in the JISC is....well, it's not saying anything that we don't already know. I've noticed that much of academic writing is just common sense stuff put down into words. If I could ever figure out how to do that, I would be a great and accomplished academic writer.Anyway.The paper is interesting; you can find it here (warning:pdf).Basically, to

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-3730281191993787082008-04-15T09:33:00.001-05:002008-04-15T09:33:47.103-05:00

I just learned that the guy who had my job before me wasn't perfect.This may sound silly to [you], but when I interviewed for this position, I did a little internet-stalking on the person who left the job. I knew that he left for reasons unrelated to job performance, so you know, I like to size up the shoes I'm going to fill.I was terrified by what I found. This guy had been awesome; he had

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-71639559580244803632008-04-08T13:33:00.001-05:002008-04-08T13:42:48.050-05:00

TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) is not new. At all. It was born in 1987, although wasn't put into XML format until this century, I believe. Mostly, English nerds love it. It allows them to find patterns in literature that's been encoded, and differences across editions and versions. It warms their nerdy little hearts, and at the same time allows for the writing of more literary criticism than ever

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-88560771684716057962008-04-08T09:40:00.001-05:002008-04-08T09:42:30.578-05:00

Ever since I had Kinkos print out a copy of the PREMIS data dictionary and bind it for me (for just $16!), I have been longing for a comparable piece of literature to come out for MODS and METS. I mean, didn't PREMIS win an award or something for putting their information in such a wonderful and useable format?YES. THEY DID.I know that all computer geeks think print is just sooo 1993, but

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-39591026046283287182008-04-07T14:19:00.001-05:002008-04-07T14:19:35.246-05:00

I'm feeling a tad under the weather today, and have somehow gotten myself a lost voice (I'm guessing it's from singing too many one-hit-wonder 80s songs this weekend), but we're going to try this anyway.I'm slowly settling into this new job...I've talked a little about it over the past month and a half. It's mostly interesting; I can spend a whole day reading about TEI if I want to, and I'm

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-59410214006833512612008-04-03T09:25:00.001-05:002008-04-03T09:27:55.982-05:00

My predecessor left me a bunch of articles about all kinds of technology/library issues. That is cool, but since I don't know what he left me, I decided to make a spreadsheet of the articles. A catalog, if you will. Hee.So, I'm going through the folders and what do I find, but J.C.R. Licklider's "The Computer as a Communication Device." (warning: it's a pdf) A veritable classic in our field, akin

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-87500601634910340832008-03-25T14:58:00.003-05:002008-03-25T15:14:11.409-05:00

When I took early modern philosophy in college, one of the main problems that we ran into between any two philosophers was their difference of definition. Kant might have meant one thing by his use of “mind” or “knowledge”, and Leibnitz would have a very different meaning. And then if you threw Berkeley into the mix, well, you had a rumble on your hands.Just kidding. Philosophers do not have

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-13234799461358312642008-03-24T11:16:00.005-05:002008-03-24T11:27:32.060-05:00

This is big right now...Thomas Mann wrote a paper about the Working Group's paper on RDA that they presented back in November. There's another response to his work from the autocat listserv here.I’m just going to be taking the things I highlighted from his work and talking about them. Not very systematic, but hopefully it acts as a good guide for me personally when I go back through the work.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-11515165307768354802008-03-21T09:19:00.002-05:002008-03-21T09:20:25.115-05:00

I've been reading up on RDA, FRBR, and metadata more generally over the past week (I have such a cool job). Anyway, as I was reading, and reading, and reading, I saw some things that grabbed my attention.A lot of people who talk about RDA (and FRBR) talk about how these new concepts and new shifts in understanding are going to help us create meaning for our users. Instead of cataloging in a

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-48381887951365779362008-03-20T10:57:00.003-05:002008-03-20T11:24:06.085-05:00

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.--Heinrich Heine ("Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.") Historical note!Heine was a Jewish cum Protestant Romantic poet living in Germany in the early half of the 19th century. The quote was actually in reference to the Spanish Inquisition, and the burning of the Qur'an.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-62364984630614335022008-03-19T11:19:00.001-05:002008-03-19T11:21:00.965-05:00

I am SO GLAD that Karen Coyle gave her talk at Code4Lib on RDA. I myself have been asked to do a powerpoint presentation on RDA/FRBR for the cataloging department, and the points she’s raising are insanely useful (although also scary). She makes a good stab at talking about weaknesses and strengths of RDA without coming down on one side or the other.Of course, in this blog, I don’t really feel

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-29154277090603922662008-03-17T16:08:00.002-05:002008-03-17T16:25:32.348-05:00

I'm pretty young to the ALA listservs, so I've never been around for the Presidential elections. But I have to say, the email blasts with the (clearly?) professional graphic design work....is this normal? Or is this new? Alire's is the funniest, to me: the one that's trying too hard. The one that came in today, Williams, is much more down to earth, although I do like how we still have the faded

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-30095170827465758932008-03-14T09:28:00.004-05:002008-03-14T09:30:34.631-05:00

I went on a field trip the other day. To the library's offsite storage facility. Now, I had seen pictures of these places before--robotic arms that gather materials that are so closely spaced no human being could ever get in.Our storage facility is not that crazy, although it does have 40 ft. ceilings and can store about 1.3 million volumes. but the gathering is still done by actual, live people

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-17487680509605361652008-03-13T15:48:00.000-05:002008-03-13T15:50:18.475-05:00

I'm just going to lay this out there--sometimes I get bored cataloging. It's not always puppies and sunshine at my desk, especially right now, when I'm learning how to do the cataloging the way they do here. I mean, it's good practice, but dear me, I get tired of checking for correct spacing.I'm much more interested in talking to people about metadata then actually creating it. My husband has

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-49598560598239973182008-03-11T16:49:00.001-05:002008-03-11T16:51:32.356-05:00

I've been trying to find some information on what kind of workflows are out there for metadata creation. Let me tell you, it is harder than you think. But I did stumble across a new piece of software that will hopefully be coming out soon: Rutger Libraries' Workflow Management System (inventive title, no?). Code4Lib did an article about it awhile ago, so it's not like super-new news, but I've

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-68386928064829332172008-03-06T13:11:00.003-06:002008-03-06T13:18:58.230-06:00

The Interwebs is already starting to seeth with mentions of GLIMIR. But first, you may ask, what is GLIMIR? Well, as I read it, it's a terribly horrible acronym for Global Library Manifestation Identifier (yeah, I don't know where that other I and the R come from, either....maybe we could throw some stuff in?....Global Library Irate Manifestation Identifier Roadshow?)Basically, it takes the

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-22707330447389777092008-03-05T09:12:00.005-06:002008-03-14T09:37:57.925-05:00

There's a big digital project in the works here at The New Job. They're digitizing something like 400 works or pieces, and then some of us in the cataloging department are charged with creating the metadata. Not from scratch or anything, of course--the works are originally out of the archives here, so there's some basic metadata available. I've been meeting with people about this project a lot in

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-41095845426401504302008-03-03T16:10:00.000-06:002008-03-03T16:11:25.166-06:00

So I've started using old-school Unicorn (ie, Workflows). I mentioned before that it feels outdated. It's really easy to use, once someone has explained how to use it and what the words mean. It's kind of Windows-based...it reminds me of databases that we used in junior high, which makes sense, since Unicorn is a pretty old system. I'm currently learning how they copy catalog here, so the work is

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-58710217597874307802008-02-29T15:49:00.004-06:002008-02-29T16:02:26.232-06:00

I've always known that there are multiple sources of information that a cataloger must be comfortable with in order to do their job. I use them every day. But reading through a list of them, or even better, trying to re-create my former setup of bookmarks and documentation, makes the whole thing seem quite daunting. Think about it: not only must you internalize the rules of AACRII, you must also

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-64443041774011538052008-02-28T17:06:00.004-06:002008-04-30T13:49:43.698-05:00

"The convenience of the user must be put before the ease of the cataloger."Charles Cutter is a name that's pretty familiar to anyone who catalogs. That's his statement. I've written about users in relation to cataloging departments before, but it's always interesting to see a quote from Cutter in a book on metadata best practices. Mostly because I have this dim idea that librarians in the past

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-21784608237286589122008-02-27T13:38:00.000-06:002008-02-27T13:39:12.380-06:00

Are you ready for this? I now have the old Unicorn version and the "new" Unicorn version on my desktop, simultaneously. The old one....I don't even know how to explain it. It's like a dinosaur version of an ILS. It has little radio buttons, but no mouse-over captions to help you understand what the little buttons do. It's one of those systems where, if you don't know what you're doing, you're not

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-16713430515797604672008-02-26T15:30:00.001-06:002008-02-26T15:32:56.039-06:00

I've crossed over to the dark side, you know. The Unicorn side of SirsiDynix. I am going to have so much to tell you all about the differences between old Unicorn (WorkFlows) and new Unicorn (the Java based version) and how different it is from Horizon... yep. Tomorrow I'm learning WorkFlows a little (old Unicorn look and feel), and after that I'm going to learn the Java platform of Unicorn (new

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-67178474797099373092008-02-26T15:20:00.003-06:002008-02-26T15:21:53.987-06:00

Preface: I was in Mexico for a week after leaving my old job. But hey, I'm back! Woo! Back to regular programming, but now with a tan.=================================================================================Part of my new job is to catalog monographs and other materials, and manage digital projects. Because my job started yesterday, I am honestly not sure what all this entails. But I know

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-1180896904483861302008-02-13T08:51:00.003-06:002008-02-13T11:02:13.409-06:00

So, I'm leaving this job on Friday. And I'm trying to square away as many things as I can, since there's no way of knowing when they'll get another cataloger in here. I've "given away possessions", so to speak, and by possessions I mean responsibilities. I don't deal with ezproxy anymore, my students have taken over the maintenance of Horizon, and now I'm writing up little how-to's for the

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-61923217201284983342008-02-07T08:43:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:46:21.609-06:00

While reading the intrepid Cataloging and Classification Quarterly this quarter (which is an awesome one, by the way), I was intrigued by the first article, and the recapping of a report by Karen Calhoun (the recapping was done by Deanna Marcum). Two things really caught my eye.Now, let's be fair; I didn't read Calhoun's report, because I was reading what Deanna thought of Karen's report. But it

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-32128515360842635332008-02-05T10:29:00.000-06:002008-02-05T10:32:18.370-06:00

to think about writing. Instead, I just feel like sleeping for the next three days. I think I might have mono, but then I'm reminded of a famous quote from Wayne's World:"One time I thought I had mono for an entire year. Turns out I was just really bored."Well, I'm not bored....just so, so sleepy. Even reading the DCRM(B) is not making me feel more awake. I know! I thought rare books cataloging

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-77590971686646481322008-01-31T12:04:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:25:27.149-06:00

One of my library friends today asked the question: Did you read the Final Report of the Bibliographic Control Working Group?Well, yes, of course, I answer. It's quite similar to what they said on November 13. Then we started talking about RDA. Gulp.There is so much cynicism related to RDA, its appalling. Awhile ago I was thinking about how we adapt technology to "traditional" cataloging practice

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-71493071739494333092008-01-29T08:34:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:25:52.562-06:00

I have a new job. Instead of working with Horizon, and cataloging, and all that jazz, I'll be doing only original cataloging and acting as a metadata librarian. I'm pretty excited. And even though I'll be leaving Horizon, I'll be working with Unicorn instead. Yes, I'm moving to the DARK SIDE. I think this will only help my understanding of the SD machine, actually. Of course, I'll be doing so

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-85712063322580600302008-01-25T09:05:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:27:52.997-06:00

For anyone who isn't a Horizon customer who might read this blog, I feel like it's my duty to keep you informed on what's happening in SirsiDynix Land. And there are a couple new things to report.First, SirsiDynix is having a SuperConference! This SuperConference! will have both Unicorn users and Horizon users. I assume they're doing this because the two groups have already been meeting together

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-71359489336243343172008-01-24T13:58:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:28:43.149-06:00

I got the Cataloging Service Bulletin today. And I just have to ask, does anyone really read that thing? I get it, look at the table of contents on the front page, grow disheartened that there are 58 pages of LC rule interpretations and four pages of revised LCSH, and I just want to kind of hide myself and then hide this bulletin in a binder and never look at it again. It's as if the bulletin

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-74994571424789745782008-01-23T15:29:00.001-06:002008-02-07T10:34:02.303-06:00

I used to work in archives. I also used to work in museums. As anyone can tell you, libraries, archives, and museums have very different ideas about how to arrange and organize things. They also have different views on users, on policy, and lots of other things. There is a committee, out there in the ether, called CALM (Committee on Archives, Libraries and Museums), whose job it is to help all

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-14603454670631160542008-01-22T09:11:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:34:49.360-06:00

I haven't talked about this, mostly because I hadn't visited the site yet, but the old Dynix "customer care" website is in the process of switching over to the Client Care Portal. This is a joint client care website for both Unicorn and Horizon. I assume it's in place to get ready for Symphony. But it has this great added benefit to any Horizon customer (and Unicorn customer, too, I imagine),

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2