Category Archives: ala

The soundbite phenomenon

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I have enjoyed reading about presentations at the recent ALA annual conference. Of particular note for me are Owen Stephens’ extensive notes, available here. The ability for those who aren’t present at conferences to quickly catch up on essentials of what was discussed is, to me, hugely important and beneficial. I’m thankful for the efforts of others to record their impressions for someone like me to read.

The discussions that are written about often raise important issues in my mind and at times I feel strongly enough about an issue to respond to what was written, usually via commenting on a particular blog post. Such is the case with a recent blog post by Roy Tennant, called “Shoot the Dogma.” In this post Roy talks about a presentation in which one of the panelists uttered the statement, “Shoot the dogma,” as part of a larger narrative about why we should question many of our longstanding beliefs and practices. In this case she was referring to cataloging in particular. Roy picked that as the title of his post and said that this was one statement in the discussion that really stood out to him.

After thinking about that statement for a little bit, I decided to respond. See the link above to the post and the following comments for a complete picture of what was said and by whom. I guess what bothered me (and still does) about that statement is that it represents, to me, the latest in what I would call “the soundbite phenomenon.” Someone else who is regularly quoted with provocative or interesting soundbites is Stephen Abram. No personal affront intended, but I get tired of soundbites like this. Why? Well, there are many reasons. One is that many things are easier said than done. Another reason is that in my observation over many years in the profession, there is a tendency for us to grab ahold of a soundbite like this and shake our heads in affirmation, without really exploring its meaning and implications to see if the point made is actually credible or defensible.

In this case, as Karen Schneider pointed out in responding to my comment in Roy’s post, I need to understand and be aware of the larger context of the discussion. I plan to listen to the audio archive linked from that post so that I can be better informed. This is a reminder, as many others have found in the past, that responding to what someone has chosen to filter or write about in a conference session on a blog somewhere, especially if that response is critical, can be tricky.

One final observation. I find it weird that my criticism of something someone said should be met with the response that, basically, questions my criticism because “This is a domain in which [that other person] has a lot of knowledge.” Oh, please. Let’s just set aside the implication that I lack experience in these areas for now. My criticism, or anyone else’s for that matter, should stand or fall on its own merits. Maybe my criticism, such as it is, will turn out to be invalid. If so I will be the first to admit it.

Getting value out of conference attendance

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I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, of all stripes and sizes. I have to say — and this may come across as arrogant — that I don’t get a whole lot out of most of them. A well known blog that I have been reading, called Lifehacker, recently posted about the issue of how to make conferences worth the trip and time. It’s worth reading and then thinking about ways in which you can improve your own conference experience.

A large part of my problem with conference attendance is that I am not the most sociable guy out there. Too many activities with complete strangers can leave me physically and mentally exhausted. (Even too many activities with friends has the same effect.) Another problem for me is that in my experience, too many conferences, particularly in the library world, consist of recycled speakers over and over and over again. While I have never attended them, judging by their publicly available conference schedules, two conferences that I think are pretty egregious in this area are Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian. Every year it seems like they have the same people talk about variations on the same themes. That is a bit of a turn off. But admittedly I haven’t ever been so maybe my criticism isn’t valid in this case. But I have experience with many others that I actually have attended such as ALA, where this is true. A third complaint I have with conferences is that too much of the time speakers tout what they are doing and how innovative and the “latest and greatest” a certain thing is, and it isn’t. Too often, what I hear about at conferences is something that I already have experience with in my own library setting or know quite a bit about.

I want to go to conferences to learn new things, to hear more detail about things that I have only heard or read about, to stimulate my thinking beyond the boundaries of my own particular sphere of knowledge or work experience. I want speakers who challenge me, who are good presenters, who encourage attendee participation. I want the conference location to be accessible for non-conference activities if possible, to have pervasive (and FREE) wireless connectivity, and to provide ample opportunity for me to get away from it all for short periods of time to recharge my batteries.

One of the things I do when planning to go to a particular conference is to look closely at who is giving a particular presentation and not so much at the topic of that presentation. Maybe that seems odd but at this stage in my career, interesting topic + great speaker is the ideal but interesting topic + bad speaker is always trumped by not so interesting topic + great speaker.

I’m tired of the same old, same old at conferences. The thing is, conferences are really, really expensive these days. I think I have a right to have high expectations for something that I (or sometimes, but not always, my employer) am paying a lot of money to attend. We need new and innovative conferences models in the library world. From the conference organizer’s perspective, I fully realize how much work and effort go into making one successful, and how much can be ruined by pure chance (like bad weather). But I will continue to look for ways to get a better return on my investment. As a result of this outlook, for instance, I don’t ever bother going to an ALA event; they aren’t worth the cost at all to me.

Comparing the Library of Congress to Wal-Mart

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Surely the news from last week about some Congressmen unfavorably comparing the Library of Congress to the likes of Wal-Mart and UPS was one of the stupidest things I have ever read. I was genuinely shocked by the level of ignorance and, well, stupidity…shown by Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), when they made statements like the following:

“You might be well advised to consult with Wal-Mart or Target who track inventory every day.”

and

“If UPS can track millions of items a day and not have a 10 percent loss, why can’t you?”

I mean, are these people for real???? Here is a link to an excellent post by Matt Raymond at the Library of Congress that thoroughly and completely exposes the whole tempest-in-a-teapot for the farce that it was: http://www.loc.gov/blog/?p=207.

In that same blog post there is discussion about the current ALA president, James Rettig, and his comments to Congress about what he sees as major deficiencies with recent changes in cataloging and so forth. Here is part of what he stated that the Library of Congress needed to do:

“…require the Library of Congress to consult broadly and meaningfully with the library community, including organizations central to bibliographic control, regarding all future decisions to substantively modify the character and quantity of bibliographic records”

Good grief. What on earth does he think LC has been doing? And has always done?! I can (barely) grasp that Congressmen might be ignorant but for someone at the highest levels of librarianship in this country to make such dumb statements is, in my opinion, inexcusable. Even worse to my mind was that many of my librarian colleagues cheered him on. It’s yet another reason I am so thankful that I no longer belong to the American Library Association (as if I needed any more reasons).

Maybe I’m just being grumpy

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Marc Meola from ACRLog writes about the Wall St. Journal article on LibraryThing. What stood out to me in his post was the phrase “Maybe I’m just being grumpy…” I am glad he wrote that, admitting that sometimes we who blog can sometimes just be in a particularly negative frame of mind. That is often my problem, too. For instance when I wrote about a panel discussion at the American Library Association conference a while ago, I think I must have been in a particularly grumpy mood. I reread that post now and cringe a bit. All of this is just to lead up to a point that has been made umpteen times before, and that is, that it really pays to think carefully about the tone of one’s remarks before hitting that Publish button.

…and these people expect to be taken seriously?! [Updated]

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This afternoon I read a report of some kind of panel discussion at the American Library Association between three well known and highly visible librarians on the issue of “who controls the future of search.” Things were fairly ok up until I read the following statements:

“stephen: in the battle of the river and the rock, the river wins

joe: that’s deep”

These people expect to be taken seriously? Puhlease. I’m so glad I wasn’t present because otherwise I think I wouldn’t have been able to suppress a loud guffawed at this point in the conversation. Mind you, I realize that the quote above is taken out of context and that if I had been there I might have taken it differently. Go read the whole report on this conference session if interested. I am becoming increasingly intolerant of talking heads who spout their own particular brand of evangelism to an increasingly dimwitted and befuddled flock of sheep, er, librarians.

[Updated June 25, 2006: I found two other writeups of this same session for comparison. Check them out here and here.]

Yet another bungled ALA initiative

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This is the last post of the evening, I swear. I have made clear my problems with the American Library Association (ALA) in the past, and these problems stem from what I have seen from the inside, having actively participated in ALA and attended many, many ALA conferences over the years. Recently ALA began publishing a somewhat glitzy, heavily graphics oriented email newsletter called American Libraries Direct. I’ve read that some other librarian bloggers have trashed it but my initial thought was something like, “Hm, not bad. At least they are making some attempt at technological relevance.”

However when I perused today’s edition, in the ALA News section, my eyes were drawn to a blurb stating something about “ALA Recruitment Assembly launches recruitment website.” I then read more about the new site, www.librarycareers.org, and how it is focused initially on providing information on why and how to become a librarian and will soon be expanded to provide links to available jobs in librarianship. This really bothered me. Why? Because there are at least three excellent, well known, and widely used websites already out there that cover most if not all of the same territory as this ALA creation! These include Rachel Singer Gordon’s LISJobs.com, Priscilla Shontz’s LIScareer.com, and www.libraryjobpostings.org, maintained by Sarah Johnson and Rachel Singer Gordon. To be fair, some of these are mentioned in the www.librarycareers.org site. But still, my perspective is, why should ALA waste their efforts (and money) on reinventing the wheel? Why didn’t they or couldn’t they reach out to these well known, librarian operated sites and offer to partner in some way with them?

With the money they could have saved by doing this, maybe they could have put more effort into improving their horrible website.

It’s late, I’m probably overly grumpy, and I need to go to sleep.

Ross Atkinson dies

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Yesterday I was saddened by the news that Ross Atkinson, Associate University Librarian at Cornell, had died. I never met him but I’ve read many of his writings, so my view of him is definitely second hand at best. My opinion is that Ross was one of the most important thinkers regarding libraries, collections, and acquisitions of the past several decades. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style, his deep and sometimes provocative thoughts, and his perspectives on important issues. One of his articles (Toward a Redefinition of Library Services” (In Virtually Yours. Chicago, ALA, 1999; p. 3-21)Find in My Library) is a required introductory reading to the course I teach and it invariably sparks a lot of discussion. Other articles or writings of his are also part of the course. If you don’t know much about him or are interested in his writings, I highly recommend that you find a copy of Community, Collaboration, and Collections: the Writings of Ross Atkinson published in 2005 by the American Library Association. Here is the complete citation in Chicago Manual of Style format:

Atkinson, Ross, Robert Alan, and Bonnie MacEwan. Community, Collaboration, and Collections : The Writings of Ross Atkinson. Chicago: Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, 2005.Find in My Library

A public park for your brain

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Quote “overheard” from an excellent blog called It’s All Good, derived from notes jotted down during a live symposium sponsored by OCLC at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting (known as ALA Midwinter). The full quote was “It’s like a public park for your brain” and this statement was made by one of the presenters in the context of discussing the importance of libraries.

Some Thoughts on RDA and ILS vendors [Updated]

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Some time ago I noted here that an acquaintence of mine had snagged an interesting job at ALA as RDA Project Manager. Yesterday I sat down and read more about RDA, which stands for Resource Description and Access. In particular I read through the RDA Prospectus, published by an international group called the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, or JSC for short. This group is responsible for implementing changes to the cataloging code of practice in use by the majority of libraries in North America, the U.K., and Canada. The current cataloging code is known as the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR) and this has been the standard code for cataloging since the 1960s when the first edition of AACR was published. Having taken all of the cataloging coursework in library school and then starting out in the profession as a serials cataloger at the University of Chicago Library and then managing a large cataloging unit there for quite a while, I have “grown up” on AACR and have been actively involved in the cataloging community, particularly the serials cataloging part, in the past. I’ve since moved away from that professional focus somewhat and am no longer as current in my knowledge as I used to be. I had heard about RDA but didn’t really pay much attention to it. So it was a big surprise to me to read yesterday that RDA will be replacing AACR (or rather, AACR2R, which is the 2nd, rev. ed. of AACR that is currently in use). I decided to delve into RDA in more detail.

What I learned from the prospectus and from some of the discussion surrounding RDA that I could find is very intriguing. This is a very big change, and, in my view, a positive one. It is a big change on many levels but since I work for a major ILS (integrated library systems) vendor, I focused on what this new standard might mean for them. Here are some thoughts or impressions that came to mind:

  • Acceleration of the end of MARC, or at least, the lessening of emphasis on MARC. MARC (which stands for MAchine Readable Cataloging) is not directly tied to AACR2R or RDA in theory but nevertheless the two are closely entwined in practice. While AACR2R (and soon, RDA) describes cataloging rules such as how to choose the title of a book, MARC is the standard for how to record and transmit cataloging information electronically. MARC also drives or controls much of what cataloging information gets displayed to users in online catalogs. My reading of the prospectus makes it seem very clear that RDA will not assume the use of MARC but instead will be designed to be of use in a variety of metadata formats, of which MARC will be one of many. Of course there are already many other metadata formats in use by libraries other than MARC (e.g. EAD, Dublic Core, etc.), but this kind of emphasis by RDA on multiplicity of formats has far-reaching implications and solidifies or adds weight to the trend toward multiplicity of formats that’s been underway for several years. Why does this matter to ILS vendors? It matters because the core record or basis for just about every major ILS system is the MARC record. Expansion of multiplicity of metadata formats supported by an ILS calls for radical system redesign — assuming, of course (which I personally do not), the need for an integrated (some say, monolithic) library system continues to exist.
  • The prospectus makes it clear that RDA will be predicated on FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and FRAR (Functional Requirements for Authority Records), conceptual models developed under the auspices of IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions). These models have been around for quite a while yet very few ILS vendors have made their systems compatible with them as of yet. Implementation of RDA, as it is currently proposed, anyway, will change that from “it would be nice, but…” to “must be capable of…” In other words, it will no longer be desirable, but required. That’s a big difference. Those ILS vendors who have maintained the status quo on this one won’t be able to do so for much longer.
  • According to the prospectus, “RDA is being developed to provide a better fit with emerging database technologies, and to take advantage of efficiencies and flexibility that such technologies offer with respect to data capture, storage, retrieval, and display.” This could mean all kinds of things for ILS vendors and I am not certain really of what JSC has in mind. However, database design and maintenance is perhaps the most integral, complicated, and proprietary aspect of modern library systems. Any changes in that aspect of ILS work will be of huge significance for vendors.
  • Perhaps if RDA is successfully implemented, the idea of an ILS will enjoy a renaissance if/when vendors and/or libraries develop a system that can readily ingest, output, and manipulate library data no matter how it is encoded. Rather than component-izing (a madeup word) the disparate pieces of traditional ILS functionality as seems to be the general trend nowadays, maybe RDA, with its inherent tolerance for a multiplicity of metadata formats, will result in one central system that can handle those formats in one place with the flexibility that libraries need. Who knows?
  • One major portion of RDA will be dedicated to relationships. I find this interesting and a good thing. One of the biggest failings of ILS systems is that they have largely failed to readily help librarians piece together disparate works so that the user of the online catalog can readily see relationships among them.
  • One thing not mentioned at all in the prospectus is the whole concept of user-supplied metadata, e.g. tagging, and how that will play a role in the future for online catalogs and bibliographic utilities. I believe that tagging as a phenomenon is here to stay, even if I have my doubts about its efficacy right now. How can or should ILS vendors enable user-supplied metadata in conjunction with library-supplied cataloging?

I admit that I don’t know as much as I should know about RDA and surrounding issues, and I may have misinterpreted some of what I’ve read. Or maybe there are even more radical implications for ILS vendors than what I can think of right now. Regardless, I am fairly confident that RDA’s progressive approach bodes for a lot of upheaval for a lot of stakeholders. I’m going to pay a lot more attention to it than I have heretofore!

A friend lands an interesting job

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ALA | ALA Editions names Bloss RDA Project Manager

I was pleased to see that a friend of mine, Marjorie Bloss, has landed an interesting job at the American Library Association. She will be spearheading development of a new standard for digital environments called Resource Description and Access (RDA). I was previously unaware of the development of this new standard, which shows how “out of it” I have been these past few years. Congratulations, Marjorie!