Re: [RDA-L] 264 dates

Posting to RDA-L

On 19/06/2013 01:45, Robert Maxwell wrote:

<snip>
Mac, you have brought this issue up often enough, but what do you do about other parts of the record that are geared toward a particular language community? Notes in 5XX fields are going to be in English in English-language records, for example, and for good reason. We use English terms in the extent element. There are lots of places in the record where we use the language of the cataloging agency. I don't see how this differs from using English terms in a publication statement (specifically the date of publication element). I also note that this is not new to RDA. AACR2 also used English-language phrases like "not after Aug. 21, 1492" or "between 1711 and 1719" (21.16G).

And yes, the fact that we record a lot of information within the record in the language of the cataloging agency does imply that a cataloging agency that uses a different language would need to create its own record in its own language, i.e., duplicate records. I don't see any way around that. At least most of our users in Utah wouldn't be happy with records for Chinese resources created by Chinese agencies (the Universal Bibliographic Control ideal) in which the notes, the publication statement, the extent, etc., were all in Chinese.
</snip>

With the power of modern systems, it is important to realize that "text" today is not like "text" on a piece of paper. Everybody keeps talking about metadata and linked data, but those are not the only tools and there are other developments that are just as important (I think even more important) and could be incredibly useful. Here is an example of what can be done today, using a tool that is "free", i.e. from Google (and we should all now be getting a better awareness of what "free" means, although in this case, I think it really is free).

I wish I could make a live demonstration of this but I cannot seem to find a permanent link into the Russian National Library catalog, so this is the best I can do at the moment. Here is a record (in Russian characters) for a book by Mikhail Gorbachev as cataloged there, and I have chosen their ISBD format: (after Mark's tests, I think the Russian characters will come out OK)

Горбачев, Михаил Сергеевич (1931-).
   Моральные уроки XX века : Диалоги / Михаил Горбачев, Дайсаку Икеда ; [Послесл. М. Горбачева]. - М. : Blue apple, 2000. - 175 с., [8 л. цв. ил., цв. портр.] ; 22 .
   5000 экз. - ISBN 5-8415-0004-Х (В пер.).
   УДК 94(47+57)(093.3)
   ББК 63.3(2)6+Т3(0)6,02+Т3(2)74,02
   03.19
   I. Икеда Дайсаку. - 1. Новейшая история, 20 в. 2. Перестройка социально-экономической жизни общества - СССР

When I run this through Google Translate, I get:
Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 -).
    Moral lessons of XX century: Dialogues / Mikhail Gorbachev, Daisaku Ikeda, [Afterword. Gorbachev]. - M.​​: Blue apple, 2000. - 175. [8 liters. col. ill., col. Portree.] 22.
    5000 copies. - ISBN 5-8415-0004-X (In per.).
    UDC 94 (47 +57) (093.3)
    BBK 63.3 (2) 6 + T3 (0) + T3 6.02 (2) 74.02
    03.19
    I. Daisaku Ikeda. - 1. Recent history, at 20. 2. The restructuring of social and economic life of the community - the Soviet Union

It doesn't understand some of the Russian bibliographic abbreviations and ignores them mostly e.g. where it changed "Новейшая история, 20 в." (Recent history--20th century) to "Recent history, at 20." It did figure out "col. ill." but considered the "8 л." (leaves) as "8 liters", which is pretty funny! It also didn't pick up  "портр." as "portrait". Far from perfect, but not all that bad. The final product is very readily comprehensible to a person. The biggest error however, is with Gorbachev's name, which for some reason goes from "Горбачев, Михаил Сергеевич (1931-)." (Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich (1931-)" to "Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 -)." ignoring his patronimic! I have no idea how or why that happened.

This could also be done with another format that the Russian library provides, which they call "full" but is actually a simplified XML-type of delimited information, which I won't append here (and unfortunately, I cannot link to it).

Google Translate can be made to work as a "mashup" which could work in conjunction with catalogs. It's easy to implement and I have it working on my blog, e.g. for my blog in Greek. I am sure the translation is far from perfect, but someone may be able to get some kind of an idea of what is there, otherwise it is totally gone to them. It's helped me with languages I don't understand.

All of this can--and will--be improved vastly and libraries could make versions for their own purposes (adding authorized forms or URIs?, or maybe making special translations for specific fields such as the 300 field). Libraries could perhaps be lucky enough to work with Google and supplement what they have done. None of it is magic (although the results sure looks like magic to me!) and can only get better.

So, this is how it could work: libraries could help create a really cool tool that would begin to be a real solution to a problem that has plagued libraries since they started to cooperate: how can you efficiently and effectively share a record made for a community in e.g. Russia with e.g. an Anglo-American community. Here is the start of a real solution. And we can all see it in action!

Also, an improved tool such as this could be implemented today (not in 10 years from now when libraries will be even further behind developments than they are today and it will be even harder to catch up) and absolutely everyone could benefit--from user to cataloger. This tool could be improved in all kinds of ways (people today tend to be understanding of "weirdness" they see, but they expect continuing improvements) plus it would probably be far cheaper to implement than it will cost the library community to implement RDA/FRBR. It could even help iron-out problems with that evil, old "legacy data".

Use the power of the tools that are now at our fingertips! There is so much more that could be done and could make everyone's job easier!

Re: analog vs digital collections and cataloging

Posting to RadCat

On 11/06/2013 16:38, Anderson, William wrote:

<snip>
It would seem the first logical step would be “what is the job”, the tools will emerge from that. It occurs to me that we do need something like FRBR user tasks, if not “the” FRBR user tasks. Does the word “tasks” start one step to far along the process than what is needed. As James stated below, returning to brass tacks, “what do people want from information”, than moving on the “tasks” to provide it. The DSM IV occurred to me as a model. One wonders if we could have a manual of general “information diagnoses” (IDM?) with evolving “treatments”, i.e. need à task. The framework around which to build tools. (To head it off, no I don’t mean anything as absurd as knowledge base to answer every question. Mental illnesses, pardon the analogy, each are very individualized whatever diagnosis is chosen from DSM, ditto any “information illness” for a librarian to doctor.). It would be an interesting idea for a committee (I almost wish we’d done this before RDA).
</snip>

I like the idea of basing it on the DSM. One idea I have had is if you could get a massive database of questions from reference librarians (the first stop toward discovering what the public really wants. Does something like this exist already?) along with the answers that the librarians deemed satisfactory, you should be able to encode those answers as queries, e.g. for this kind of question from this kind of searcher, look in these databases, look at these tools, and use these methods. The expert would fill in the necessary information. These are the types of things that can definitely be automated at least up to a point, but the final product would necessarily be highly complex to use. Bingo! You have the beginnings of a tool that definitely works, giving people what they want (which would have already been proven since it came from real-life practice from reference librarians) and you would need an expert librarian to use it. The key is to not dumb it down. The expert queries themselves should be cataloged for later retrieval for others, possibly using the DSM as a basic model for arrangement, once again for use by expert librarians. And of course, the queries themselves would be going through constant revision as librarians learned more about what people want, and what information is available out there.

Again, something like this could follow a DSM pattern fairly well, I think. (By the way, here are the codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_codes and yes, they can be found alphabetically too!) In the place of the DSM arrangement, there could be sections by topics (art, architecture, literature etc.), by formats (DVDs, streaming, paper, parchment), by creators, by time, by types of researchers (children, high school students, interested adults, journalists, researchers) etc. and these queries could be combined or separated as needed. Each query could have lots of technical information explaining more clearly what it does and doesn't do, problems with it, etc. etc. etc. I am sure the system for something like this could be built relatively easily and something similar probably already exists. The real problem would be getting the questions and decent answers, along with general buy in.

But it is obviously more important to figure out what parts go with the work, the expression, the manifestation, and the item! Doing this will help people find things in our catalogs even though the structure will apparently not be followed in Bibframe, and nothing has to be demonstrated. :-)

Google Books and Google Play

I just discovered something new (for me at least) about Google Books. I looked at an older posting of mine on my blog and found this link to the Royal Commission report on the management of the British Museum (where Panizzi's catalog is discussed), and the link was: http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=ajFDAAAAcAAJ which used to go into the normal Google Books interface but now it throws me into the books section of Google Play. It turns out that when I am on Google Play, I cannot find a way to download the pdf except (apparently) by downloading an app (free), although I haven't done this yet because I do not want the app. Reading on Google Play is also inferior, in my opinion.

The original interface still exists however, where I can just download the pdf: http://books.google.com/books?id=ajFDAAAAcAAJ. The difference is in the URL, from the
http://books.google.com/books (regular interface)
http://books.google.com/ebooks (Google Play interface)

It doesn't seem to work for all books. Full view or preview mode seems always to have a Google Play interface, while snippet view or no view may or may not have a Google play interface, e.g. a book with a snippet view:
http://books.google.com/books?id=I5cb5M4OgQgC, and the
http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=I5cb5M4OgQgC gets a zero result.

But here is one by Ann Rice (no ebook available)
http://books.google.com/books?id=uxd4r90RMsgC which, when you change the URL
http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=uxd4r90RMsgC
actually redirects the URL to a page, although you cannot get the book through Google Play.

I can't find anyone else who has mentioned this change to Google Books, but I would suspect that Google will change its Google Books interface over to the Google Play completely, thereby making the pdf download available only through their app, which will give them tons and tons more information to play with.

I thought I should share this discovery.

Re: analog vs digital collections and cataloging

Posting to RadCat

On 10/06/2013 16:13, Anderson, William wrote:

<snip>
As a thought experiment what would such a distributed exercise look like, and what would the economics look like behind it. We do have the model of the public commons, combination social meeting space, business technology center, event venue, and (?) roving information consultants it sounds like. Likewise we have the idea of more free roaming librarians that, say at academic institutions, would be assigned to classes or specific projects on a temporary basis. Likewise for other government and other institutions.
</snip>

The basic idea is that since collections no longer need to be tied to a single location, the librarians don't either. The information goes out to the public and it only makes sense that if librarians want to be a part of that, they need to as well.

<snip>
I did not mention cataloging or metadata, as I’m not sure how that would fit into the picture, whether there will be a “back of the house”. A victory of the extrovert view? (Susan Cain’s book keeps coming back to me) Perhaps, in my most self interested keep-my-job view, a pairing of metadata librarian and public consultant would be a viable model, a multi-talent team based approach a la Leverage.
</snip>

In my opinion, metadata/cataloging would be the key to the whole thing and one reason why I believe librarians and catalogers are completely missing the boat. If we want people to believe we are "experts" (which we are) then we need specialized tools. Tools that do the job. And most importantly, it is completely irrelevant how complex the tools are or how many specialized ones there happen to be, so long as they do the job. People understand and even expect that experts need specialized tools: your dentist needs special tools, your surgeon needs other tools, your butcher, your baker, your mechanic, your lawyer.... Each one has dozens of highly specialized tools they need to do their jobs. People realize that for experts to do their jobs effectively and efficiently (therefore, cheaper for you with better results) each expert needs special tools that they know how to use. We want them to use their tools--we just want them to use them well and effectively for us. Regular members of the public know that if they spent weeks, months, or years, they too could also learn how to use those tools but they aren't interested and don't have the time. People just want the job done ASAP. And done well.

So, the task should not be to build tools that every child can use--the job should be to build tools that do the job. Compare this to going to a dentist and seeing that his only tools are a pair of pliers, a toothbrush and a bottle of whiskey. I will not let that dentist touch me. I want to see lots of weird tools that I don't understand and that make bizarre noises, otherwise, I would have no faith in the dentist. I suspect that may be how many members of the public think about librarians when we use exactly the same tools they use.

If you can make tools that do the job, people will pay for you to do that job. History shows this clearly. So, the problem for librarians (catalogers among them) is to find out very clearly what the job is or in other words: what do people want from information? Then give it to them no matter what it takes. And it's time to throw those dogmatic FRBR user tasks into the trash bin, that's for sure!

Re: [ACAT] NSA leak source and Metadata (Was: NSA leak source)

Posting to Autocat

On 10/06/2013 16:54, McDonald, Stephen wrote:

<snip>
By using metadata the same way that library users do. You run a search on the metadata set to FIND communications that meet certain criteria (such as frequent communications with someone suspected of supporting terrorism). You examine the results of the search to IDENTIFY suspicious connections. You SELECT one or more of the parties in the suspicious communications for closer examination. You use the metadata of the communications to OBTAIN the locations and identities of the suspects, and start observing the suspects with other resources (background checks, interviews, stakeouts, and other standard operations, leading to warrants for searches or phone taps if sufficient evidence is obtained). It is entirely possible to use communication metadata to discover and ultimately prevent a planned terrorist attack.
</snip>

FRBR and Prism? Wow! Well, I don't believe that 99% of real library users follow the FRBR user tasks of F/I/S/O and they never have. The vast majority come in to get into the collection and browse the shelves (when there are open stacks) so that they can work with the information itself. This is even more true when considering digital resources, where you "obtain" the item before you decide whether you want to "select" it, mirroring what people do in open stacks; while "finding" in this brave new world of "search" becomes weirder and weirder.

But beyond that, I agree. When you have enough metadata, it definitely is content, which I will take as a synonym for "knowledge". And knowledge is power. My favorite Madison quote about the interaction among information, knowledge and power (which has been quoted so often lately that people are probably getting tired of it, but I'll do it again) sums it up quite well: "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html

For those who are interested there is MyShadow https://myshadow.org/ that can help show how big of a "digital shadow" you cast.

NSA leak source and Metadata (Was: NSA leak source)

Posting to Autocat

Connected with this leak is a more general discussion of "metadata" and some of the frightening implications it has. While the government says that it does not get the "content" of the information, they do get the "metadata". (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/07/18824941-obama-nobody-is-listening-to-your-telephone-calls?lite) We can see this metadata easily in emails, where there is the "body" of the message (which apparently is untouched by the government) while the "To" "From" "CC" "Subject" "Date" and *all kinds of other information* is available.

In this regard, there was an interview on DemocracyNow with Jacob Appelbaum (one of the creators of the Tor project)

(the transcript is at) http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/5/court_govt_can_secretly_obtain_email and he makes a very subtle point that perhaps has more meaning with the events surrounding the NSA leak. He said: "And so, I think it’s important to stress: Metadata in aggregate is content."

He goes on to explain: "What that means is that if you look at one event, that I talk to you via email, in theory, that we talked is a piece of metadata. The content—that is, what I wrote in the email—that is, in theory, protected, and you need a search warrant for it. But if they know that I talk to you every single morning, that tells a story, maybe even, you know, a really important story. And maybe if they see that I talk to Dan or they see that I talk to other people, that also tells a story that is equal to content when it’s viewed in an aggregate"

Political aspects aside, this is what "data mining" and much of "linked data" is all about. Someone may go to a grocery store and a book store. No big deal. But if you often go to the grocery store at the same times as when some "person of interest" to the authorities goes to the grocery store and then go to the book store at the same times as another "person of interest" goes to that book store, then it tells a story. What kind of story does it tell? It could be just a coincidence because those happen to be the hours you are off work, or that you are romantically interested in someone at one of the stores and those are their times of work, or there could be thousands of other reasons. In any case, I think Appelbaum is entirely correct: Metadata in aggregate is content. (Or at least, it can be)

This is what I have learned about metadata. People are intensely interested in it--but these are the types of metadata that is of interest. Not bibliographic metadata. Still, I think librarians, and especially catalogers, could make some important contributions to the larger realm of metadata.

Re: analog vs digital collections and cataloging

Posting to RadCat

On 10/06/2013 00:06, Julie Moore wrote:

<snip>
But getting back to our core values of librarianship, what does a library without books, without a reference desk, and without technical services make? I can tell you that our most popular service point is Star Bucks! And perhaps that is the future of academic libraries ... to basically become a student center.
</snip>

It has been interesting to read how different libraries are coping with the changes. "Everybody's a librarian here", bringing Technical Services together with Public Services but reference librarians going elsewhere; all quite fascinating. But, what is a library without books (physical), reference desk or technical services? I gave a paper in Oslo http://blog.jweinheimer.net/2012/02/revolution-in-our-minds-seeing-world.html where I said:
"... a question [that] I believe should be of burning importance to librarianship but it may strike some as rather strange: I believe that librarians have to figure out precisely what it is that they really do. What I am questioning is whether the job of librarians is really to select, acquire, receive, catalog, shelve, circulate, conserve, and provide reference help, and do it all efficiently and effectively, or do they actually do something quite different?
I suspect they do something else, but I don't really know what that something else is and what's more, I am not even sure how to begin to answer such a question."

So, can you have a library without books, a reference desk, etc.? Of course and people have built them at home for personal reasons for a long time, and sometimes these were the best libraries in the area. If you lived in the area and were lucky enough to know the owner, the owner might let you use the books. Here's the take on some of the newest (strange!) trends in such personal collections, from nothing less than the Wall Street Journal!
 
http://live.wsj.com/video/home-libraries-for-the-e-book-era/5CBCB395-59D5-466E-8028-B52C9B0EC352.html

In another sense, I worked with a graduate student in architecture a few years ago, and he was trying to figure out what "the library of the future" would look like. He, and I, liked this idea: in ancient Rome, there were huge bath complexes, where people could bathe, get massages, work out, eat and drink, learn new skills, and so on, and in every bath complex, there was always a library. Here is a picture of the library in the Baths of Trajan

In other words, the library was located where the people were.

I can imagine that the "library of the future" would be located in areas where people congregate, such as occurred in ancient Rome. Instead of niches for scrolls as we see in the library of the Baths of Trajan, as we saw in the photo above, there would be a bunch of hookups for wifi, along with a few machines for those who didn't have them, while the "library collection" would be immensely more massive than anything you could store locally or anything available before, since it would be based on what was digitized. When people had questions about information, the librarian (the only person working in such a library) would help people and when necessary, be able to immediately connect with colleagues around the world using a Skype-type of communication, to efficiently help provide people find reliable information that is of importance to them. This way, information would be provided to people locally but the librarian could still be a part of a much larger community than ever before. Where would these places be? They could be anywhere: individual classes could have a librarian, conferences, malls. Something like this could prove to be immensely popular at a sporting event or even a rock concert. There's only one way to find out. Even presidential debates could use a librarian so that when somebody said a zinger, everybody would know immediately. Librarians could even make use of tools like "Watson" (the computer that won at Jeopardy). 

None of this is science fiction--the technology for all of it exists right now. The problems are primarily organizational and social. Plus, there is the main question: why would people go to the librarian when they can search Google ... [et al.] themselves? My answer: they would go to librarians--*if* librarians could demonstrate that they could give them better information, faster and more reliably than through doing it themselves. So, librarians would have to (finally!) demonstrate their case. I think they could, especially if they were able to collaborate with colleagues using Skype, IM type messaging and they would be pretty sure of getting quick help.

The sky really is the limit! But as we see, the job of the librarian would not be: "to select, acquire, receive, catalog, shelve, circulate, conserve, and provide reference help, and do it all efficiently and effectively". I think those days are disappearing--for better or worse.

Re: analog vs digital collections and cataloging

Posting to RadCat

On 09/06/2013 04:18, Julie Moore wrote:

<snip>
The advent of the Internet has certainly changed things in cataloging, as we now watch these tens of thousands of MARC vendor records flow in and out of our catalogs via batch loads. They say that our patrons prefer to find ALL content using keyword searching (bringing up tens of thousands of hits) on their computers (or smartphones) now. Ironically, I was among the early catalogers of websites and digital media. It was very cool and exciting ... I loved cataloging that stuff in the beginning (which was not that awfully long ago, I have to remind you!)

 

Perhaps it was naive on my part, but back then, I never thought for one second that there would be an aggressive takeover of digital materials over non-digital materials ... I thought there was a place for both ... but it is happening and very quickly. With that, (and with diminishing budgets) I am also observing the trend of an equally aggressive takeover of IT staff over catalogers. I thought that there was a place for both of these realms (and peoples -- with our distinct purposes and realms of expertise) in the library world. I still do believe that ... just as I still believe that there are core values of librarianship.

 

A librarian at a conference told me (very proudly) that if it were up to him, the entire "library" would take up no more space than the desktop he was sitting at. So even if we move to completely dumping all of our physical items and become only digital libraries, will we not continue to need librarians and staff who can develop those collections to meet our institutional needs, acquire those collections and pay for them, somehow describe them and make them accessible to our patrons? I must say that I am saddened and perplexed by what is happening in our libraries. Libraries are changing ... libraries have always changed. But this time, I think it's very different. 

 

The tide has turned in libraries of preferring to collect digital stuff (whether it be e-journals, e-books, or streaming music/video) to what some now refer to (with great disdain, I might add) as "analog" materials ... the old fashioned, fuddy-duddy, physical stuff that you can touch and feel ... things like books (GASP!), journals, scores, CDs, DVDs, and the myriad of other formats that I catalog including 3D objects, pictures, games, models, and etc.

 

Libraries are now dumping almost all of their money into developing digital collections and their maintenance and upkeep. Staffing is all going into supporting the digital realm. The libraries without walls are happening, ironically, in our own, beautiful library buildings that are now sitting with many more empty shelves.
 

I recently heard about a library that had digitized all its maps, and since they were digitized, they no longer needed the physical maps ... so they dumped all of the physical maps (that, of course, require map cases and space to handle them.) To me, this is just sad, almost sickening!
 

As I have often said, I believe that part of my job as a cataloger is to record pathways to human knowledge for generations to come. I believe that we, as librarians, are the collectors and protectors of human knowledge. I worry very much about us, as libraries, dumping all of our physical collections for the digital, as I have little confidence that those materials will still be there for generations to come.
</snip>

I completely agree, and I too regret the fact that "physical materials as information resources" will slowly go away. But I think it is safe to predict that they will. Such changes of format have happened a couple of times before and the world continued: when the scroll went over to the codex and when printing arrived and--who knows? Maybe the same problems took place when clay tablets disappeared! Of course, printed materials will never stop being made entirely (just as scrolls and hand-written manuscripts, and probably even clay tablets, are still produced today), I think it is safe to assume that increasingly, people of the future will look at e.g. books much as we now look upon scrolls or manuscripts on vellum: with awe and wonder. We certainly do not look at scrolls and manuscripts as the best places to get information; they are seen as interesting and beautiful artifacts. It is important to keep in mind that earlier people looked at those scrolls and manuscripts as their primary sources of information, not as we look at them.

Those in the 2nd century looked at scrolls as "the best" place to get the information they needed, and in the 14th century, people looked at bound manuscripts as "the best". Since the time of printing in the later 15th century, people have looked at printed materials as the "best places" for information and that is changing again. No doubt in the future it will change yet again into something we cannot imagine at this juncture. It becomes clear that "the best" in this sense means "the most advanced means you have at your disposal" since we do not now know--and can never know--what "the best place" for information actually is.

On top of these tremendous changes in formats, something that I think is/will be far more disruptive is the openness of distribution. No longer do publishers and retailers have the iron lock on what is available for public consumption and they have not liked giving up such power. Many members of the public would include librarians in that mix. With the internet and world wide web, things have opened up in some tremendous ways, with plenty of junk out there it's true, but lots and lots of gold--if you know where it is.

I may love it and I may hate it, but the fact is that there are some fabulous things on the web--and, incredible but true--not all of it you have to pay for.

For libraries however, I think it is vital that librarians stay librarians and do not become IT technicians. There is far too much IT in librarianship today, I think. Somebody has to view things from the patron's point of view, and that is the role of the librarian.

I think society has a tremendous need for librarianship today and librarians could become more important to society than ever before. Unfortunately, many librarians are buried in a fantastical, solipsistic world populated by the spectres of FRBR, RDA, linked data, and so on; that is: they have been ensnared in the world of IT.

Re: The Process of Cataloging in the Future

Posting to RadCat

I guess I am not so enamored of the long past halcyon days. While I love libraries, and always will, before library school I didn't know how to use a catalog at all--even though if someone had asked, I thought I knew all about them. From the beginnings, people have come to libraries to use the materials in the library, not to use the catalogs, and normally not to talk to librarians. They used catalogs only because it was the only way into the materials that interested them. And they talked to librarians only because they couldn't get the catalog to work, or couldn't find the materials on their own. This has been since the beginnings.

Although major complaints from the public were noted by the Royal Commission, where they discussed Panizzi's catalog, the Commission pretty much dismissed those complaints, and in any case, everyone more or less realized that the catalog was a necessary evil that they needed to get into the materials they wanted. It was clear that the public did not like it at all, however. Yet they were realistic and they quickly saw that their only option was to browse the shelves, that is, in the collections where there were open stacks. In Panizzi's collection, it was closed stacks and several people mentioned they would have been very happy to be able to browse the areas they wanted, but they knew that could never work for the general public. Consequently in closed stacks, the catalog was the only option and people could either use it or just do without. Complaints were irrelevant and people just had to continue to use the clumsy catalogs.

Of course, nobody knew precisely how clumsy the catalogs were until the computerized ones came out where searching was much freer than ever before. Nothing is perfect and a lot was lost in the transition, especially when keyword came out. I have tried to show some of what has been lost in my podcasts and postings because it turns out that many people, including catalogers, do not understand this. At the time of the transition, many catalogers saw what was being lost but workloads were always increasing so they just kept working and kept their mouths shut.

Today, the public has real choices to getting information that they find very attractive. Increasingly, they can access and work with the information itself, completely bypassing catalogs (or they *think* they are bypassing them, but that is another matter). The fact is, more information is readily available to more people now than ever before in the history of civilization. That should be seen as not only a good thing, but as a great thing. When I can take a class virtually on almost any topic I want e.g. "Dynamics of Ocean Structures" http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/114106036/ or I can listen to the latest Reith Lectures from the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9 (or earlier ones too) or I can listen to the audio recordings of Studs Terkel when he was interviewing people for his book "Hard Times" http://www.studsterkel.org/htimes.php. This is incredible. But you can't find any of that in Worldcat or any library catalog (or clone) that I know of. I can find these things because I have spent many years working on these matters and I know these materials are so hard to find that only the tiniest percentage of the populace ever could. What is the purpose of the library catalog today?

So, it is clear to me that we are now living in the halcyon days. The question is: how badly do libraries want to be a part of those halcyon days? There is a lot they can do, and should do (at least in my opinion), but they are choosing other paths.

Re: The Process of Cataloging in the Future

Posting to RadCat

On 31/05/2013 11:11, Michael Gorman wrote:

<snip>
"Our users are on the Internet and use Google or Google-like discovery tools. They find the content they need ...." Oh really?

As I wrote before, it's an age of lowered expectations. Those expectations driven by vast, amoral, global businesses with a 100% interest in money and 0% interest in learning on the onward transmission of knowledge.
</snip>

I completely agree with you, but this is what the librarians at Utrecht University Library found. I would amend their statement to: "They think they find the content they need ..." but that comes off as extremely supercilious and paternalistic. It is a proposition that is very difficult to disprove: How do you prove that people are not finding the "content they need"? That would be a lot of work and would potentially enrage many, and they would insist that "I am the one who knows the content I need--not you!" (I've been on the receiving end of such rants and it is not pleasant) It becomes especially difficult to disprove when you have members of your own profession coming to the same--I think, incorrect--conclusions.

Library catalogers must demonstrate, somehow, that their catalogs do something better than the other search engines. I think it can be done, but it would require a complete re-evaluation of the catalog and its purposes. It would have to work differently from the way it has always done, as I have tried to show in some of my papers and podcasts. FRBR is simply an academic flight of fantasy, while sadly, RDA is putting massive cataloging resources on the wrong track.

I don't know if this necessarily is an age of lowered expectations. People expect a lot more today than they did 20 years ago: full-text, downloadable immediately onto my computer/mobile device from anywhere in the world, and it should be compatible with Office, or Open Office, or Mendeley or whatever programs I happen to have on my own machine. What I think has happened is that people are becoming increasingly lazy--they don't want to drive to the library and walk through the stacks, check out a book or DVD or whatever and have to take it back in a couple of weeks. They sure do not want to work hard searching for something. People may go to a library for social purposes--to see Uncle Jack or Aunt Minnie and share a cup of coffee, or to pass the time and browse the books, etc. But to go to "get current" on a topic or to learn something, the library is becoming a diminishing resource.

By the way, the Charlie Rose - Shane Smith interview is available now at http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12946. He has a fascinating view of the "information world" and how people are reacting to it. Also, I did not have to register.