Creative Cataloging

I was reading through the bibframe listserv, as I do, because I lurk, and I kept kind of muttering at my computer screen “what? But you’re not the user!” or “catalogers feel better when there are guidelines?” And then I happened across this from Karen Coyle:

“I'm convinced that we cannot "model our universe of data" as a metadata model that covers everything anyone would ever want to catalog, or how they want to catalog it. This is why I am highly skeptical of FRBR -- because it tries to fix one view of bibliographic data, as if the world isn't undergoing constant change. While there may well be a convenient core of elements, beyond that the main qualification, IMO, is re-usability -- give catalogers a whole host of elements that they can use wherever they want, even if no one has used that combination before. The instance data then becomes the picture of the bibliographic universe, not a pre-defined structure. In other words, create the tinker toys (or Legos for those not old enough to remember tinker toys) and let the catalogers make things with them.”

Now, I agree with her very much, but only in certain cases. The certain case that I am thinking of is the one where you have a very experienced cataloger who can make educated guesses about the thing they are cataloging. Nate Trail, from LC, responded and argued that some catalogers do like the structure offered by distinct elements for distinct classes of material. And I agree with him, too, but only in the case of an apprentice cataloger, or maybe someone who has not before been let off their cataloging leash.

I am convinced that we need to put more trust in catalogers, not because they necessarily deserve to be let loose on the wilds of cataloging, but because if we don’t create standards that allow people some free reign, they will *never* learn how to catalog creatively. And we need creative cataloging more than ever. I just heard about a book that had an ipad with it, with an app that added dimension to the book. There is no possible way to predict what the things that come into our library will look in even five years, and to try to create snuggly blankets of rules for carrier types and pre-built cataloging structures is probably going to end up making catalogers more confused and less experienced in the long run. I think we learn better when we’re a little scared.

New Models of Metadata Throwdown

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 first, things were pretty quiet. Webex offers a chat window in their interface so you can have side conversations or ask questions or whatever. I left at the stroke of 3, when the thing ended, and people were still going on and on about the logistics of changing over from MARC to whatever we may end up with. It was insane. To me, it seemed like everyone was asking Karen herself to explain how SirsiDynix is going to implement RDA. What a ridiculous and useless thing to ask. How could she possibly have any idea?

Also, best moment, which I will recreate here in a vignette:

Attendee: So, are you saying that MARC is dead??
Karen: Yep.


Awesome.

So, I left the webinar feeling very angsty about my fellow attendees, because I thought we got way off track with asking questions about logistics, when Karen was there to talk about new models of metadata. I really wanted to hear her talk about the web structures and how metadata theory is changing. She did get to talk about that, but I feel like the conversation devolved a little.

Now, with the distance of a day, I get it. People are scared. Change is hard emotionally and intellectually, and we're looking at a real sea change in how we create and manage information. MARC has been the only format going for a long time, and AACRII has been the only standard going for a long time, and Karen said yesterday that we're looking at getting rid of BOTH. For many catalogers, who have never dealt with anything else (like, say, EAD and DACS), they can't really even imagine what a different standard and different format would look like. Some of the attendees were having trouble even dissociating the two, often confusing MARC for a standard. There's a lot of education to be done in order to help everyone move forward.

A Loaded Question

From Autocat this afternoon:
"Some staff here are convinced that "you
can't find anything" in our catalog. That it has become an unnecessary
expense since most patrons browse the collection anyway. If so, is it
the 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 all the new-fangled discovery tools like Aquabrowser and iBistro and all that nonsense. This is a HUGE QUESTION, Palm Beach County Library System, and no one really knows the answer to it. In fact, I would argue that these questions are the very core of all the changes going on in the library world right now. I wonder if she'll get any responses. I certainly do not have the finger endurance to type out the kind of response that she needs....although, to be fair, probably no one does. But if I did, it would start out with "When Yahoo and Google started creating their own search engines in 1996..." and we'd just go on from there. My response would probably end with "and no one knows, even to this day, if the problem is the catalog or the untrained user, or both. Although I figure it's both."

A Fork in the Road

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 certainly respectable, but they are not Gods. They are just people who happen to do very well at analysis of different kinds of data, who also happen to be very good at writing papers and books. A small skill-set, to be sure. The other thing that characterizes these educated souls, is that they are, at core, not interested in practice.
That's a not a pejorative statement, by the way. Why? Because when you spin it the OTHER way, and say that most practicing librarians are not interested in creating theory, no one seems to mind.
Anyway, while I was in undergrad, I put these people up very high, and I put practitioners at some sort of "lower" rung. When I got to graduate school, I finally started seeing that it wasn't a hierarchy, but rather a difference of opinion about how it was best to spend one's time.
The longer I work with "academics", the more I see that this basic divide is a real problem for any kind of project between practicing professionals and the theoreticians. Why? Because the theoreticians say "we want X" and the professionals say "Oh. Well, X isn't actually possible." And the theoreticians say "but you asked us what we wanted!"
Now, I don't think that either side is "right" in this particular debate, because on the one hand, you can say that the theoreticians aren't grounded enough to see that what they desire and what they can have are different, but you could just as easily say that the practitioners aren't allowing themselves to dream enough in order to innovate.
So the two sides are constantly at loggerheads, and it takes some very adept people to keep them both happy and productive and working towards a common goal. And it's so, so easy to put these two groups against each other. "Their heads are in the clouds!" "They just don't want to change!" And neither of those mentalities are constructive, and neither of those mentalities are true.
I think we see this all the time. The Working Group for the Future of Bibliographic Control is a great example. Well, not them, per se, but the response to them. We have the very, very practical side saying that we need to scrap RDA and just focus on cataloging, and we have the extreme other side who are completely content to just "try it out" and let things run their course, because hey, why not?
There are more examples out there. They're always there.

Conversation with a Serials Librarian

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 questions in AACR! That's the whole reason CONSER exists."

The more we talked, the more we both came to the conclusion that FRBR is, as the serials librarian said, "a fancying up of old ideas." When I think of FRBR and I think of all the examples that FRBR has been used to describe, it's still based off the basic idea of one work that can be expressed in multiple expressions/manifestations/items. But it's still ONE WORK that was created by ONE person/group/corporation. Serials are just not like that, so it falls to CONSER to (yet again) make their own rules, and tweak concepts, just like they had to do when the library community ignored their needs back in the mid-century with AACR. I don't have a problem with FRBR being tied to traditional ideas of bibliographic control, but they should probably acknowledge that straight off.

This goes back to something I wrote about awhile ago--that archives and museums will have no interest in RDA. And it's dawning on me as to why (besides the obvious one that RDA is kind of imperialistic). If RDA is based off the conceptual framework of FRBR, and FRBR starts everything off with the term "work," we're automatically shutting out everyone who is not part of the one-book-one-author universe. Archivists, curators,and serials librarians just don't respond to that kind of terminology. It doesn't really matter if you have "addressed" their needs--you're starting from the wrong place.

I think that our serials librarian is right, in a way. FRBR, even though it seems to be trying to philosophically embrace all kinds of information, just doesn't do that. Where do archival collections fit into FRBR? Serials? Pith helmets? They don't fit, and will never fit. And that's ok. Because I'm not saying that FRBR isn't an excellent way of conceptualizing the creation of creative works. It is! But if the concept doesn't even fit one of the largest "anomalies" in the library world (serials), then why are we using it as a base to build a new set of rules about cataloging?

Clash of the Titans

We had a meeting the other day. It was me, my boss, and 4 people from the IT department. We had come together to talk about the library system, and where we are going from here. We talked for about 15 minutes about where Horizon was going, since the IT department is generally out of the loop on that, and about the update (7.4.1), and about Aquabrowser, and then we got into the list of ILSes I had emailed to them.
And then wham!
No, didn't get hit by a bus. Rather, one of the IT guys says "ok, I just have to ask--what does 'acquisitions' mean?"
So I metaphorically took him by the hand and explained how a book moves through the library. I've always thought that was the easiest way to explain how an ILS works. He gets all that; most people get library workflow pretty quickly, because hey, we've all used libraries since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. But then I said "and there's one other module--serials."
Looks of total vapidity took over their faces. It didn't take over my boss's face, of course, since he is a librarian and knows all about such things.
And I have a moment of small panic: how do I explain the chaos that is serials? The name changes, the embargoes, the missed invoices, the backlog, the missing issues, the theft? Luckily my boss saved me, in a way, by saying that most serials modules for ILSes have never worked adequately enough for a serials department to completely forego their old paper-based systems. That seemed to appease the IT people.
The things that people don't know about libraries.....I never really thought that we had a seedy underbelly, but trying to explain the workings of even our own well-oiled and well-run library makes my head hurt.

Treehugger v. Propellor Head

The age-old debate, right? In case you're wondering, this is a difference made by one of my professors in my graduate program. He himself was a propellor head, I think, which means he was a technology-lover. I tend to think of myself as a natural treehugger, which means that I would rather be handling old and fragile paper and books than learning SQL or building webpages.
Which is weird, right? My entire job is focused on computers, databases, and programming languages, yet in my heart of hearts, I do wish I ran a rare bookshop, telling customers all about the new first edition Wealth of Nations that just came last week and no, please, don't touch the pages, they are in good condition but I'd rather not have your finger oils all over them if you're not prepared to buy .
At any rate, the dichotomy between these two camps used to be much more prevalant than it is today, I think. Go to the Society of American Archivists conference, and you'll find nothing BUT tech seminars and digital records and EAD and whatever else is coming down the pike. Very little left on the paper that they are preserving. More and more, preservationists and archivists are moving away from their roots. I know that most of the people I graduated with, have gone into or are more interested in, digital matters.
But the thing is, most small-organization archivists don't have the time to mess around with fancy digital anything, and would rather have more information on the nuts and bolts of preservation than the newest open source software out there, or how to put all of their things online. Unfortunately, many archivists get sucked into the digital wave--our archivist is thinking of digitizing old newspapers, but without thinking that maybe the cost of digitization would outweigh the gain of having them online. Without heavy use, what's the point of putting them up on the web? Does it increase use? Maybe, maybe not. It's not like he's thinking of putting ancient Roman texts online, or the Gutenberg bible. It's just some student newspapers, and if they don't get accessed anyway, what's the benefit of making them digital now? His thought process seems to be (and I think it's this way a lot in the archives community) that any digitization is good digitization. I don't think that such thinking is productive, but it's very prevalent everywhere.
Don't get me wrong, the digital revolution is full upon us, and it's not a bad thing. It gave me a job that is interesting and fun and challenging, so who am I to complain? But I hope that the treehuggers stand firm and don't give too much ground. We need our lovely old books, too.