is cataloging dead: advocacy for bibliographic control randy roeder and rebecca routh ila/acrl...
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Is Cataloging Dead: Advocacy for Bibliographic Control
Randy Roeder and Rebecca RouthILA/ACRL Spring Conference
Davenport, IowaMarch 3, 2008
What catalogers do …
“What catalogers are like …
• “Set in their ways”
• “Blindly follow the rules”
• “Cranky, anti-social”
• “Put the periods in the records.”
• “Nit-picky perfectionists”
• “Out of date when it’s out of backlog.”
What catalogers hear from others…
• “Description is not important”
• “No one does subject searches”
• “Full text searching makes metadata obsolete”
• “Cataloging is too expensive”
So, how did we get to this disconnect?
(made buggy whip obsolete)
The chains of the past …
• MARC
• AACR2
• local practice
LCSH is showing its age …
• largest controlled vocabulary in English language (good)
• designed for an alphabetical environment (bad)
• pre-coordinated (bad)
• often too general
“Failures of catalogers …”
• assume the value of their work is self-evident
• tend to view their work as an endless stream of materials to be processed
• focus on the resource, not its use
• tend to ignore hard-to-catalog resources (the long tail)
New Directions
New Roles for the Library of Congress
WoGroFuBiCo
Eliminate redundancies Re-design work flows to make data more
accessible Recycle data from other sources
Focus on the “long tail” (unique and rare collections)
Think and plan for global access
OCLC record
OPAC record
All that’s needed is one good record
The analog past
Curses!Curses!Oh dear…another goof!
ONIX for Books
Internet Movie Database
WorldCat Identities
The Long Tail
• Unique and rare items• Archival materials• Hidden collections• Digital projects
VIAF Project
• Virtual International Authority File • Cooperation between OCLC, Library of Congress, die deutsche
Bibliothek • Links authority records from different national libraries• Name registries and subject headings
• Multilingual, multi-script, with variations in spelling and
romanization
The next generation catalog is affecting cataloging
• results not alphabetically displayed
• not premised on the retrieval of print material
• no decisions about format or location before search
• no a trip to another ‘silo’ to retrieve digital content
• does not ignore the social side of research
One-box metasearch (Are we there yet?)
Easy integration of digital resources
Recommendations & more …
Integrated instructional content
Faceted browse & relevance ranking
WorldCat LocalThe shot heard ‘round the world…
Inexpensive ‘next gen’ catalog?
Does not display local record!
Jane Eyre the Novel
• Author• Title• Genre• Period• Subject
EditorsPublishersPrinters
The Book
Book in translation
• Parallel titles• Translators
The Film Adaptation
Writer DirectorProducerActorsCrewDistributors
The Remakes
The Music
ComposerLyricistLibrettistPerformersRecording studios
The flat record model
• One record contains all entities• Navigation awkward• Relationships unclear• Redundant
FRBR Relational Model
“Bibliographic control is increasingly a matter of managing relationships—among works, names, concepts, and object descriptions—across communities.”
Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, January 2008
• Successor to Anglo-American Cataloging Rules• Based on FRBR data model• Content standards for all formats • Guidelines for best practice• Online resource• International in scope• Coming soon
Advocating for more of this will fail…
A better vision
• A web page for every book, film, recording
• Collaborative bibliographic data • Linked author & publisher information• Relationships -- editions, formats and languages• Linked critical works & scholarship
• “A community of experts” adding value
Cataloging staff
• training for a new skill set
• working in a more collaborative environment
• more accountability
Cataloging isn’t dead -- it’s changing.
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