Planet Cataloging

Budgets everywhere face cutbacks and we are all seeking to achieve greater efficiencies and add more value to the services we offer.  Time for a mini-forum!  

Post a comment and tell us what you are doing in your library, share your best ideas for streamlining your services, cutting costs, launching new services on a shoestring or adding even more value.  We eagerly awaits your thoughts.

When I develop WordPress sites, I find that I end up repeating many identical tasks for each site. The phrase “repeating identical tasks” should (and does) set off alarms: This should be automated! To that end, I’m trying to learn some more command line tools for doing tasks that I currently use a GUI for.

One such task is migrating my development database to the staging/production server. Basically a mysqldump from my local database that I can then import on another server. A key thing to watch out for with WordPress, though, is the base URL for your site. If you’re serving a site from localhost while you develop it, you’ll need to change every occurrence of localhost in your database to the base URL for the new server.

sed is a command line tool for doing just that job. It runs a regular expression search on the input and outputs the replacement. Example:

$ echo "localhost" | sed "s/localhost/www.example.com/g"
www.example.org

Pipe your mysqldump through sed to have an SQL file ready for your new server.

$ mysqldump -uusername -ppassword database_name | sed "s/localhost/www.example.com/g" > database.sql

This way I avoid having to open the SQL file in a text editor, doing a global search and replace, and re-saving.

In response to continuing interest in the authority control workshop, “A. Rose by any other name”, CIG is planning a re-run during 2010.  No date or venue has been decided yet, but current planning assumptions are that it will be a half day workshop, during the first half of the year and outside London, if possible.

 

If you would be interested in attending the event please contact alan.danskin@bl.uk or D.Tough@nhm.ac.uk.  We are also interested in hearing from anyone who can offer a venue outside London.  The programme is flexible, so we also encourage anyone engaged on innovative or interesting name authority control projects that to contact us.  An expression of interest assists our planning, but is not a commitment to attend.

 

For further information about the content, please refer to the website for the October 2009 workshop at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/events/CIG/2009/authorities/.   We hope this event can go ahead, but we need to hear from you.

 

Alan Danskin

Diane Tough

(CIG Committee)

So, I am prepping my intro to KO class for next semester -- and I just re-read Fran Miksa's review [LQ, 79(1): 131-143] of Lois Mai Chan's [Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007] and Arlene Taylor's [Introduction to Cataloging and Classification. 10th ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006] textbooks on cataloging and classification... it is a splendid historical critique of textbooks (and education) in the area of cataloging and classification and their relation (or lack thereof) to practice in libraries, esp. in small, medium, public, and special libraries. Miksa finds that much of today's textbooks in the area focuses almost exclusively on the technical procedures of cataloging and classification and doesn't include anything that would inspire the reader to view cataloging and classification as "worthwhile, even inspiring, endeavors". He ends his review by saying:

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:40:31 -0800, Daniel CannCasciato
wrote: [AUTOCAT]

>>>> Jane Kelsey wrote:
>> As this is a coming issue, is anyone in favor of going to Department?
>> I am moving more toward the idea of Department spelled out.
>
>I'm for spelling it out. There are many headings established (or
references) that use the spelled out form of the word and its variations in
French, Spanish, etc., that I think it would make retrieval and maintenance
easier if we did so all the time.

It would be best if this could be solved in an automated fashion, but I have my doubts about that. I am sure however, of one thing: NOBODY will ever think to search for "United States. Dept. of Defense." except for catalogers and people who have learned (or been burned) along the way. Somehow, a search for "United States. Department of Defense" must retrieve the correct result.

As Ed points out, the card catalog was very forgiving in these matters, and there was also a concern to cut down on the number of letters typed (a holdover from the Taylorist period in cataloging) but also to cut down on the number of cards produced. (More letters typed meant using more space which somewhere would translate itself into an extra card)

All these concerns are shreds of a history that no longer applies.

Morbus Iff took an interest in FRBR a few years ago and began some work on it, making a start on a Drupal (a web site content management system) module that would use it: LibDB. As the datestamps show, he abandoned it, as often happens.

But he says, “I never stopped thinking about it.” In Drupal 7 and FRBR: A Mental Model, he puts down what he’s been thinking about regarding getting FRBR into the newest version of Drupal. (Which from what little I know is going to be really good.) It’s Drupal-heavy, so if you don’t use Drupal you might get confused.

Drupal 7 is “nearing” release and I’m once again thinking about FRBR. 7 now has the ability to add custom fields to its content types, functionality that previously required the contributed module CCK. While CCK, as a framework, had tons of additional third-party modules that mocked up different types of fields, Drupal 7 doesn’t, solely because it isn’t in the wild yet. I don’t consider this bad news, really, because I’ve always been of the opinion that most of the contributed modules available to Drupal are crap. They scratch itches, certainly, but very few of them are what I’d consider quality productions. So, for me, thinking about Drupal 7 and FRBR is thus constrained to “core” and “my own custom code”. Primarily, I’m interested to see just how much of FRBR could be modeled without custom code at all, so I’ve made some odd decisions to accentuate this. One could even accuse me of “just” making a boring old cataloguing system: regardless, I’m doing it with FRBR’s model fully in mind.

I've just posted a full video of my talk "What is Social Cataloging?" on YouTube.

Update: I've posted the whole thing as a single clip on Vimeo. I'd go there instead of YouTube.

The best way to watch it is to click this playlist link.

I talk about LibraryThing, social cataloging, the "social cataloging ladder," Library 2.0, how libraries are failing at library 1.0 and I insult OCLC and cheer libraries on a bunch near the end. Fun for the whole family.

Bernhard Eversberg wrote:

> It was openly said that DDB is also intended as a "German answer to Google Booksearch", to counter the hazard of them becoming a monopoly. Contrary to GBS practice, DDB will ask rightsholders first before scanning their works, said cabinet minister Neumann. A noble intention indeed.
>
> As far as Google News reaches, there seems to be no news about it in the foreign press, whereas all German media carry the report and commentators seem to be unanimously pleased with the idea of a competition against Google. A fine idea indeed.
>
> No mention is made in the plans and announcements of library catalogs. Will they be considered "appropriate tools"?

Thanks a lot for this information. I haven't read about it either. When German and French publishers were excluded from the Google Books agreement, I was really concerned that their materials would just go unused because they will be much harder for people to access and people will generally take the easiest route available. I didn't know what the French and Germans had in mind: just to say "No, I don't like the agreement" or if they intended to build a competitor to Google Books. I applaud the effort.

And yet, it is hard to say if they will succeed. Using Europeana makes me rather skeptical. Here are some Alexa statistics. Percentages are total percentages of internet users who have visited each site. I must say, even though I have incorporated Europeana into my Extend Search function, and there are some very nice materials there, no user I have spoken with has ever heard of it.

Europeana:
7 day 0.0016
1 month 0.00114
3 month 0.00117

WorldCat
7 day 0.0168
1 month 0.0187
3 month 0.0178

LibraryThing
7 day 0.0309
1 month 0.0302
3 month 0.0278

Alexa only gives statistics for domains, and not subdomains (books.google.com, or catalog.loc.gov) and I can't find these statistics anywhere, but they could be very interesting to compare.

In any case, for libraries and catalogers in particular, I think it is clear that "finding" relevant materials in a reliable fashion is just as difficult as ever. There seems to be a real opportunity.

I am afraid that we will have to jettison the word "cataloger" though. As I read in a report: "The word 'cataloguer' is, rightly or wrongly, associated with the past and with one form of metadata only: MARC records. As one director commented: '... a 'cataloguer' is however sadly, a bygone relic."
See: "Directors' views on the future of cataloguing in Australia/New Zealand, 2007: a survey / Jenny Warren."
http://www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/documents/Warren2007.doc

I think that it is the word "cataloger" that is obsolete because it is related in the popular mind with physical materials, but the *task* of cataloging (updated to "metadata") is perhaps more important than ever. "Metadata" does imply a change in Weltanschauung, which has been discussed at length.

I thought I’d post this presentation, similar to the ALCTS November 2nd presentation, but with a Canadian slant. Slide #63 has information on training/documentation availability and a link to the LAC FAQs. *My thanks to colleague Peter Glenister for providing me with this information. Posted in future of cataloguing Tagged: LAC, Library and Archives Canada, RDA, RDA presentations [...]

The new Area 0 of the International Standard Bibliographic Description has been published on the Web.

Area 0: Content Form and Media Type Area is an amendment to the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). This new area of the bibliographic description takes the place of the general material designation (GMD) in area 1. It is being issued with a set of examples. Area 0 will be incorporated into the consolidated ISBD for its next revision in 2010.

Apologies for cross-posting.

To those interested, I have just made available another of my "open replies" to Thomas Mann's report (http://www.guild2910.org/Future%20of%20Cataloging/LCdistinctive.pdf) on the E-LIS database (once again) at: http://eprints.rclis.org/17331/
"An Open Reply to Thomas Mann's report 'What is Distinctive about the Library of Congress In Both its Collections and its Means of Access to Them ...'"

Recently National Public Radio has run a series entitled “On the Road to Safety,” exploring various aspects of traffic safety.

The interdisciplinary number for traffic safety is 363.125 Highway and urban vehicular transportation, a number that has 363.1 Public safety programs and 363.12 Transportation hazards in its upward hierarchy. The number 363.125 has unsubdivided Relative Index entries “Road safety” and “Traffic safety,” among others.  An example of a work classed in 363.125 is the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Road Safety (WorldCat record for summary here, full report available here). 

Works on safety engineering of roads are classed in appropriate subdivisions of 625.7 Roads, which has the Relative Index entry “Roads—engineering,” among others.  For example, works on protective roadside barriers are classed in 625.795 Protective roadside barriers.  An example of a work classed in 625.795 is Guardrail and Median Barrier Crashworthiness.  (The entry 625.795 has the note “Including dividers, fences.”)

The Relative Index entry “Safety engineering” leads to 620.86 Safety engineering.  The entry 620.86 has the note “For safety engineering of a specific technology, see the technology, plus notation T1—0289 from Table 1, e.g., safety in machine engineering 621.80289.”  The standard subdivision T1—0289 Safety measures is not added for topics in including notes, because those topics do not approximate the whole of a number; nor is T1—0289 added where redundant, as when the caption specifies safety. 

Works on safety engineering of motor land vehicles are classed in appropriate subdivisions of 629.2 Motor land vehicles, cycles.  For example, engineering works on safety design of motor land vehicles are classed in 629.231 Analysis and design (the entry has the note “Including . . . safety design” and the Relative Index entry “Safety engineering—automotive—design”).  An example of a work classed in 629.231 is Design for Safety & Quality: Lessons Learned from the Analysis of Crashed Daimler-Benz/Mercedes Automobiles: An Interview with Miklos F. Ranky.  (The entry 629.22 Types of vehicles has the class-elsewhere note “Class design, materials, construction of a specific type of vehicle in 629.23.”)  Engineering works on safety accessories in motor land vehicles are classed in 629.276 Safety accessories (the entry has the note “Including air bags, bumpers, mirrors, seat belts, windshield wipers and washers”).  An example of a work classed in 629.276 is Air Bags and Occupant Restraints.   The number 629.276 has the Relative Index entry “Air bags—automobile,” among others.  The Library of Congress subject heading “Automobiles—Occupant restraint systems” has been editorially mapped to 629.276 (in WebDewey).

I was a newbie to the library mashup scene, and took in a lot of information yesterday at Middlemash, hosted by Damyanti Patel and her colleagues at Birmingham City University. It was every bit the friendly and stimulating event that I’d expected to be, but by the time I, along with an impressive number of co-malingerers, got to the Barton Arms at the end of the day, I was able to pinpoint what had made me mildly uncomfortable at intermittent points of the day.

The discomfort had nothing to do with either the organisers or the participants, or indeed with the concept of mashing itself. The problem is that the same forward-thinking librarians who celebrate the advent of electronic resources and innovative technologies for discovering them, are the same people who, in a mashing context, are forced back into the world of print. And this has to be about ownership of data. Bibliographic data is much more “ours” than electronic resource metadata, that has traditionally been proprietary, locked away in abstract and index databases, available only in academic institutions and certainly not mashable by a bunch of librarians with a strange predilection for creating more exciting experiences of scholarly information.

Mashing the reading list

Like many people at the event, Edith Speller from Trinity College of Music was concerned about her institution’s reading lists. She felt that they were getting too static, and out of date, and, like many Talis Aspire customers, wanted to raise awareness of all those expensive subscriptions to e-resources among academics who would then be more likely to include them on resource lists. However, the solutions arrived at seem to be very book-specific, involving the following:

• Using the ISBN of a book on a resource list to look up recommendations (along the lines of “people who bought that also bought this”) using Amazon Web Services.
• Using the Mosaic API to:

• Perform an ISBN look-up to find the courses associated with the people who have borrowed that book.
• Use course codes to look up what other books were borrowed by people on those courses.

Paul Stainthorp at University of Lincoln is using RefWorks to create embeddable lists of new titles and communicate them to users, by sharing folders within RefWorks publicy and creating RSS fees on that folder. He’s also used Yahoo! Pipes (the mashup panacea du jour) to pull in the book cover image and description from Amazon. Because their academics prefer notifications by email, as opposed to running their own RSS feed, an email now comes in when a new book arrives in their subject area.

No doubt academics are availing themselves of current awareness services provided by publishers to find out about new e-journal articles, but it comes back to the disintermediation of the library from e-resource metadata. Owen Stephens from Open University reflected in the pub afterwards on the decisive break that occurred with the electronic journal, when the library no longer owned the item, but merely licensed it. Tony Hirst concurred that the library world had never challenged the proprietary nature of abstracts and indexes.

Mashing the library floor plan

Owen ran a workshop in the afternoon to develop his idea for mashing library floor plans with Google Maps. We used the University of Sheffield library floorplan as a working example, and it was fascinating to hear about how Open Layer (an Open Source mapping tool) works. Apparently maps are divided into tiles of 256 by 256 pixels, and then some javascript asks for each tile as needed as the user navigates around the map. And as the user zooms in, the map simply moves to a more detailed set of tiles. The exercise of converting a floorplan into a zoomable map forces the library to consider how granular and practicable their floorplans – is there enough detail to establish on which shelf a book is located? Maintenance is also an issue and Owen suggested augmenting the shelving workflow, so at the end of shelving, the librarian records the start and end classmark of the shelf. We also considered separate scenarios where the user wants a particular book, on the one hand, or books on a subject area on the other.

University of Sheffield plans to use heat maps to analyse how users are navigating the library. With the Ranganathan maxim in mind (positioning the stock to minimise the need for users to move around the library) they would then be able to optimise the library layout.

Sure it’s funky, but I just want to renew my books

Earlier in the day, Mark Van Harmelen from Hedtek Ltd. based at the University of Manchester, urged us all to listen more to the student voice, through focus groups and other mechanisms. I know that Owen Stephens and many other Middlemash attendees are making every effort to engage with students in the idea and design stage right now. It will be interesting to see whether we’re expending too much energy on over-sophisticated solutions for the dying format of print. As Chris Keene from University of Sussex stated, the response of students to tag clouds and other features at the discovery layer is, “Sure it’s funky, but I just want to renew my books.”

Personally, I’d love to see more focus on work-level data. The published works of an author or indeed a subject area plotted against an appropriate timeline could be tremendously useful – the works of Dickens plotted against key social legislation of the 19th century springs to mind. But the approach would come into its own with non-fiction, where there is a more direct relationship between published literature and real world events. That would really add scholarly value to bibliographic data, and would enable us to break out of transactions such as reservations that are rooted in the past not the future of scholarly life.

Draft of ISO 25964-1 "Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies. Thesauri for information retrieval”Work has been under way since May 2008 to revise and extend the international standards for thesauri, ISO 2788 and ISO 5964. The updated content of these two standards, plus other material needed to support interoperability, will be combined in a new standard ISO 25964, as follows:ISO

LC has published Decision regarding the final disposition of LCSH headings for video recordings.

In summary, the decisions are:

Topical headings (MARC tag 150) denoting a genre or form of video recording will be cancelled in favor of the correlated film headings;
The heading Video mini-series will be revised to Film mini-series and the heading Television mini-series will be retained;
The existing topical heading Interactive video will be made plural and a genre/form heading will be created; and,
Genre/form headings for Internet videos, podcasts, and webisodes will be created.

The ALCTS Non-English Access Working Group on Romanization invites comment on its draft report. Recommendations

A majority of the Working Group believes that the factors discussed in this report are significant enough to make a general shift to Model B in bibliographic records premature at this point. Some members of the Working Group feel that having romanized access points in records provides enough added value that their use should be continued indefinitely. Others believe that in an environment of shrinking staffs and production pressures we should anticipate future developments in making our decision and recommend a move to Model B sooner rather than later. However, most believe that although a gradual move towards the use of Model B for current cataloging is probable, we should continue current practice for some time longer as we prepare for the transition.
Further research is needed into the remaining obstacles so that we can identify decision points that will allow us to move beyond the status quo. We recommend that ALCTS sponsor a survey of libraries and library systems to better understand the status quo and possible future directions from a technical perspective.
Automatic transliteration software should be utilized to reduce time needed to create the romanization, when possible.
The amount of romanization in records could be reduced by limiting it to fields including key data for access (titles and headings).
Since different languages and scripts raise very different issues, some language/script cataloging communities may decide to move to Model B sooner than others. A coordinated decision to change practice within each community would be preferable to individual decisions to implement Model B in different libraries at different times.

2009-11-30, In preparation for DC-2010, the tenth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, to be held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 20-22 October 2010, a conference committee has been established, chaired by Stuart Sutton of the University of Washington Information School. Program Chairs for DC-2010 are Diane Hillmann of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Metadata Management Associates, and Mike Lauruhn of Taxonomy Strategies, while Liddy Nevile of La Trobe University is the Workshop Convenor.

2009-11-30, Following the DCMI Advisory Board meeting on 16 October 2009 in Seoul, two Task Groups have been deactivated: the DCMI Agents Task Group and the DCMI Government Application Profile Task Group. Talat Chaudhri of UKOLN was appointed co-moderator of the DCMI Scholarly Communications Community and member of the DCMI Advisory Board.

Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO, has been busy pushing NISO standards announcements our way. I will be combining the announcements to save your time and LITABlog space. Instructions for requesting the relevant documents from Cindy appears at the end of this message.

The first group of announcements has to do with special character sets and transliteration.

1. Systematic Review ISO 10754:1996, Extension of the Cyrillic alphabet coded character set for non-Slavic languages for bibliographic information interchange.

“This is version three of the standard that specifies a set of 93 graphic characters with their coded representations. It consists of a code table and a legend showing each graphic, its use and its name. Explanatory notes are also included. The character set is primarily intended for the interchange of information among data processing systems and within message transmission systems.”

The deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Monday, Feb. 22, 2010.

2. Systematic Review ISO 233-3:1999, Transliteration of Persian characters into Latin characters.

“This part of ISO 233 establishes a simplified system for the transliteration of Persian characters into Latin characters. This simplification of the stringent rules established by ISO 233:1984 is especially intended to facilitate the processing of bibliographic information (e.g. catalogues, indices, citations, etc.”

The deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Friday, Feb. 19, 2010.

3. Systematic Review IS0 9984:1996, Transliteration of Georgian characters into Latin characters.

“This International Standard establishes a system for the transliteration of Georgian characters into Latin characters in accordance with the principles of stringent conversion in order to permit international information exchange, particularly by electronic means.”

The deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010.

ISO standards documents are not openly available, but ALA members can request documents for the purpose of review and comment from Cindy at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu (please also copy me at metadata.maven@gmail.com). Please be sure to state explicitly that you ARE a current ALA member — Cindy will not send you a document without this assurance.

In the absence of other recommendations, ALA will recommend that NISO vote to confirm these standards. If you believe ALA should recommend another option, you must provide comments for Cindy to pass along with ALA’s recommendation.

More announcements to come …

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

I have been careful in recent posts about numbers to note that the term 'book' has no precise referent. One person's book is another person's pamphlet, or ...

Brian Lavoie and I have an article in the current issue of DLib Magazine which uses Worldcat to estimate the number of print books published in the US which are potentially in copyright (i.e. with a publication date of 1923 or later). Of course, this question has been given currency in recent years by the mass digitization of library book collections, notably by Google.

This article characterizes the aggregate collection of US-published print books in WorldCat, with a special emphasis on materials published during or after 1923, and therefore either potentially or definitely in copyright. Findings from the analysis indicate that the collection of US-published print books in WorldCat is quite large, encompassing about 15.5 million print books. Nearly two-thirds of these - those published after 1963 - have a high likelihood of being in copyright; less than 15 percent - those published prior to 1923 - are almost certainly in the public domain, with the rest - those published between 1923 and 1963 - potentially in copyright if copyright was renewed. The post-1923 materials collectively account for more than 80 percent, or about 12.6 million, of the US-published print books in WorldCat. It is difficult to predict how many of these print books might be orphan works, but even a small fraction would, in terms of absolute numbers, be considerable, and require a substantial effort to investigate and clear copyright. [Beyond 1923]

In order to generate various counts decisions have to be made about what to count. And those decisions have to be based on what can be supported in the data that we have. I was talking to Brian about some of these decisions a while ao, and he wrote up some of his comments which I include here.

"As a non-librarian who works with library data on a regular basis, I was surprised to learn that the commonplace object 'book' is not well-defined in traditional cataloging practice. This is all the more surprising when one considers that historically, libraries were built around aggregations of books. The difficulty is that there are no explicit bibliographic criteria for identifying something most people would recognize as a 'book'. So for example, consider a simple question like 'How many books are in WorldCat?' In the bibliographic universe, there is nothing explicitly defined as a 'book': there are monographs, or more narrowly, language-based monographs, but the items falling into these categories are not necessarily books as we might commonly perceive them. Is a government document a book? A dissertation? A technical report? A pamphlet of only a dozen pages? These kinds of materials, and more, get included when we use a construct like 'language-based monographs' as a proxy for 'books'.

"Why is this important? The concept of "books" is appearing in a variety of current discussions, most notably in the context of digitization issues like the Google book settlement. So we are often asked questions like, 'how many print books in WorldCat have been published after 1923?' We can provide answers to these questions, but only with a degree of approximation built in: i.e., we can calculate a number that reflects something along the lines of 'all language-based monographs in WorldCat, excluding dissertations and government documents'; we can even throw in a minimum page requirement (at least 49 pages, according to the UNESCO definition of a book). But we can't say exactly how many books are in WorldCat, because from a cataloging standpoint, we don't know what a book is. Libraries are grappling with difficult new questions these days, as collections and services transition from print to digital, from local to the network. But an old question still remains: what is a book?" [Personal communication from Brian Lavoie]

[Note: Updated to include later version of Brian's quote. This is repeated from an earlier entry On books again.]

We have entered the era of Everything-as-a-service, where lowering transaction costs mean that a growing range of capacities can be sourced from the cloud.

It has become common to talk about a threefold model:

1. Software or applications as a service. A particular application may be used in the cloud (for example, Salesforce.com or Webex web meetings).


2. Platform as a service. A development environment is provided which supports application development (for example, Azure, Microsoft's cloud operating system, or force.com from Salesforce.


3. Infrastructure as a service. Computing or storage or some other infrastructure component is provided (an example is the computing and storage services available from Amazon).

Recently, I have been wondering about 'network as a service'. Think of Facebook and eBay. In each case, a major part of the their value for third party developers is access to a 'network' of other users. And this is an explicit part of the offer of Facebook and eBay. In the former case, a developer can 'leverage the social graph'; in the latter, developers have access to the 'largest ecommerce opportunity on the web'. There are cases where access to a network is a useful feature of a service, even when network creation is not its primary purpose. Take for example firms which provide Employee Opinion Survey services. A firm which provides this service to many organizations will have benchmarking and comparison data which will make them an attractive option for some potential clients.

Business models vary in these examples, and in some cases the 'interconnectedness' of the network provided is important, in other cases less so. Value may reside in access to the network, or access to intelligence generated by the network (analytics data).

I have been thinking about this in the context of Worldcat. Worldcat is a bibliographic database. A major part of its value however is in the holdings data: it associates bibliographic items with libraries which hold them. In other words it creates a library network. OCLC leverages this network in other services - notably resource sharing. The Worldcat network is also leveraged by services provided by other organizations. For example, it provides a switch between other bibliographic services (Google Book Search, LibraryThing, OpenLibrary, Goodreads, ec) and library collections.

It provides a network as a service ...

When recording my previous Talking with Talis podcast with OCLC’s Karen Calhoun, in a hotel lobby over the road from the British Library in London, we suffered a technology failure loosing the last third of our conversation.

Karen kindly agreed to spend some time in a follow up conversation so that listeners could get to hear her thoughts on a couple of further questions I asked, including one about the future for library metadata formats. 

In addition I also gained the opportunity to ask her reflect upon the presentation she gave on that day.  The slides for which are available to view from the OCLC site.  The other benefit being that we were not competing with the music, staff, and hotel guests during the recording.

When recording my previous Talking with Talis podcast with OCLCrsquo;s Karen Calhoun, in a hotel lobby over the road from the British Library in London, we suffered a technology failure loosing the last third of our conversation. Karen kindly agreed to spend some time in a follow up conversation so that listeners could get to hear her thoughts on a couple of further questions I asked, including one about the future for library metadata formats.#160; In addition I also gained the opportunity to ask her reflect upon the presentation she gave on that day.#160; The slides for which are available to view from the OCLC site.#160; The other benefit being that we were not competing with the music, staff, and hotel guests during the recording. Technorati Tags: Karen Calhoun,OCLC

This is the last two weeks in FRBR, actually. Lots of stuff to point out to you. (I just realized I don’t get notified when there are comments waiting for approval, so a few have been sitting in the queue. Sorry about that. I’ll change it.)

Alison Carlyle says 2010 is the Year of Cataloguing (or something like that) and FRBR is involved. Of course!

Next Monday Ron Murray is giving a talk called Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe — FRBR, Physics and the World Wide Web. The abstract:

In response to dramatic increases in the quantity and types of culturally significant resources in libraries, cataloging theories like FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) have become more complex when compared to traditional cataloging theories. The need to re-conceptualize and justify bibliographic resource description theories is now critical, due to the emergence of the World Wide Web – whose structure and content is more varied and more dynamic than that of libraries. To support the argument that the “commonsense imagery” of analog materials limits our thinking about cataloging and about resource description in general, the speaker will review how for atomic physicists, the “commonsense imagery” of physical processes had to be abandoned in the early 20th Century because the mathematics that explained the measurements of physical processes could no longer be related to any perceivable object or event. The diagrams that have fueled physicist’s imagination since 1945 correspond to nothing in the physical world – but were instead generated by the theories created by the physicists. The speaker suggests that the complexity of analog and digital Cultural Heritage resources warrants a similar approach to their description. This approach – “Paper Tool” creation and use – applies equally well to bibliographic descriptions of library content as well as to the emerging Semantic Web.

Ron Murray sent me up a bunch of interesting stuff about this, and I have been sitting on it and not gotten around to giving it a serious think or posting about it. It’s quite thought-provoking, and if a recording of his talk is available afterwards then I’ll link to it and you’ll want to listen to it.

Lukas Koster asks Is an E-book a Book? “First, we need see how all this fits together before we can answer the question ‘Is an e-book a book?’ or more precise: ‘In which sense is an e-book a book?’ Fortunately there is already a conceptual model for bibliographic entities and the relationships between them that describes this: FRBR.” And later: “I also think we should use the possibilities of the FRBR model to start describing, cataloging and identifying the ’stories’ (chapters, articles, etc.) that make up books and e-books separately, as units of content in their own right. People are interested in the content, the ’stories’, not the physical items or artificial digital aggregate units like e-books or e-journals.”

Kent Anderson asks, How Many Books Dance on the Head of an E-pin? It’s a response to Koster’s post. “Should we trim up the tree further? Simply stop at ‘expression’? In that case, you would have the expression of the work ‘Tom Sawyer,’ with the FRBR silent from that point on. And that may be where we’re headed — toward a world that can’t presume items or manifestations, but only list expressions of works. Or perhaps we should evacuate some of the detail from “manifestation” in order to provide an appropriate silence on the issues involved.”

Lukas Koster also pointed out a couple of interesting things in a tweet.

First, UNIMARC, RDA and the Semantic Web (130 KB PDF), a paper given by Gordon Dunsire at IFLA in Italy in August. The abstract:

The paper will discuss the application of Resource Description and Access (RDA), the emerging
successor to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, as a content standard for metadata encoded in
UNIMARC. RDA is designed for international application in a digital environment, and is not aligned
with any specific bibliographic record encoding format, although work is ongoing to develop its
application to MARC21 and Dublin Core formats. The paper will also discuss the implications of
making components of RDA and associated models such as Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) compatible
with the Semantic Web.

Second, RDA and the Semantic Web, slides from a talk given in Seoul earlier this year by Alexander Haffner. FRBR starts on slide three.

Library student Michael Steeleworthy might do a reading course on FRBR. “I’m pushing for this in part because I’m not enthused about the course options for winter term, but mostly because I’m not comfortable with the level of knowledge I have on the organization of data and records to feel qualified to apply for a job in the sub-field.” He even scanned in some notes he took while reading Arlene Taylor’s Understanding FRBR.

Jennifer Eustis posted Are User Tasks Outdated Asks NGC4LIB from that never-ending mailing list thread which I still haven’t read.

And there’s some mention of FRBR in Bugs in Amber, Diane Hillmann’s analysis of Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace (1.1 MB PDF), a report that the Library of Congress commissioned from R2 Consulting. It asks, “[A]re traditional cataloging and the MARC record—even after modernization by RDA and FRBR—still necessary in an era of full‐text indexing”? Diane replies: “Leaving aside the odd assumption that RDA and FRBR represent the ‘modernization’ of the traditional MARC record, they couch the issue only in the context of a limited number of technologies, never mentioning the gorilla in the room, the data being built by others outside our comfy and bounded silo.”

Some companies have what is called "casual Friday", where employees can come to work dressed less formally, what is considered "smart casual" or "business casual" -- dressing in such a way to appear professional yet relaxed. Where I work, everyday is casual day and there is no dress code. Some might dress formally, others very informally -- t-shirts, shorts, etc.

I work on the second floor of our library, yet it is one floor below ground level. Actually, it is split level, in that the west side of our floor is on the ground level with very nice windows, but the east side is not. All of us work in cubicles, called "stations," even the top supervisors.

I am not complaining about either the lack of a dress code or the location of our work. But it is representative of the fact that most of us in technical services do not engage professionally with the public. Like the ship engine mechanic below deck, we in technical services are the ones who provide the foundation to keep the library and all its branches functioning, but we are not the public face.

What I describe may be more true here at a large university library than in smaller libraries, where catalogers and others in technical services might perform a larger variety of tasks. Of course, we have plenty of interaction among ourselves, and meetings to attend, but in the end, cataloging is for the most part a solitary task. It can be intellectually challenging at times, other times the work can be dull or frustrating. Sometimes it gives one the feeling of accomplishment. But it is different than working as a reference librarian, for example, or in the circulation department where one engages in frequent contact with the public.

All that said, I would recommend to anyone starting a career in the library world to spend some time working as a cataloger, if possible, because it helps establish a good understanding of how the library is organized, where one might find particular items, and how to search for them.

Giles Martin took the photo of EPC at LC on November 17, 2009. From left to right: Karl Debus-López (Library of Congress, standing in for Beacher Wiggins), Jonathan Furner (UCLA), Welna van Eeden (University of South Africa), Lyn McKinney (Billings [MT] Senior High School), Deborah Rose-Lefmann (Northwestern University), Sandra Singh (University of British Columbia), EPC Vice-Chair Anne Robertson (Australian Committee on Cataloguing), EPC Chair Caroline Kent (British Library), Andrea Kappler (Evansville Vanderburgh [IN] Public Library), and David Farris (Library and Archives Canada).

Meeting 132 of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) was held November 16-17 at the Library of Congress. EPC Chair Caroline Kent (British Library) was re-elected for a second two-year term as chair.

In Table 1 (Standard Subdivisions), EPC approved a proposal to recast T1—0286 Waste technology as T1—0286 Green technology (Environmental technology). In Table 2 (Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Persons), EPC gave provisional approval to the revision of Asia Minor and Turkey, and requested additional literary warrant information before approving the expansion for Switzerland.

EPC approved selected updates in the following schedules: 004-006 Computer science; 320 Political science; 361-365 Social problems and services; 390 Customs, etiquette, folklore; 400 Language; 569 Fossil mammals and 599 Mammals; 636 Animal husbandry; 646 Sewing, clothing; 690 Buildings; 720 Architecture; 800 Literature and rhetoric; and various historical periods in 900. EPC also reviewed and approved the full schedules for 670 Manufacturing and 680 Manufacture of products for special uses.

Several discussion papers were considered by the committee. One discussion paper addressed current and proposed practices related to representation and use of standard subdivisions with extended or narrowed meanings, and displaced standard subdivisions. Our investigation of such subdivisions was prompted by two streams of inquiry—a set of questions posed by a group of Dewey Section classifiers preparing training materials (Michael Cantlon, Carolyn Turner, and Ruby Woodard), and our ongoing review of practices related to the representation of standard subdivisions in add tables. EPC approved the discussion paper on 281 Eastern churches for external review. We are seeking advice immediately from the Arabic, Greek, and Russian translation teams; we will also be seeking advice from other experts in Orthodox Christianity. Yvonne Jahns (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek), chair of the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) 340 Law Working Group, was a guest attendee at the meeting. She participated in the extensive discussion of various 340 Law discussion papers; the full 340 Law schedule will be considered at Meeting 133. Yvonne also presented “20 years SWD: German subject authority data prepared for the future.” EPC considered another set of discussion papers, including one from the EDUG 370 Education Working Group, focused on the 370 Education schedule. EPC reviewed revised proposals for updates to 372.3-372.8 Elementary education in specific subjects, and updates to levels of education in 372, 373, and 378. The full 370 Education schedule will also be considered at Meeting 133.

EPC also heard progress reports on Dewey linked data, mixed translation models, and ongoing efforts to use machine assistance in the development of the abridged edition. Thanks to the efforts of EPC member Welna van Eeden, a representation of the DDC Summaries in Afrikaans was added last week to dewey.info (Afrikaans is the tenth language represented in the service).

EPC scheduled a follow-up electronic Meeting 132A (to be held February 1-26, 2010), during which the committee will review the Editorial Rules for standard subdivisions; further work on the machine-assisted abridged model; updates to T1—0288 Maintenance and repair to address issues raised at Meeting 131; updates to the Table 2 provisions for Asia Minor, Turkey, and Switzerland; a possible expansion at 746.92 Costume to match similar provisions for clothing and accessories elsewhere; the updated history periods for Africa based on comments from outside reviewers; and minor updates proposed by the Swedish translation team. If necessary, we will split the meeting into two parts and schedule Electronic Meeting 132B (possibly as a webinar) at a later date. Meeting 133 will be held June 16-18, 2010, at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio.

A few weeks ago I attended the opening of an amber exhibition at our wonderful Museum of the Earth which is only about 6 miles from my house. The exhibit had a little of everything: science, history, geography … and jewelry. I have to admit (and this will surprise no one who knows me) that the jewelry was a big draw, and I went laden (literally), with a varied selection of my own collection of amber. Hey, laugh if you will, but these days I work at home, and have very few opportunities to wear jewelry of any kind—so this opening was irresistible.

But, enough about jewelry, I want to talk about bugs and bibs! As you might expect in a science museum, there was far more emphasis on amber as a carrier (so to speak) of bits and pieces of the past, particularly the biological past. As a preservation medium, amber is hard to beat, though, of course, there are limitations in terms of the size of the biological specimen. I didn’t realize it, but apparently fake amber is everywhere, and one way to recognize the bio fakes is that they include specimens too big to be slowed down by sticky tree sap. The exhibit had some nice fakes, including a small snake in plastic colored to look like amber.

The interest of the scientist in amber is that it stops the process of decay for those creatures lucky (or unlucky) enough to be captured in its grasp. The amber captures a moment in a bug’s short life in a way that allows us to examine it closely and in detail in our own time, millions of years later. In much the same way, the Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace by R2 Consulting captures a moment in time, very likely too late to have much of an effect on the future, but just in time to capture the state of the cataloging world before the tsunami arrives. [R2]

But the R2 report is as fascinating to a metadata maven as a bug in amber is to a biologist. It describes in detail the current world of cataloging distribution, focusing on the “dysfunctional market” that has grown like Topsy around distribution of MARC records. It gets exactly right the disconnect between the librarian sense that “records want to be free” and the business approach that production costs must be recouped and profit margins maintained for there to be any point in participation at all, and comes down predictably in support for the latter view.

It’s a fascinating read, particularly if the fact that LC commissioned the report is kept in mind—because this is hardly a context-free analysis. I was particularly interested in the description of the businesses outside of libraries supplying MARC records either as contractors or as part of a materials supply chain. As a former denizen of one of the large academics that R2 identifies as part of the “green tier” (more about that later), I was aware of the fact of that portion of the MARC marketplace, but had little contact with it.

The gist of the report is that the MARC distribution network is a dysfunctional hybrid, partly librarianishly “free” and part commercial marketplace. The authors feel that it should be possible to increase the supply of MARC records from “the community” without relying on poor beleaguered LC to supply them, and they give us a multitude of statistics to support that assertion. They believe that there’s enough time to accomplish this and save everybody money before the promised changes come to pass, and all must be re-thought.

My comments on this report, informed by my well-known biases, fall into a few convenient categories:

Dysfunctional? Probably …

Much of the first portion of the report is devoted to a description of the current “marketplace” and a discussion of the survey results that illuminate and inform the description. It’s here that R2 makes the case that LC is subsidizing the whole shebang, to the benefit of everyone else.

“Both libraries and vendors (at least the good ones) rely on “service” to their respective clienteles to distinguish themselves, but there are important distinctions in their respective definitions of the term. In the commercial world, service must exist within a context of profitability, in which all costs are covered and some additional increment is contributed to the company’s continued growth and as a return on the capital initially invested. The library service ethic is much more open‐ended and less directly constrained by costs.”

The report contains much interesting description of what the authors perceive as the bifurcated market, one which, in their view, inhibits the growth of useful marketplace incentives to increase output:

“This tension ‐‐ between community values and commercial values, between idealism and pragmatism, between social responsibility and private benefit – has deeply affected some aspects of the library market. Cataloging, regarded by many as the heart of librarianship, is one of those areas.”

It’s pretty clear where the authors come down in this conflict between “community” and “commercial” values:

“The impulse to share records for which the costs have not been fully recovered may make sense as a form of community good, but is not sustainable without some form of subsidy or exchange. From the commercial viewpoint, it’s simply bad business.”

And, perhaps more to the point:

“It should not go unnoticed that LC itself provides open access to its MARC records via multiple channels. The prevalence of open databases is a key factor in the economic confusion that plagues the MARC Record Market … “

The report goes on to a rather interesting and revealing categorization of the complex MARC marketplace into three tiers. The “Green Tier” includes the “ … oldest, most traditional segment of the market, in which nearly all MARC records originate.” This tier includes both libraries and businesses, as well as OCLC, and is, as such, a mix of the “community” and “commercial” as described earlier. The big thing is that they’re contributors to the marketplace, even if also consumers. According to R2’s statistics, this tier includes 97% of academic libraries, 63% of public libraries and a similar proportion of school libraries.

The next tier down (and it’s clearly down, in this categorization) is called the “Blue” or “opportunistic” tier, including by the author’s definition “ … non-OCLC libraries and underfunded libraries without adequate cataloging capacity.” More interestingly, this tier “ … is also home to open database providers, and the pervasive (did they mean to say “pernicious”?) Z39.50 protocols used to locate and obtain MARC records free of charge.” But R2 makes note of the shifting borders between tiers: “Both in Canada and in the US, historically ‘green libraries’ are adopting ‘blue tier’ practices and expectation, as library budgets are cut and as Z39.50 targets proliferate. Nearly all libraries, regardless of size or type are strategically patient, periodically re-searching the ‘blue tier’ for certain records to become ‘available’; but for ‘blue tier’ libraries, this is the primary approach to cataloging … Open Access and Open Archives Initiatives reside in the blue tier, strongly supported by the basic philosophical stance that access to information should be free.”

The “bottom” tier is the non-library “purple” tier, and this description clearly defines the real threat to the current MARC world, not just the fuzzy-wuzzy library community notion of sharing: “The non-library (purple) tier operates to a large extent without appreciation for or experience with MARC records, and without much regard for the library market in general. It is important to remain aware of activity in this segment, of course, because developments here pose the most significant competitive threats to the traditional values and economic structures of the ‘traditional green tier,’ and even the ‘opportunistic blue tier.’ This is the place where newer technologies and non-MARC data formats are used and developed.”

Obviously, we have met the enemy of libraries, and according to R2 it happens to be us. But wait, there are some unexpected companions in the nasty “purple” tier. In addition to the usual suspects, like Google and Amazon, we find … “OCLC pro-actively operates within the “traditional green tier” and within the “purple non-library” tier. OCLC member libraries, however, are also very active in the “opportunistic blue tier,” sharing records in ways that may conflict with OCLC’s proprietary intent.”

The battle lines seem clearly drawn here, with the “information wants to be free” crowd clearly the enemy, whether in sheep’s clothing as traditional librarians or explicitly displaying wolfish teeth as a member of that unappreciative crowd that cares little about the current MARC marketplace and would like to see the library data silo dismantled brick by brick. No matter that we seek these changes for the benefit of libraries struggling to live within their budgets and to innovate to serve their users as well–shame, shame!

The R2 Solution

The report’s authors actually manage to ask THE most relevant question that should be (and often is) on our minds, but only to dismiss it as out of scope:

“The practice of cataloging has never before faced the level of scrutiny it now enjoys … or endures. Two types of question predominate. First, are traditional cataloging and the MARC record—even after modernization by RDA and FRBR—still necessary in an era of full‐text indexing, OpenURL linking, and other discovery options? While this is a worthy question, it is fortunately not within the purview of this report.”

Leaving aside the odd assumption that RDA and FRBR represent the “modernization” of the traditional MARC record, they couch the issue only in the context of a limited number of technologies, never mentioning the gorilla in the room, the data being built by others outside our comfy and bounded silo. Then they go on to pose the questions they would rather address:

“How do we as a profession understand and explain the costs and benefits of producing and distributing cataloging records? Where and by whom are most original records produced? What incentives exist to stimulate production? What are the barriers that discourage production? How does the library market assign value to the work of cataloging? What is the return on any organization’s investment in producing original catalog records? How does shared cataloging and free or low‐cost distribution of records affect the market? To what degree is market activity subsidized by LC and by the work of individual libraries?”

The problem is, that without an answer to question #1, the other questions seem hardly relevant.

“As noted there, the market is in need of adjustment, if it is to create an incentive for producers while retaining the community ethic of free sharing of data. The ethic of the cooperative can only be sustained if the full costs of production are borne by the community.”

It seems to me that the market will be adjusted, and the recognition of the full costs of traditional cataloging and the plunging ROI as we address Question #1 will hasten that readjustment, but probably not in the direction R2 predicts or that those seeking compensation for their MARC record production might want.

The authors provide some telling glimpses into their world view in their discussion about crosswalks:

“ONIX to MARC record translations and fully operable MARC to non‐MARC metadata crosswalks could dramatically alter this three‐tiered landscape. To date, major players in the blue and purple tiers have failed to buy into the concept of shared bibliographic and authority data. While some efforts to encourage cross‐market cooperation are underway (notably the OCLC/NISO forum), fierce competition flourishes within and between each tier of the market. Even more problematic, each tier has distinctly different needs and incentives, making it difficult to establish an adequate degree of shared urgency and/or investment in new solutions.” [RIN]

Clearly, in a world where the only relevant data one can see “out there” is ONIX, crosswalks seem a no-brainer, but to call this view “limited” seems far too kind.

Ultimately, R2 thinks we still have time to tweak the marketplace and flog out more MARC records by identifying and marshaling unused capacity (e.g., hidden catalogers) and providing economic incentives. In my view, this is a flawed argument, and takes away from the need to plan for the transition to a much different future. I agree that MARC will indeed be used by libraries for some time, but as a lossy exchange format, not the lynchpin of the library data world. R2’s strategy prolongs the old world, jeopardizing the possibilities of moving forward in a timely manner.

The Sacred Cow Effect

Sadly, the whole report, interesting though it is as a biological specimen, fails utterly to examine the data activity outside libraries except to demonize it and its proponents. In making the Library of Congress into Poor Nell, they also deny the innovations in creating and reusing data that LC itself has accomplished, for instance, the American Memory Project, the LC Flickr Project, and many other digital initiatives that have proactively (and openly) pushed the metadata envelope in ways that inspire and engage us. The report fails also to understand that the changes they fear, the ones that they rightly expect to undermine the current marketplace completely, are already nibbling ravenously around the edges of MARC and its traditional marketplace in ways that will hardly take the 5-10 years to make change become real that R2 predicts.

Last summer at ALA in Chicago, a small group of us pulled together a linked data program, hearteningly well attended, where Eric Miller persuasively predicted that the return on investment for integrating “free” metadata from “the cloud” will trump traditional concerns about quality. [Miller] Mainstream entitles like the New York Times are moving aggressively into the linked data space, seeking to merge their data with the likes of DBpedia and FreeBase. [Sandhaus]

Consider this from MMA partner Jon Phipps: “The future cataloging marketplace will have to compete with ‘free and more than good enough’. Like the people who initially sneered at Google for being too simplistic and ignoring metadata when it came to searching, the professional cataloging community ignores (or tries to fend off) the enormous future output of Linked-Data-enabled systems at its peril. By opening up a clear relationship between the semantic web and library data sets, the RDA vocabularies represent a threat to the hegemony of catalogers. The RDA vocabularies are a a disruptive, game-changing technology.” [Phipps]

The reality is that it’s not just the marketplace that’s changing, it’s also the profession. As part of the analysis of why the numbers of catalogers reported in their survey doesn’t lead to the expected output levels, R2 speculates that “These data lead us to ask what catalogers are doing. Bob Wolven and others suggest that catalogers are being called upon to apply their knowledge of cataloging principles to new initiatives; and specifically to creating metadata for digital and archival collections.” [Wolven] R2 seems to imply that this is a bad thing, taking away resources from the business of actually churning out MARC records, but certainly these newer roles are critical to the survival and renewal of libraries, far more than shoring up current MARC record production.

The solutions the R2 report poses, from paying more attention to recouping cataloging costs and re-centralizing creation of cataloging records, if taken up, would actively undermine a transition to participation in a more open, linked data world. They represent a step backward, in a community that has already internalized the values of sharing and decentralized data critical to seeing value in the world of openly accessible data lying on our doorstep.

Oddly enough, the report ends with a quote from my old friend Sherman Clarke (unattributed, so most likely as a comment to the survey):

“We collectively need to have a model that allows us to do some of the building of BIBCO records mechanically or through accretion of metadata from institutional records or other record loads. OCLC already does considerable building of the master record from incoming records; what we need is something more like the metadata that is becoming usual in NewGen environments. If someone adds a tag or review or picture, that becomes available in the master cluster. Not a BIBCO record, but a BIBCO cloud of metadata for a particular manifestation of a work/expression.”

Yup, you got it, Sherman. The change we need is not really about records, or catalogers; it’s a new way to think about information and added value.

[Miller] Miller, Eric. “Linked Data and Libraries: Grassroots Program: From Legacy Data to Linked Data, Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0. Available at: zepheira.com/talks/ala-em-lod.pdf

[R2] Study (for the Library of Congress) of the North American MARC Records Marketplace, October 2009, R2 Consulting LLC, Ruth Fischer, Rick Lugg. Available at: www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/MARC_Record_Marketplace_2009-10.pdf

[RIN] Research Information Network. (2009). Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world. Available at: www.rin.ac.uk/files/creating_catalogues_REPORT_June09.pdf

[Sandhaus] Sandhaus, Evan. “150 Years of Semantic Technology.” Presentation at the Cornell University Libraries Metadata Working Group Forum, Nov. 13, 2009. Slides will be available from: metadata-wg.mannlib.cornell.edu/forum/index.php?date=2009-11-13

[Wolven] Wolven, Robert. (2008). In search of a new model: Columbia University Libraries: Robert Wolven reflects on what’s next for cooperative cataloging. netConnect, 1/15/2008. Available at: www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6514925.htm

Here at UC Berkeley technical services, we are supposed to search for the record first within our library database, and then search for it in OCLC. This is necessary primarily because there might be an order record for it within our library system which needs to be inserted into the local note area of the OCLC record before exporting it; also to see if we in fact have that book, or an earlier edition.


In determining if the book is an exact match, the main details I would check would be pagination and height, title, author, publisher, and date of publication

Announcing "ConferenceThing," a free, mini-conference we're organizing to coincide with ALA Midwinter in Boston.*

When:	Friday, January 15, 2010
Where:	South Boston, very close to ALA Midwinter
Structure:	Mixed conference/unconference
Admission:	Free

We've wanted to do something like this for ages. Now that ALA is in Boston, home for Abby and Sonya, and a short drive from the main office in Portland, ME, we have the chance to do it—and do it up. We've chosen Friday, before the exhibitions open at 5pm.**

What we're planning:

• "Higher-level" conversations about the topics we care about—Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and books. Many librarians are ready to move past the basics. A lot of us now spend most of our time thinking about this stuff!
• Learning, but no instruction. If you want to set up a Facebook page, get a book. If you want to talk about what works and what really doesn't in library social media, show up.
• Non-library people. The event will be open to everyone—LibraryThing members, librarians, etc. We're going to bring some interesting bookstore and publishing people. We think we're all in the same boat. And we're drifting. Let's talk about whom to eat first.
• Some sort of LibraryThing meetup and ALA party. We're looking around for something different. It might just be drinks at Bukowski's, but we're looking for something cooler. (We're shooting for the Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose books LibraryThing members cataloged.)

What to do

• Join the ConferenceThing LibraryThing group to talk about it, and plan things
• Follow @ConferenceThing on Twitter

---

*ConferenceThing is not affiliated with ALA Midwinter in any way, although we have the same tailor.
**Friday is also when most of the special sessions are planned. We're bumping up against a couple of events, including some by our friends in LITA. We're sorry about that, but there weren't any better options.

Ross,

I really appreciate the indepth answer you provided, but I still have some problems.

First, your example of the SKOS:
owl:sameAs <info:lc/authorities/sh2009120881> ;
skos:inScheme <http://id.loc.gov/authorities#conceptScheme>,
<http://id.loc.gov/authorities#topicalTerms> ;
skos:prefLabel "Communication--Political aspects--United States"@en;
lcsh:coordinates
<http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85029027#concept>,
<http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh00005651#concept>,
<http://purl.org/NET/marccodes/gacs/n-us#location> .

is fine and I believe does exactly what I have been saying that we need. but as you say, we must imagine this sometime in the future since it doesn't work now (not only because the term United States is not yet avaialble, but because the system is not set up that way. i.e. there is currently no link from
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2009120881

to either:

<http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85029027#concept>,
<http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh00005651#concept>,

The reason this does not work currently is because everything is still based on how people browsed a card or printed catalog. It all made perfect sense before, but fell apart with keyword searching. I think I need to stop and explain this because it may be becoming "lost information." For those who know this already, I apologize in advance.

If someone wanted to find books on the politics of communications in the U.S., they would open the "C" catalog drawer (not "P" and not "U") and begin going through the cards until they would come to "Communication," which--in theory--would be a raised card with the information now available at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85029027#concept printed on it. They would read and learn whatever was on this raised card, then they would continue to browse (for quite awhile sometimes) until they ran across the subdivision "Political aspects" and continue to "United States."

In reality, it never worked that well because librarians were scared that the catalog would get too big, so they placed very few guide cards into the catalog, and as a result, almost all of the cross-references were found only in the red books. As a result, the red books were vital for the searcher to get all of these cross-references and such, but relatively few people actually used them. (I confess I did not understand their importance until library school, and I know I am not alone! BTW, a discussion is going on about the red books now on Autocat) People, including me, nevertheless muddled through somehow.

This system worked even worse when computers arrived with keyword since people ceased browsing the headings as they were supposed to, and with keyword searching, they would jump right into a record placed in the *middle of the file,* then see the subjects, and choose "Communication--Political aspects--United States." When they clidked on this link (if the system allowed it) you would be thrown into the *middle* of the old, card catalog browse list and not at the beginning as it was designed to work. This is how the LC catalog works right now. But the searcher still needs the information found under "Communication" plus lots more along the way, and now, the only way to get this information is to browse up and up to the top, often, after many, many screens. Of course, nobody does this except weirdos like me who understand how it is *supposed* to work. But, it's still a pain to do it and there must be something better.

Therefore, the link from "Communication--Political aspects--United States" to "Communication" is absolutely critical if the headings are to be useful, since the traditional method of browsing does not work anymore, and hasn't for a long time.

Therefore, while the structure you point out may work in the future, it doesn't appear to right now, and we are forced to imagine. The trouble with imagining is: I and lots of other people can imagine a lot and once people begin imagining, they can imagine how much more they could and should get, instead of only the internal relationships to "Communication" "Political aspects" and "United States." I think something like: http://dbpedia.org/page/Category:Communication would be found pretty useful by lots of people out there. Also, I would like some level of real world searches to be involved. My example has always been the real world keyword search for someone who is interested in battles of WWII: "wwii battles" which should retrieve the cross-references:
See: World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations.
See: World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns.
See: World War, 1939-1945--Naval operations.

which appears now only if you search: "World War, 1939-1945 battles" which nobody would ever do. With a structure as you lay out above and what I think is necessary, it is at least possible because there is a reference for "wwii" in http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85148273 which appears nowhere else. This structure reflects how the card catalog functioned. I have written some more on this in one of my "Open replies" to Thomas Mann, where I discuss some of the problems of subjects, at: http://eprints.rclis.org/13059/1/OntheRecordOpenReply.pdf

<snip>
Your basis for this thread was to mitigate the effort and expense of our current cataloging process by ignoring RDA and FRBR and, instead, tweaking AACR2. But then you ask if we should drop LCSH for dbpedia. These seems completely disjoint. How would we begin to justify the retrospective conversion?
</snip>

I do not want that at all. We should be working hard to make LCSH actually useful for the public who now approach information retrieval in ways completely differently from before (primarily, using keyword which, as I tried to show, makes the LCSH browses more or less incoherent). But even more importantly, we must create something that is genuinely useful to our users and this means to *not* merely recreate the functionality of the card catalog, but we should try to recreate its power--because there was a power that is not replicated in our library catalogs (as I have tried to demonstrate) and certainly not in Google and the like. This also shouldn't take 10 years to do.

If it turns out that all we can do is recreate the traditional browses used in the card catalog, I am afraid it may not be worthwhile.

On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:22:57 -0700, john g marr wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, James Weinheimer wrote:

>> On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:08:15 -0500, Henriksen, Phalbe wrote:
>>> Is the library's catalogue going to degenerate into a free-for-all
>>> political forum???

>> While I certainly sympathize with this view, I think that this may be the
>> price to the library if we are to enter the Web2.0 world: we lose control
of a lot of tasks where we were the absolute masters previously.
>
> The question is not whether we should retain a form of "mastery" or "pay
>a price" not to play techno-political conformity games, but whether we
>should continue to be and become increasingly responsible for providing
>factual data for public consumption in a transparent and unbiased manner.

So, are you saying that we should not allow users to tag the records? As I tried to point out, there are essentially two options: 1) to not allow tagging 2) to allow tagging. There are several options in how to implement user tagging.

If we allow tagging, then it can either be managed or not managed. If it is managed, it will demand library resources (perhaps a lot) and there will be some very tricky moments, I am sure. If we want to scrub out obscenties, we can do at least a lot of it through automated means, but that still leaves room for a lot of tags out there. If we manage it, what criteria do we use? Do we maintain that we are the ones who are "objective," "unbiased" or "fair and balanced" while the others aren't?

Of course, just because someone may be a teacher or faculty member does not make them immune to bias and subjectivity. How do we explain to users that "our tags" (i.e. traditionally assigned subject headings) are *not* biased, while theirs are? Or their tags may be, depending on how we feel that day? More importantly, how do we get users to agree to our pronouncements without making a huge fuss? I see it that if we manage user tags, we will be opening a huge, political, can of worms.

Web services may provide some solutions, but offer just as many pitfalls since we can import tags and reviews from other sites, but this means that we would still have to decide how to manage it or not and (at least I hope!) others will be able to take our records and do what they will with them, including changing them, or displaying them with the tags and keywords *they* want. For example, I have no doubt that there are some people who would love to take our records with the author of "William Shakespeare" and change the heading to the person that they believe was the "real" author of those works, e.g. Edward de Vere, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon, or whoever is their favorite.

What I am trying to point out is that the world of cataloging is changing because our society is changing and there is nothing we can do about it. I don't like a lot of these changes in many ways, but they are being forced upon us and we must deal with problems and possibilities that our predecessors never had to face. We can decide to ignore it all, to keep "control" of everything, and maintain that ours is "better" than everyone else's, but that seems to me to take us down the path of eventual extinction. As Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

As an aside, I also find it very interesting that there is controversy among catalogers over adding user tags and other types of user inclusions (which the public has demonstrated that it wants), but there is almost no controversy over the switch to FRBR structures which have a much greater impact on cataloging and the catalogs, even though it has not been demonstrated that our public want it at all.

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:08:15 -0500, Henriksen, Phalbe wrote:

>Is the library's catalogue going to degenerate into a free-for-all
>political forum??? Or are we going to limit tagging to patrons who have
>active library cards, or write policies so that we have to go through
>the potential tags every morning and cancel the ones that don't meet our
>policy? Are we going to add to our technical services staff to do that?

While I certainly sympathize with this view, I think that this may be the price to the library if we are to enter the Web2.0 world: we lose control of a lot of tasks where we were the absolute masters previously. So, we either allow tagging and enter the Web2.0 world, or we do not enter that world, or we try to manage the input from that world to retain as much as we had, which demands more resources from an ever-decreasing staff.

Another possibility is to use the API to import on the fly the tags and reviews from other online tools, which is possible to do with Amazon.com right now. Conventional thinking is that this improves your catalog, but then you have all of those tags and reviews from amazon.com..... (!!)

Still another possibility is that libraries actually decide to share our metadata all over the web in all kinds of ways (as I have suggested) and our records can then be seen on webpages everywhere. Of course, this means that we lose control over how our records are displayed, the context, and so on, and our records can still display alongside those tags.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe it will be an opportunity for some enterprising person out there to create a new NetNanny, "CatNanny" that will "scrub out" those dirty tags for the catalogers. Or, everybody will just get used to seeing bizarre results, just as we do in Google and Yahoo. I confess that sometimes a Google search result strikes me so much that suddenly, it seems I have been transported from the year 1990 or so, and I *can't believe" I'm seeing all of these things that would have shocked me deeply back then. The world has changed a lot in not *all that much* time, and it seems to be changing faster and faster.

Still, I do think that it is absolutely imperative for libraries to enter the Web2.0 world, in spite of us losing control. If we don't, I fear we will just be marginalizing ourselves too much

I caught up with Vice president of OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, Karen Calhoun, in the lobby of a hotel across the road from the iconic British Library building in London.  Karen was preparing for her presentation at the 2009 OCLC Tech Forum to be held in the Library conference centre.

I took the opportunity to talk to her about the last twelve months since the announcement about changes to the OCLC record reuse policy.  We then moved on to discuss how new entrants, Biblios and SkyRiver, in to the record supply sector may alter that landscape.

As well as discussing the themes for her presentation later that morning, we also explored the blurring of the boundaries between OCLC’s traditional record supply focus and the ILS vendor community offering library automation software.

I caught up with Vice president of OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, Karen Calhoun, in the lobby of a hotel across the road from the iconic British Library building in London.#160; Karen was preparing for her presentation at the 2009 OCLC Tech Forum to be held in the Library conference centre. I took the opportunity to talk to her about the last twelve months since the announcement about changes to the OCLC record reuse policy.#160; We then moved on to discuss how new entrants, Biblios and SkyRiver, in to the record supply sector may alter that landscape. As well as discussing the themes for her presentation later that morning, we also explored the blurring of the boundaries between OCLCrsquo;s traditional record supply focus and the ILS vendor community offering library automation software. Technorati Tags: Karen Calhoun,OCLC

This fall, OCLC has been involved in loading records from major European collections from Denmark and France.

OCLC is working to  make available in WorldCat the records and location information of the Danish National Union Catalogue (DANBIB) (see the February 2009 announcement at http://www.oclc.org/enews/2009/08/en_denmark.htm).  OCLC's agreement with the Dansk BiblioteksCenter (DBC) was the result of a year-long pilot coordinated with the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media (DALM). The pilot took place with the participation of academic and public libraries from across Denmark. When the loading into WorldCat is done, there will be approximately 10 million DANBIB records represented in WorldCat.

There have been two major projects with French metadata. The first is bringing approximately 15 million records from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. (BnF). This project, announced in June 2009 (http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200936.htm) has an extra layer of complexity due to the native INTERMARC format of the records; a conversion to MARC21 has been going well and records are already appearing in WorldCat. OCLC is excited to continue working with BnF, who have previously provided assistance with the Virtual International Authority File (a.k.a.VIAF, Fichier d'Autorité International Virtuel).

The second French-language project is that of ABES (l'Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur), an association of French academic libraries, bringing 8 million records to WorldCat. This project (announced in September 2009 at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200949.htm) builds on a long relationship with ABES. Their cataloguing system, Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc) is based on OCLC's Central Bibliographic System (CBS).  As the September press release mentions, "Loading CBS records into WorldCat makes possible the option for real-time updates from CBS into WorldCat, via SRU update, which is currently being used effectively for the Dutch union catalogue and the union catalogue of Australia."
 
Both ABES and Denmark are also working with OCLC on loads of library data to WorldCat Registry, a web-based directory of libraries worldwide. (See previous Metalogue post: http://community.oclc.org/metalogue/archives/2008/10/cataloging-ourselves.html)The Registry comprehensiveness for French and Danish libraries will be greatly improved by this cooperation for inclusion of local catalog linking and other institutional data.

OCLC has many other current agreements with national libraries and other organizations. Notable among them are:

• the Slovenian COBISS.SI catalog of over 3 million records,  representing the collections of over 380 libraries. Completed in October, the load of 3,129,554 records resulted in 3,063,840 records (and  4,309,068 holdings) being added - an extraordinary ratio.
• five consortia of the Swiss Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz (IDS), loading 10 million bibliographic and 16 million holdings records from Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg library systems. This project is underway.
• the Israel consortium MALMAD, representing 30 academic institutions. This is also underway.

Look for more news on these last two projects in early 2010. In the meantime, you can also watch WorldCat grow at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/newgrow.htm. We are honored to be working with these partners on enhancing the visibility and utility of their metadata.



 

Changes in map cataloging from LC.

On June 10, 2009 the Policy and Standards Division (PSD) of the Library of Congress requested input from the library community about its proposal to change the structure of LCSH subdivisions for many cartographic materials. In brief, the paper suggested simplifying form subdivisions used for cartographic materials by removing the adjective (e.g. -Maps, Comparative would be revised to -Maps). The new genre/form headings would then do the “heavy lifting” of identifying a particular genre or form of material. After reviewing all of the comments it received, PSD has decided to implement its proposal to simplify the subdivisions.

The full text of the decision, which includes PSD’s responses to several concerns raised by the correspondents, is available on LC’s web site.

The Google Books Settlement is causing a great deal of previously unexpressed bibliographic interest -- just how many books are there in the known universe? How many are published in the four countries now included in the settlement agreement? (US, UK, Canada, Australia). And how many are in the public domain?

Lorcan Dempsey and Brian Lavoie have recently published an article in DLib that looks at these figures using the world's largest database of bibliographic data, WorldCat. The data is fascinating, but I have already seen it mis-interpreted, so I thought some clarification might be useful.

Dempsey and Lavoie are very clear that what they are measuring is "Manifestations." Folks outside of the library environment are unlikely to know what that means, therefore it is important to clarify what the numbers in the Dempsey/Lavoie article represent. Each “book” that is counted represents a published product at about the same level of granularity that today would be given an ISBN. Therefore if a publisher re-issues a book in their backlist after the previous print run has been exhausted (say, a decade later) and with a new introduction, it is considered a different book. The publication date that is fed into the study is the date of the new issuing of the book. Also, as publishers re-package and re-print public domain books, these also are considered separate products with new ISBNs and new dates.

Thus, if you look up a commonly re-published book like “Moby Dick, Or The Whale” in the Library of Congress catalog, you retrieve 40 items (and more if you use the short form of the name, simply “Moby Dick”), of which only one is pre-1923 — that one was published in 1851. Of the other thirty-nine instances of the publication of the work, which range from 1925 to 2006, some contain what GBS called “inserts” - that is, separately copyrightable intellectual property in the form of introductions, etc., but others may be a straight republication of the text. If you do the same lookup in FictionFinder, a work-based view of a portion of the WorldCat database. you find:

823 editions of "Moby Dick" (which combines the various versions of the title)
534 of which are in English

of these:

9 have an unknown date
60 have a date of 1923 or earlier
465 have dates after 1923

Looking through the list on FictionFinder it is easy to see that there are some duplicate records, both in the pre- and post-1923 entries.

Therefore, the question we now need to answer is: how many public domain works have been republished after the 1923 cut-off date?
What is clear, however, is that Google is going to need to identify Works (if not strictly in the FRBR sense, then at least in the sense that meets some definition that is valid for copyright law).

Comment to post: Will books survive? A scorecard…

It has seemed to me that the comparison of *a* printed book to *a* digital book is rather missing the point. More apt is to compare *a* digital device to *a* library. In this library are texts, videos, newspapers, magazines, and all kinds of weird things that ended up in the library for all kinds of reasons.

So, when we say that there are a lot of distractions on the web, this is entirely true, but there can also be lots of distractions in a library, with people walking around and talking, different magazines vying for your attention, public lectures scheduled, people doing strange things in the stacks and bathrooms, and so on, all of this going on while you are trying to concentrate on your book.

And, while an ebook device may cost a few hundred dollars, this must be compared to buying an entire library of books. Thanks to all of the digitization projects, many of which allow you to download for free, a single ebook reader now can represent quite literally a million-book library, with some of the finest works ever produced (although not the most recent).

Given all of this, it seems as if a digital book reader would be a great value since it could give me zillions of the best books of all time for free immediately. My hope is that people may actually read some of these older books that are free, compare them to some of the pulp published today, and question which is more valuable. There were a lot of romance novels published earlier that are now in the public domain. Maybe the fact that they are free will make them more interesting to the public again.

The purpose of a call number is to establish the exact location where a library item is shelved and can be retrieved, and to establish a logical order for its location within the library.

There are two parts to a call number: the classification number and the cutter. The classification number represents the first subject area, while the subsequent cutter or cutters represent either subtopics within this classification or, if it is the final cutter, the main entry of the item, i.e. the title or author. In the case of books and monographs, the final cutter also includes the year in which it was published.

There are two main library classification systems employed in the U.S. -- the Library of Congress system, used in most university libraries, and the Dewey Decimal system, used in most public libraries, and in libraries outside the U.S. The difference in appearance is that the LC classification system is alpha numeric, while the Dewey classification system is numeric.

At this point I will talk only about the LC system as that is what I work with daily, but for more information on the Dewey classification system click here for a listing of Dewey classification numbers, and here for a brief history and description.

The LC classification, as mentioned, is alpha numeric. Usually there is either one or two letters, followed by numbers; in the K series for law, it is often three letters, the three letters representing the country. Here is an example of an LC call number, for the book, Ho Chi Minh, by William J. Duiker, published in 2000:

DS560.72.H6 D85 2000

DS560.72 is for biography of North Vietnamese political leaders, H6 is for Ho Chi Minh, D85 is for William Duiker, and 2000 is for the year in which this edition was published. DS560.72 is the classification part of the call number, while H6 and D85 are the two cutters. Note that under this classification, all books whose primary subject heading is biography of Ho Chi Minh would be shelved in one section and within that the books would be arranged alphabetically by author, and for the same author the books would be listed chronologically, usually reflecting a newer edition.

Classification numbers are determined by the subject headings, with some exceptions, most notably literary works, where the classification is first based on country and then by author. For example:

PL4378.9.V86 S6213 2002

This is the call number for the book, Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng, originally published in Vietnamese as Śô đỏ. PL4378.9 is for individual works of Vietnamese authors, V86 is the cutter for Vũ Trọng Phụng, and S6213 is the cutter for the original title, Śô đỏ, with the number 62 for the title, and the number 13 representing the fact that it is an English translation.

I will discuss this more later but in the next entry I will talk about searching for books in OCLC.

I recently stumbled across an older ACRLog posting “Academic Librarianships’ Future Strengths?” While the entire article gave me something to reflect upon and think about regarding our future strengths, I think the most interesting part of the post, from my perspective (and likely most of you if you’re reading this “Cataloguing” blog!) is the following: While it’s [...]

I’ll have to admit – I’m not particularly sold yet on Google’s new cloud-based OS idea – I think largely for two reasons:

1) I don’t trust the cloud enough at this point to be willing to store all my data there

2) On my netbook (which would be the primary device for this software) – I work more offline (on planes or travelling) than on.

Of course, there is a 3rd – I have big reservations when it comes to giving up so much of my information to one company – or utilizing a solution that essentially is a vehicle for a single organizations tools (this is the biggest reason I can’t bring myself to buy a Mac – the EULA is regressively restrictive) – but given that the source is open, I’m certain that if the product has merit, someone will provide a version free from Google’s services.

However, with that said, I noticed on Slashdot that some folks have taken the code Google has currently provided and mashed up a VMWare image.  Since I use Sun’s VirtualBox software (and it can run a VMWare image) – I decided to give it a spin.

Anyway – here’s what I got so far:

At this point – everything points to Google services (including the hotmail and yahoo icons – though I imagine that will change at some point) – but that makes sense since Google has put in a fair amount of work to build robust web-based tools that are optimized for Chrome.  And essentially, that’s what this is – it’s Chrome Plus.  I’m not sure I’d characterize what Google is doing as providing a new OS – rather, they are taking Linux and putting a new windows manager on top of it. 

The pluses so far – even within a virtual machine, the overlay boots very quickly and is directly integrated into my google services (that’s actually how you log into the system).  The downside – as I see it – is the reliance on Web-based applications.  At this point in time, there are really too few of them in my option, to take the place of the work I do daily.  Looking at this virtual machine instance, I could only see using if I was browsing the web or doing some light document editing with Google Docs.  However, if I was creating a presentation or writing a document for publication – I’ve often found the present Google Docs applications to be limiting.  They get better all the time – but I constantly find myself falling back to working with either Open Office or MS Office, depending on my audience and complexity of the document or if the document will be shared within a business environment, where tools like Microsoft’s SharePoint or equivalent my be used for signing and locking documents. 

However, I think that the biggest thing that I’m missing in this first implementation is the lack of my file system and the ability to install tools.  On my travel computer, I have versions of eclipse, Visual Studio, gimp, etc. for development.  I have my organizations VPN software for remote desktop access, ssh+sftp, my blogging software, email client, etc.  And I add tools, develop tools to make my work life easier – and in this Browser-based OS – I currently lose that.  Will Google’s OS eventually become something more hybrid – to allow users to work in multiple spaces (both the cloud and outside of it) – not sure, but I guess we’ll find out in a year or so.

For now, anyone wanting to give this a spin and happens to have a copy of VMWare or Sun’s VirtualBox, find your way over to: http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/download-chrome-os-vmware-image/ and have a look.  You may have to register to see the article (I did) – but the image is there and you can download it and play around with it yourself.  It’s definitely worth tracking as the code continues to develop.  And while this first release is definitely pre-alpha, I think it will kind of give you a taste of where Google is going.

–TR

During our mad rush to add all the used book stores at Abebook (blog post) and all the Barnes & Noble stores (Talk thread), Dan added the 50,000th entry into LibraryThing Local.

So where is http://www.librarything.com/venue/50000? A Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV.

There's no photo up yet, if someone near Morgantown wants to go and take a picture with a piece of paper that says 50,000! on it.

(crossposted from the other blog)

The purpose of cataloging is to establish a record for a library item which includes a brief description and (usually) a call number, which in the case of printed materials are either placed on the spine or, if too thin, on the upper left corner of the book or periodical.

The description of the item would normally list the title; author or editor; publisher, along with place of publication and publishing date; physical description, i.e. how many pages, if it is illustrated, and how high in centimeters; notes, if it contains a bibliography or index; series, if it is part of one; and subject headings. Literary works, that is, poetry, fiction, drama, etc., do not normally include subject headings unless its topic is central enough to be listed, a historical novel, for example

The description of the item appears in different formats. What is called the brief view or the full view is what the patron normally sees at the library website, and is similar to what is usually found on the inside verso page, known as "Cataloging in Publication" data (more on that later). For example, this record in full view form from the Library of Congress website:

LC Control No.: 85019329
LCCN Permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/85019329
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Personal Name: Pike, Douglas, 1924-2002.
Main Title: PAVN : People’s Army of Vietnam / Douglas Pike.
Published/Created: Novato, CA : Presidio Press, c1986.
Related Titles: People’s Army of Vietnam.
Description: vii, 384 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
ISBN: 0891412433 : $18.95
Notes: Includes index.
Bibliography: p. 362-378.
Subjects: Vietnam. Quân đội nhân dân.
LC Classification: UA853.V48 P55 1986
Dewey Class No.: 355/.009597 19
Geographic Area Code: a-vt---
CALL NUMBER: UA853.V48 P55 1986
Copy 1

-- Request in:
Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms
-- Status:
Not Charged

This is a full view of the record, the brief view is the default mode in the LOC website. But the cataloger works with a different format, which can also be found at the LOC website by clicking "MARC tags":


PAVN : People's Army of Vietnam / Douglas Pike.

LCCN Permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/90026264
000

01026pam a2200277 a 450

001 1525312
005 20090828140631.0
008 901203r19911986nyu b 001 0 eng
906 __ a 7 b cbc c orignew d 1 e ocip f 19 g y-gencatlg
955 __ a pc05 to ea00 12-03-90;ea15 to SCD 12-04-90; fg05 12-04-90; fm22 12-07-90; CIP ver. bd65 to SL 05-07-91
010 __ a 90026264
020 __ a 0306804328 : c $14.95
035 __ 9 (DLC) 90026264
040 __ a DLC c DLC d DLC
043 __ a a-vt---
050 10 a UA853.V48 b P55 1991
100 1_ a Pike, Douglas, d 1924-2002.
245 10 a PAVN : b People’s Army of Vietnam / c Douglas Pike.
260 __ a New York, N.Y. : b Da Capo Press, c [1991], c1986.
300 __ a vii, 384 p. ; c 22 cm.
490 0_ a A Da Capo paperback
500 __ a Reprint. Originally published: Novato, CA : Presidio Press, c1986.
504 __ a Includes bibliographical references (p. 362-378) and index.
610 20 a Vietnam. b Quân ḍoi nhân dân.
740 0_ a People’s Army of Vietnam.
920 __ a Do not acquire

These numbered fields and coded letters in each field are necessary so that the records are properly exported to the computerized library database. MARC stands for MAchine Readable Cataloging. A MARC record can be viewed at library websites by clicking either on MARC or "Staff view". The numbers for each of the fields represent different categories: 050 or 090 is for call number; 100 is for author (if there is one); 245 is for title; 300 is for physical description; 440 or 490 and 830 are for series, if the book is part of one; 500 is for notes and 504 for noting if there is a bibliography; the 600 fields are for subject headings (600 for personal names; 610 for corporate names including organizations; 650 for topical subjects; and 651 for countries); 700 is for added entry personal names (such as editor) and 710 for organizations involved in the publication. The 900 numbers are for local notes. These are the main fields used by a cataloger, but there are many more. For more descriptions, see the Library of Congress description here.

As a cataloger, I will sometimes go to the website of a library which has the book I am cataloging, and copy and paste sections of the MARC record into the OCLC record I am about to export, if the OCLC record is incomplete.

I have discussed here only a monographic record, as that is what I work with daily. Serial records and electronic resources might look slightly different. In the next entry I will discuss the call number, which is divided into the classification number and the cutter number.