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.

Process v. Product

Cataloging is changing, there is no doubt about it. Even as we hold on more tightly by writing rules and guidelines and more theory and more rules and more guidelines, it seems to be slipping through our fingers. Some of the change is coming simply because of globalization. OCLC is not just for American libraries with the money to afford to share data and train catalogers anymore. I work within a department that is traditional (by traditional I mean wealthy, with time to train catalogers, and the resources to keep them, and the culture to respect their contribution to the library world), and one that prides itself on its thorough and thoughtful cataloging. I’m a very lucky cataloger indeed, to work at a place like this. I know that very well.

But we talk a lot about the degradation of cataloging “standards” here. I use quotation marks because I’m not quite sure what that even means anymore. For the purposes of our conversations, of course, it means that what we see in OCLC (or other record clearinghouses) is not what we used to see. Missed punctuation, missed fields, misspellings. Things that, in the heyday of the marriage of MARC and AACRII, would never be missed.  We have a system of hierarchy here, where we hold DLC to the highest standard, and have several libraries we hold as almost as trustworthy, and we turn to those libraries as our trusted sources of cataloging copy. Things are not so clear now, and more work is required all the time to turn OCLC records into records we can use in our catalog.

Now, I think we all realize that we are paddling against the current on this particular problem if we think that we can control the changes that happen all the time in cataloging (and libraries generally). Most of the catalogers here are resigned to it, and we slowly change our own standards so that we don’t have to put as much time into our own work (because there’s always a backlog and it never ends).

My question, though, is…is this a value-neutral change that is occurring? Are we actually losing anything by becoming more lax in our standards? And I do think we’re becoming more lax generally. New metadata standards do not even come *close* to the kind of thoroughness that MARC contains, because they focus on a streamlined feel. Even big metadata standards tend to streamline themselves. I don’t know if this is good or bad or even something that terms like “good” and “bad” should be applied to. We *are* sliding away from strict control of our metadata though, out of necessity and out of a different idea of what we need in order for our metadata to work for us.

I’m interested in where cataloging is going, and technology has always been an aid to a cataloger, but I hate to think that we might lose our dedication to good description because we've committed ourselves to productivity.

BIBFRAME

Well, it’s officially been what? a year and a half since I last posted on this blog. I’m back in the library world after a hiatus due to babies, and of course I have things to say about things again. And since this blog was just sitting around and not doing anything (figures…lazy blogs), I decided that I can start using it again for my blatherings.

And do I have something to blather on about?! Yes, yes I do.

There was a Webinar. Hosted by NISO and by DCMI, it featured Mr. Eric Miller and he talked for 90 minutes about BIBFRAME (which I hear has its own website now checkitoutlook!).

I am so excited about BIBFRAME that I actually went home and told my husband all about it. I never do this, by the way, because he’s a very nice man and also an attorney who doesn’t even know who Tim Berners-Lee is. Anyway, so I went home and started to explain why we are in the position of needing a new metadata schema for bibliographic entities, and I only got to the point of explaining MARC and he said “that seems clunky—why don’t they just make it so that the records can be searched by Google?” And then I had to say “you ruined my whole story.”

That is what BIBFRAME, if and when it gets on its feet, is supposed to do. It’s going to open up bibliographic data to the World in the form of tagged data that can be searched by the search engines on the internet. I’ve been telling all my (non-librarian, non-cataloger) friends about this, and they all get wide eyes and go “Ohhhhhh! That’s a good idea! I would love something like that.”

Yeah, no kidding.

I also had a thought regarding the paradox of vendors who say “we will change the metadata schema for bibliographic records when our customers demand it” and the customers (libraries) who say “We can’t change schemas until our vendor changes it, and every time we ask if they’re working on RDA, they say they are but we have no evidence of this!” Eric Miller seemed to suggest in that webinar that what should happen is that the librarians should march on the vendors and demand a change. And everyone in the room with me when he said that literally laughed out loud like crazy loons. So I thought to myself: wouldn’t it be more beneficial if Eric Miller went to the vendors and said “I have a solution to your problem with implementing RDA. It’s called BIBFRAME and it’s going to rock your socks.”

The Internet! Bah

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. Uh, sure."

I wrote back to my friend "That guy must feel like such a doofus."

Well, turns out he does...this is an excerpt of what he thinks of his article now:
"Most of my screwups have had limited publicity: Forgetting my lines in my 4th grade play...Wasting a week hunting for planets interior to Mercury's orbit using an infrared system with a noise level so high that it couldn't possibly detect 'em. Heck - trying to dry my sneakers in a microwave oven...
And, as I've laughed at others' foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions.
Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff...
Warm cheers to all,
-Cliff Stoll on a rainy Friday afternoon in Oakland"

Cliff Stoll's embarrassment is probably a message to us all. Whenever I think about the new future of cataloging, I have the tendency to think "RDA? FRBR? Bah." Mostly this is due to a fear of the unknown, and a general dislike of people who are optimists. I am not an optimist. I am more of a...raging bulldozer of pessmism. Seeing that there were 300 people at the RDA class, though, gives me pause. Maybe we'll really do this thing. Maybe someday, library catalogs will be the most usable and efficient way of finding information that the Web has to offer. And we'll all understand how metadata is generated and actually *appreciate* what it means to generate all that metadata. And I'll have my own pony.

Sorry. My optimism got away from me for a second. I mean, I'll have my own brain-implanted internet access chip.

That's So 1998

"...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 laugh and laugh, because: TRUE.

And it got me to thinking about something I put in my notes at the Karen Coyle webinar. Namely, that FRBR's structure doesn't jive with how we see the "future" of information relationships. Everyone is talking about how information should be a 'web', with everything having the same importance and availability. FRBR doesn't do that, though. From the models I've seen of FRBR, it seems that the relationships only flow one way. Instead of subjects having potentially the same importance as a book itself, subjects are always subservient to bibliographic data. Afterthoughts, add-ons. I know that it's been said that people are working on this aspect of FRBR, presumably to change it, but to me that seems to be a basic building block of how FRBR treats information.

FRBR *is* kind of 19th century. Or 20th century even. I mean, it's a really recent concept that information can reside outside a physical object. When FRBR was published (and let's keep in mind that FRBR was in the works for several years before 1998), the idea that you would put information on the web and nowhere more "permanent" was still nascent. Why would anyone do such a thing? If you had a big idea, why would you just put it out into the ether and not try to get it published, recorded, or printed? Today, that doesn't sound ludicrous at all. But it was only twelve years ago.

The Philosophy of the Book

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 physicality and reality with FRBR. I don't know if anyone's done this, or if we've all moved way beyond traditional philosophy and just reference our own works now with nary a thought towards the people who spend all their time asking "what is knowledge?". I'd be interested in reading something that connected the two areas of study.
And THEN, another librarian (from acquisitions this time) came in to say that she saw an exhibit by Steve Wolfe that looked like he framed book jackets, and hung paperback novels on the wall. But it turns out that he actually painted those book jackets, and the "novels" are just woodblocks made to look exactly like a book. Objects that are books to the naked eye, but have no knowledge in them.
The universe is telling me to think about this issue. I like it when convergences occur like this, but I'm having trouble even articulating what I'm grappling with today. It obviously requires a lot more thought, but I don't have time to think about these things, either (cataloging awaits me!). What is a book? Is it just information? God, am I turning into Michael Buckland??

Bookstores and libraries

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 catalog is to a) list everything we have in the stacks and b) find what we're after in those stacks.

And here's the rub. Bookstores only help you find the books you already know you need. As in, I need a copy of Jane Eyre. It's in the Fiction section, under Bronte. Congratulations, now pay us $10.

Now, if I were to say instead "I need a piece of English literature, written in the early-to-mid 19th century, and focusing on romantic love," the bookstore will not help you. The bookstore will look at you blankly and say "literature? Aisle 2."

The comment that was made about "finding what we're after in the stacks" is all well and good, but it presupposes that you already know exactly what you're looking for. Libraries and library catalogs are not built on the presupposition that you know what you want. They're built on the idea that you *kind of* know what you want. If you know exactly what you want, great! That's so much easier. If you don't know, exactly, we have people and catalogs that give you lots of information on subjects so maybe you can find what you need in a relatively short amount of time.

So the whole debate on bookstores and libraries is a bit silly, because they don't serve the same purposes at all, and to say that bookstores perform the same organizational tasks as libraries is ludicrous, and patently untrue.

Getting ready

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 worldview-changing. The terms are a little different, but the rules themselves are pretty much the same, at their core. I could still use MARC. There are still statements of responsibility. There is no hand of a Library God touching down to wreak havoc upon us all.

Now, I haven't been through all of the draft documents yet, so maybe at some point I'm going to be blown away. In fact, I'm sure that will happen. Because I haven't gotten to any place yet where RDA starts looking like a FRBR mechanism. Right now it just looks like AACRII. I could only be so lucky.

Catalogers are not the enemy

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. She also said that she wanted to stand up and say "the real problem is that the library systems we use have never caught up to what catalogers actually need to do their jobs." That made me laugh. True.

But here's the thing: my colleague wasn't witnessing some small, misguided group of people who think of catalogers as Luddites and reactionaries. She was witnessing a microcosm of the thought of most of the information technology people out there today. I feel bad for all the catalogers when I hear talk like this (so I guess, really, I just feel bad for myself). Catalogers aren't backwards, they just want to create metadata for their objects, like anyone who has an object that they want other people to see. We use MARC for that. And let's face it, there isn't another metadata format out there that can rival the completeness of MARC. Most of the new metadata standards are still working out problems that this standard figured out 20 years ago.

I don't like the idea that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. MARC is not the greatest, I realize that. Neither is AACRII, or LCSH. But they're not terrible, either. Speaking strictly from metadata schemas, MARC is still pretty awesome. It still does things that DC has never even dreamed of (and which we've been trying to squeeze into qualified DC with mixed results).

The need to create metadata is not going to go away just because someone decides that catalogers are obsolete. I don't know how some people think that we will get our information about information in the future, but one great example of the need for metadata comes from images. An image doesn't actually tell you anything about itself without you looking at it. So how do you search a database of images? You search the metadata that was created by someone who cared about creating metadata--ie, someone from the family of catalogers. You can call them something else if you want; data analysts or metadata-creation experts or whatever, but it's the same thing.

Anyway. This is my soapbox. I sigh a lot when I think about how abused catalogers have become at the hands of the techies. It's not like catalogers have created the downfall of civilization or the corruption of technology. In fact, we often wish that the search-mechanism creators would find a way to use the information we give them more profitably. Does that make us reactionary?

Devil's Advocate

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 rules, and we're not somehow coming to a new dawn of cataloging when we talk about FRBR or RDA. Now, lots of cataloging scholars also see this (William Denton's chapter in Understanding FRBR is a great example of this--his whole chapter is about how FRBR developed out of the past).

But I feel as though a lot of OTHER people just aren't seeing this relationship to the past. Many librarians are very worried about RDA, just as FRBR worried them 10 years ago. Why are they worried about RDA? Because it's being touted as this new, groundbreaking initiative that will change everything about cataloging as we know it.

Except that it won't.

Ranganathan's words still ring true. Cutter's rules, lo those many years ago, set us up for using card catalogs, author and subject indexing, and helping the user to find what they need. LC based most of their standards on Cutter's work, and the ALA based most of its work on LC standards, and let's face it, Cutter wouldn't find very much to be shocked about in the AACRII.

RDA likely won't be THAT shocking, either. I mean, to look at it from an outsider's perspective (say, the serials cataloging community), it's just more of the same, wrapped up in new terminology. Will the new terminology help us to catalog various formats better? I have no idea, although from looking at the vocabularies list that came out recently, I suspect it will not. They have a separate term for music publisher numbers. No term for other kinds of publisher numbers, though. Where is the overarching idealism in something like that?

I frequently worry that the library community has been stuck in a classification rut for over a hundred years, but that the reason no one is truly willing to step out on a limb and create something totally new is because it's just easier to do everything like we've been doing it**. As the amount of information increases, and we become more and more invested in one system, it gets harder and harder to scrap the concepts. When I even think about conceiving a new classification system, I usually end up (mentally) drawing away from the idea. Dr. Miksa once bemoaned the lack of true theoretical learning in the cataloging world, telling us that one big reason we would never change our systems is because we're no longer training anyone to do it. We're just training everyone in the same traditions, and letting everyone go along thinking that this is the only way to organize information. He mused that when someday a new format comes along that everyone wants and it doesn't fit into any of our organizational schemas, there will be no one to make the leap and conceive of a new system. We've been very resourceful so far, fitting the new formats into our old ways of doing things, by renaming or expanding or just tweaking the same concepts over and over. But it may not always be enough. And I feel as if I (and others, of course) have been led to believe that RDA is supposed to lead to some new, more open era of cataloging. But the more I think about it, the less I believe it.




**(this is not a new idea, by the way...somebody very recently was saying that the reason people don't want RDA is because it will lead to a change in our system requirements, and that change will cost money that people don't want to spend)

Future trends, past traditions

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 use a metaphor (simile?), metadata schemas are like the parts of a car (simile!). METS is the frame, MODS is the engine, DC is the transmission, MIX is the mirrors....this simile is breaking down, a little, but you get the point. Gartner's idea is that once we figure out a way to bolt all the pieces together in a systemized way, we'll have a car and then everyone will be driving. So, once we finally, as a library community, decide to systematize all these different schemas and link them together and decide upon common access points, we'll have something akin to MARC and AACRII, where all the records can transfer to any library system, and everyone uses the same rules, and we can trade records and federate searches and everyone will eat ice cream every day and there will be puppies at every computer terminal.

The thing is, he's not that far from reality. I figure it really is just a matter of time before we come up with a standard for digital object description that uses pieces of MODS, or DC, or PREMIS, all within a METS wrapper. I mean, we're there NOW, we just haven't codified it yet. Who doesn't use those metadata schemas? It's the most organic kind of creation, without rules, yet we all follow a kind of Pirates' Code where we try to take into account all the traditions of library cataloging, use LCSH when possible, etc. (Also, if we could call this new code that will someday be created the Pirate Librarians' Code, I would be cool with that). There is a ton of tradition behind new metadata creation.

RDA is certainly our first step towards a system of creating metadata content that is standardized, and will work with both paper and digital, and is not based on the idea of catalog cards. At least I hope that they ditch all those crazy rules that only come from the idea of having a finite amount of space to write. I'm sure they will, the RDA group seems pretty smart. Much like AACRII and MARC, though, someone is probably going to have to come along and write one of those books like "Cataloging with AACRII and MARC21", because the RDA people will not want to tie their content standard to anything concrete, and all the librarians will just be sitting there wondering how in the hell they translate their rules from physical to metadata to digital. And I imagine that in five years, my reference shelf will have a copy of RDA, and a copy of "Cataloging with RDA and MARC" and a copy of "Cataloging with RDA and MODS" or something.

Ooh, maybe I can write one. Then I will be a Great and Accomplished Academic Writer.

Where the MARC meets the XML

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 before possible. This also fuels the academic cataloging departments, of course, so I'm not complaining. Much.

Anyway, for this big project we're working on, we're taking scholars and having them do TEI markup on printed works and handwritten manuscripts of all kinds, and then everything will be searchable by keyword and etc etc. I think that tomorrow I'm going to write about TEI, and put in links and things, because I think that not enough librarians know a lot about TEI. But today, I'm going to talk about the relationship of TEI to MARC.

Yes. They have a relationship.

I noticed it right away while we were talking about the capabilities of TEI. The thing about it is--if encoded correctly, there's no need for a cataloging record. The TEI will have captured title, author, format, genre, extant, publisher information, year published, translators, as well as chapter and section titles. The search mechanisms then pull that information out directly from the digital document.
The caveat of course is that the document has to be digital. But think about it--you could easily have a catalog that pulls not only MARC records, but also TEI document information, and have both types of things in one catalog. There's not even really a need for a search portal--you could write a fairly simple program to pull information out of a TEI document and automatically generate a MARC record with it, and then import that record into your catalog. You could even do an 856 and link the whole thing together, and you could do it all with minimal effort on the part of the cataloger.

If there were other librarians at my desk with me right now, they'd all be screaming about subject headings, and yeah, this model doesn't do a thing for subject headings, but we don't create subject headings for manuscripts, anyway, really. It's too hard. And for printed books--subject analysis is a heck of a lot less of a time commitment than doing an entire record from scratch.

And when I think about it, MODS and EAD are the same way. Terry Reese at Oregon State has written a conversion program for EAD to MARC21, and I know that MarcEdit is the perfect platform for such things...but it's also not terribly intuitive all the time, and it only deals with EAD. We're fast approaching a time when having programs for conversion of other XML formats will be really, really useful...Why hasn't a little program been written yet? It's times like these that I wish I were a programmer. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for humanity), I am not.

I just feel like we've given up on MARC, as a profession, when in reality, it's still pretty useful for parsing information and making it searchable. And these other metadata schemas all still take the same stuff out of the original and put it into machine-readable format...why not use the structures we have in place (like our ILSes) and put them to work?

Define Yourself, Sir

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 fistfights.

Anyway, this is a major problem in most fields, because if you don’t define your terms, no one is ever going to understand you. The beauty of FRBR, for example, is that they defined the shit out of everything. You might have to read it five times to get it, but they DO define their terms.
The problem that I’m seeing more and more and more in blogs and in listservs, is that librarians are not defining their terms and therefore make themselves completely unintelligible to anyone who wants to understand them. They also simultaneously make themselves completely dismissible by anyone who doesn’t care to listen to them.

A good example is this listserv I'm on. I subscribe to it, mostly just to read all the smart people’s contributions. I am, unfortunately, a listserv-lurker. Anyway, there has been this discussion about non-literal vs. literal strings. Don’t ask me to explain what those are, because I can’t. But someone decided to try to explain the basic difference, finally, after about 5-6 emails had already bounced around that used the terms without definition, and what happens? An email immediately comes through from someone saying “Thank you!” for explaining the terms. It took 5-6 emails for that one person just to understand the terms...not the argument about the terms, just the terms themselves.

What is it with people? Is it that hard to understand that you might not always make sense? Especially when you’re talking about very difficult concepts that only use words as placeholders and not as describers? I mean, if the person were using “literal” in the literal sense…well, I have no idea what that could mean in relation to “non-literal.” This is one of those times when you absolutely have to define yourself, or everyone’s eyes will just glaze over and you’ll never get anywhere.

To extrapolate this further, one of the biggest issues I see in blogs is that people won’t define their terms, and let’s face it, the library world is really not that well-defined. Yes, we have standards and we have codes of ethics and we have conferences, but we still insist on using whatever term our local database has contrived for a “work” or a “bib” or a “title” (all the same thing, by the way—just different terms, all dependent on your ILS). FRBR tried to help us out by changing some of the ways that we think about conceptual objects in the library world, but I don’t think that most librarians are well-versed in that FRBR world, and don't use those terms on a regular basis. And since RDA apparently isn’t even using all of FRBR's concepts to write their manual…well, I don’t exactly see a light at the end of the tunnel.

RDA, FRBR, and other acronyms

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 like being unbiased. I will be for the powerpoint presentation, but not here! One of the useful things about being a nobody.
The thing that really gets me (and I commented on the FRBR blog about this), is that the RDA creators seem to be getting farther and farther away from what they said they would be doing, and that may force librarians to dislike RDA.

Some of the professed goals of RDA:

1. Create a more streamlined standard.
800 pages later, I’m questioning that one.

2. Hold true to the FRBR ideal.
They don’t use the attributes in FRBR to describe things in RDA. Why, I don’t know.

3. Make things easier for the user to find what they need, in the context of all knowledge.
RDA doesn’t address subject headings. And no one has ever heard of FRAD except the people on the RDA/FRBR/FRAD groups. And FRAD doesn’t do anything, anyway. It’s conceptual, just like FRBR.

4. Make the focus the content of the record, not the display of the record.
This is all well and good, but telling a cataloger not to standardize their records is like asking a fish not to swim. We’re trained this way! Taking the display rules out won’t automatically make us stop thinking about it.

5. Create a standard that archives, libraries, museums, and creators of digital materials can use.
No one except librarians is talking about RDA. I don’t see a lot of discussion (well, ANY discussion) from archivists or curators about RDA. Is this one of those “it’ll be for their own good” kind of initiatives? I think we all know how well MARC for archives turned out.

GLIMIR

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 problem of manifestations (FRBR alert!), and addresses the issue that ISBNs are not manifestation identifiers. A good example of what that means was given by Mr. Stuart Weibel--there are lots of records in OCLC that have the same ISBN. But many of those records are not duplicate, redundant records. They're foreign language records for a work in English. So....in this case we're talking about the same work, but a different manifestation of that work (I may be using "work" in an improper form. Sorry in advance). I guess that in the beginning, a lot of people thought that ISBN would be a manifestation-identifier. Which would be very nice and comforting, since it helps to ground FRBR-thinking into current-cataloger-thinking, but it's not a 1-to-1.

So OCLC (in all their infinite wisdom), has graciously decided to solve this problem for us. Whether or not these GLIMIRs will be "business-neutral" is still up for debate. Honestly, I don't see why they wouldn't be....OCLC numbers (and ISBNs) are "free"--once one catalog outside OCLC has one in their record, you're perfectly welcome to use that number for whatever you like.

So, with that (really, really bad) introduction to GLIMIR, I give you a link list:

Stuart Weibel's GLIMIR Of the Future (good stuff, read the comments, too!)

The FRBR blog's Open Library developers’ meeting (just a mention)

FRBR definitions (why not? Manifestation!)

That's all I have for now....OCLC is not yet admitting publicly that it's launching a pilot project. But I do think it's fascinating that FRBR is basically infiltrating our organizational lives already--RDA is not more than a mere glimmer in our eyes (pun!), yet we're already ramping up for a FRBR-based approach to cataloging. In fact, it's kind of like the current recycling theory: it's easier to recycle when you don't have to think about it. It's easier to FRBR when you don't have to catalog it.

Like Jumping off a Cliff?

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 internalize the variations that LC has decided upon over the years. Then you have to internalize how MARC functions both within and outside of those rules, and apply the metadata accordingly. And that's just for items that AACRII covers with regularity. Archival cataloging is barely mentioned, rare book cataloging (pre-1801) is literally not dealt with at all, and there are other books for almost all other formats. Don't even get me started on music. Or subject access.
Catalogers are so highly and specially trained, it's a wonder we get anything done at all. I read something once that said it takes, on average, 1.3 hours to catalog something from scratch. ON AVERAGE.
I have a friend who is thinking about applying for a job as a copy cataloger, and the sheer amount of knowledge that is implicit, even in copy cataloging, is pretty terrifying.
And yet, as I look out on this sea of standards for cataloging, and feel myself growing less and less sure of my own abilities in this job, one of the other original catalogers asks me a question today, and prefaces it with "In your vast experience with cataloging multiple formats, have you ever come across THIS before?"
Two things:

1. No. I have not come across this before.
2. Vast experience?

Then I think about it. I DO have vast experience in multiple formats, mostly because I kept getting myself into jobs where people just threw stuff at me and told me to catalog it. Maps, lithographs, books, archival collections, CDs, DVDs, lectures, speeches, photographs, postcards, I've described them all. And not to "date" myself, but I'm only 28. Surely someone here is eventually going to call me out at some point.
And really, I still don't feel comfortable cataloging all the time. Making the leap into using "cataloger's judgment" is scary as hell. Who's to say that I know what I'm doing?

And then I think about the famous words of Dr. Miksa--"God will not smite you if you make a mistake in cataloging." It's comforting, because eventually I think that all catalogers have to get over that fear of leaping. It's just information, after all.

I Know What [Boys] Want

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 seems pretty fair, all things considered. Oh, but first, the title of the report is "The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools."

So, moving along, I thought two things were interesting enough to make little comments in the margins.

The first thing that caught my eye was her assessment of the hurdles to expansion of library catalogs. Calhoun says that the obstacles to expansion are actually coming from the unwillingness of catalogers to change. Apparently we're resistant to simplifying cataloging procedures, and administrators have an "inability to base priorities on how users behave and what they want."

Ouch! We sound like Luddites.

The other thing that I found interesting was her analysis of Google's relation to cataloging. She sees a huge opportunity for things like Google Book to integrate catalogs with open Web discovery, but then says that "finding and obtaining items from library collections on the open Web is not a practical alternative for students and scholars."

I think this is hilarious. Now, I'm keeping firmly in mind that this report was written almost a full 2 years ago. However, I think most librarians probably still feel this way. That online search engines just couldn't possibly be good enough for users to find online books and such. But this is contradictory, because she just said up at the top that cataloging departments could really benefit from "simplifying" their cataloging. So we have to ask ourselves, do we really know what users will and will not use? Students especially will go to the ends of the digital Earth to find something online rather than physically walk into a library. It's like when I was starting college back in the late '90s, and the thought of using a paper periodical was like the most horrifying thing I could imagine. I would do anything to avoid making copies of dusty old bound periodicals.

So do we know what users want? Or do we just know what we think they want? Is this one those "father knows best" scenarios, where we deride new technology (again) while we continue to push our own ideas of what "searching" is supposed to be? It's discouraging that even the people who study the most about user behavior and organizational theory...are subject to their own biases about what constitutes "good" and "bad" and "real" search strategies. Our users will just push on without us, you know. And someday, even the Great and Powerful Google will be left in their dust.

The "serious" researcher

"...All books are written to express man's ideas and libraries are formed because other men wish to read and study those ideas. The cataloger's main business to make the collection of books and materials accessible to all who have a legitimate claim on its resources."--ALA Cataloging rules, 1949.

One of the old cataloging manuals here at the university has that quote on the very front page; a reminder of the goals of a cataloger. Considering that even in the 1950s, the department used students to do the cataloging work, its very interesting what this quote represents. The cataloger who put that in there wanted to give his workers a sense of the purpose of cataloging, not just the drudgery of filing catalog cards. "men wish to read and study": yes, that's why we're here. To serve them.

Ah, but now the tricky part comes in! The cataloger is supposed to serve "all who have a legitimate claim on its resources."
In the research I've been doing on early-20th century libraries, this idea of legitimacy comes up all the time. In 1930s statistics for one special library, the librarian only reports the statistics of "serious" researchers. He never defines what that means, of course, so I am left to speculate wildly on what that might mean. What constitutes serious research? Is an undergraduate student "serious"? In other words, does this 20-year-old have a "legitimate" claim on resources?
While I suppose that when I was 18, I was hardly worth any librarian's time, I do like to snuggle myself to sleep at night thinking that librarians are no longer like this. We no longer assign value judgments to our users' intentions or skill level. But guess what? I totally did that JUST YESTERDAY.
To set the stage: one of our reference librarians called me up, and asked me to come out to the desk. She asked me to put on my "archivist" hat. So out I come, and she shows me what she's been working on. It's a "currency" progression (currency as in whether or not something is out-of-date, not whether you can spend it), and archives of course falls to the back of the pack. Then she shows me a "reliability" progression, and archives are just one step up from gossip! I am taken aback. We discuss this for some time, and it becomes clear that all she's trying to do is help the students understand how subjective archival materials can be, especially when they are manuscripts. But what about business records! I want to shout. Anyway, I think over the problem, and we talk some more, and we decide to remove archives entirely from both of her progressions. Why? Because these students that she will talk to, because they are not as advanced as we great librarians, will be confused and will make bad value judgments on archives if we leave it in the list.
Who am I to say that all of these students are idiots? Or worse, uncaring of their ignorance? Surely they would like to learn all about archives? Or am I just superimposing my own love of archives onto them?
I don't know where I meant to be going with this, but it troubles me that while I talk about how "backwards" librarians used to be, with their notions of the serious or un-serious researcher, I myself make value judgments on our users all the time.

Francis Miksa

The FRBR Blog just posted up a thing on Fran Miksa. Follow the links and listen to him speak! I listened to him for quite awhile as my cataloging professor. Miksa is still the most coherent organizational theoritician I've ever heard (or read). For those who do not know, his father was an amateur mathematician, who worked for the phone company during the day and worked on magic squares at night (sounds very super-heroey, doesn't it?). Incidentally, his name was also Francis. Makes for some confusion at UT Austin, where the elder Miksa's papers are housed at the Center for American History.
Anyway, Fran Miksa's daughter Shawne is also a cataloging professor, at the University of North Texas. You can see the progression here? A family of like-minded people.
Miksa takes organizational theory to places that few catalogers dare to tread. I remember him talking about FRBR, not understanding half of what he said, but his passion for reform was palpable. It was one of the only times I've ever been excited about FRBR. He was also the first person I knew to condone subjective cataloging. One student in particular in my class would constantly ask "is this right?" whenever she made a decision about her cataloging. Finally Miksa told her that she should stop comparing herself to Job; God wouldn't strike her down just for making a call how whether to put in an added author or not. I believe that Miksa was also a seminarian.
Anyway, go listen to him. It's nice to see that Miksa is still getting the recognition that he truly deserves.

Networking and Subject Headings

I got to meet some new people yesterday. All of them were technical service librarians/digital librarians. And twice I heard the same comment/question: "What do you think about folksomonies?"
Um...?
I think that they're a fad? I think that people only use them because they have no idea that other subject searching is available? I think that LCSH needs to stop being a browsing list?
I got the feeling, though, that the idea of controlled language "death" is very scary for librarians.
And then TODAY, I see this:
University of Chicago Libraries

Which is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about! Do a search in the UC catalog now, and you get not only the list of things the catalog thinks you might want, but the ability to refine that search within the LC classification schema. We have the classification scheme already laid out for us, which roughly corresponds to the LCSH , and why not use it to help make LCSH more hierarchical? I've been gushing over AAT since as long as I can remember, because it takes the headings and makes them hierarchical. I can actually use the headings to help me find more headings! What a concept!
Now, obviously LCSH hasn't always been this way. The books are actually pretty useful when it comes to finding other headings that might be useful. But when everything went online, we really lost that ability. There aren't nearly as many cross-references anymore, or see alsos.
We need to reclaim that heritage, and make our LCSH work FOR us again, instead of against us, and I think that folksonomies will end up following. All people really need is a way to understand a system for them to use it.
I mean, if enough people adopt it, everyone knows what "h8r" means, right? Why not understand subject headings?