Category Archives: cataloging

Proposal for e-resources management course

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One of the things that came up in conversation a few times when I was at NASIG this past weekend was that last year I made a proposal to UIUC GSLIS for a new, advanced course on electronic resources management. My intent in proposing this new course was that an existing course that I taught, Technical Services Functions, would be a prerequisite as would perhaps one or two other existing courses. More than that, however, my goal with this course is to get GSLIS students some much-needed focused exposure to the increasing dominance of e-resources (especially serial e-resources) in libraries of all types. Such a course is, in my view, long overdue. And the students themselves are clamoring for it.

Several people I spoke with at NASIG showed interest in what I had proposed so I have dug the following draft syllabus outline out of my email (thanks, Gmail, for making it so easy). If you have a moment and are interested in this topic, let me know what you think about it, either by commenting on this post or sending me an email.

Electronic Resources Management: A Suggested Course Outline
—————————————————————————
I. Definitions and Distinctions
a. What is an e-resource?
b. How does it differ from and how is it similar to other, more traditional library materials?
b. Overlap with integrated library systems work, serials management, acquisitions, collection development, etc.
II. Conceptual Framework
a. Access vs. ownership for libraries
b. Effect of living in an Amazon/Google/iTunes worlds
c. Relevance and authority issues for e-resources vs. other library material
d. Virtual vs. in-person library service
III. Types of E-Resources
a. E-journals
b. Websites
c. E-books
d. Databases
e. Other
IV. Management Challenges
a. Diversity of selection and workflow processes
b. Explosive growth in availability
c. Preservation issues
d. Issues for intellectual access (e.g. website lists or links vs. traditional cataloging vs. other methods for organization)
e. Licensing and copyright
f. Fiscal resources
g. Balancing “traditional” vs. e-content
h. Rapid change and high user demand
i. Evaluation of use vs. cost and other metrics
V. System Tools for Managing E-Resources
a. Locally developed
b. Commercial tools
c. Classes or categories of tools (e.g. OpenURL resolvers vs. ILSs vs. ERMS vs. Other)

Some crystal ball reflections

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Recently my mentee at UIUC GSLIS asked me to look into my crystal ball and articulate some thoughts about what lies in store for technical services librarianship. What follows is my response. I publish this here because although my points aren’t polished and well-defined, what I wrote to my mentee expresses some of what I personally think about library-related topics that are popular right now.

Where do I start?! Those who work in tech. svcs. are in need, more than ever, of a management mindset. Not necessarily management responsibilities, but a management mindset. By this I mean that we need to understand the broader pressures and trends that managers, especially upper-level managers, have to cope with and prepare for. We can no longer be (if we ever were) narrowly focused on, say, cataloging of print books and only print books. This luxury only exists in a handful of really large or special libraries. We need to be very aware of user-oriented trends such as the whole “social web” or Web 2.0 discussion, and how that might alter user expectations of what we provide to them in terms of access paths to information.

In terms of concerns and anxieties, well…I am reminded of a quote I always see in the signature of emails written by a friend of mine: “Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby.” This causes a smile to come to me every time I see it. Put simply, I worry that in the rush toward new technologies, new ways of interacting with and meeting the needs of users, too many of my colleagues find it easy to forget or ignore what is in the past. In many ways I do believe the Bible verse that states something like this: “There is nothing new under the sun.” I believe this has application in libraries. We are not to be bound (pardon the small pun) by the past, necessarily, but we at least need to acknowledge a.) that there is a past and b.) understand at least some of that past to put the present and future into a right perspective. I’ve said this to people over and over again and I’ll repeat it here as an example of this point. About 10 years ago, when I was new to the profession, one of the really hot topics was outsourcing of technical services work. People were either up in arms against this trend or actively applauding it as revolutionary and innovative. Truth is, it was neither. Outsourcing has existed for a very long time in libraries and one big example of this is in the realm of shared cataloging. The Library of Congress distributed its cataloging records on 3×5 cards to other libraries throughout the U.S. and (maybe) the world, as long ago as the early 1900s. That is outsourcing!

Particularly in this era of the “social web” I am worried by so many librarians who are leading “the revolution” and proclaiming how wonderful and how great everything is that relates to blogs, wikis, instant messaging, etc. Those things ARE great but please, folks, get some perspective on them! Understand that libraries have ALWAYS striven to be social and interactive and patron-oriented. The way some of the library technorati talk these days, you’d think that libraries have been forbidding prisons until the social web came about. That’s ridiculous. Most of what is new is actually evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Don’t get me wrong: I am heartily in favor of trying new things, of experimenting, of innovating, etc. My wife calls me a technogeek and I guess that’s an accurate made-up word. My problem is just that new developments need to be understood and perceived through the lens of historical perspective.

The value of quality in metadata

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I have known this to be true for years (I started out as a serials cataloger, after all), but the value of quality in metadata has recently been reinforced for me. Quality metadata is absolutely essential to building robust and flexible applications involving search, taxonomy, and retrieval of information for libraries (and for other organizations, too).

In previous posts I’ve described some of what I’ve worked on as a team with others in my library that relates to creating a better way for our users to find information. This includes “turning the catalog inside out” in order to integrate cataloging metadata (MARC) into our new portal web environment. This metadata supports several dynamically-generated A to Z lists of e-journals and e-books to which we provide access. It is also the foundation for keyword searches (what we are calling “Quick Search”) when results for e-books and e-journals are integrated with results from other kinds of library resources such as our extensive product literature database.

Using MARC data in new and more flexible ways is wonderful and exciting to me, but the excitement recently was replaced with anxiety when I realized that key pieces of data from those MARC records were not well maintained — not of good quality and reliability. This included something as deceptively simple as the ISSN(s) associated with each journal record. Once the problems were understood, I immediately outlined a project to update and, if you will, upgrade, the metadata for every e-journal to which we provide access. That’s around 1,600 “for cost” journals in addition to potentially ten times that amount in open access journals. That’s just a smidgeon of what many other libraries, especially large, academic libraries, have in terms of the scope of their e-journal collection. Still, it’s a very large amount for my library to handle and with our already lean technical services staffing, we could sure have done without the extra effort and time that’s required to apply the fixes.

When I arrived in this job I was told that cataloging standards were much looser here than in a typical academic library, and this was deemed to be “a very good thing.” Maybe so, but I can’t help feeling that a little more care and effort to follow national cataloging standards throughout the years would have saved me and my staff a lot of extra effort at this juncture. I am very thankful for such freely available software tools as Terry Reese’s outstanding MarcEdit program, with which I have been able to minimize this extra effort as much as possible.

One of the more memorable sayings from my first boss (and he was full of memorable sayings) that relates to this issue is “Don’t gild the lily.” By this he meant, let’s not waste our time trying to create the perfect cataloging record; he argued (and I agree) that there really is no such thing. I’m not saying that my predecessors should have had staff create perfect records. Rather, I am saying that more attention should be paid to key data elements to make sure they are up-to-date and accurate. I know many would say, “Oh, yeah, there’s the rub.” Meaning, the real question is, what are the key data elements to which we need to pay attention and keep in good shape, and who gets to decide that? I’ll leave my answers to those questions for a future post.

Back and forth about tags, categories

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I’ve gone back and forth a few times about use of tags vs. categories in FML. I’ve also tried various methods for making insertion of tags and categories easier to do, with limited success. This leads to a messy blog, I guess, but hey, this wasn’t intended to be a cataloging project or a demo site for the efficacy of tags! As an aside, using tags or categories is kind of like authority work for library cataloging in that it is or can be the part of the process of creating a blog post that takes the longest. Another piece that I am beginning to hate to do because it takes a long time, is put in all of the possible or necessary URL links. OK, I’m link lazy, get over it. Yet neglecting these two aspects of blogging has a very detrimental effect because links and tags are, in my view, the two discovery pieces that drive most of the traffic in the blogosphere. Steven Cohen of Library Stuff may be able to get away with not using tags or categories but based on my experience, if I want something I have to say to be read or picked up elsewhere, it had better be tagged or categorized somehow.

Currently I have settled for using Flock as my blogging platform of choice, mainly because I have found that it provides the easiest way for me to write, tag, and link of any of the tools I’ve tried to date. Also, instead of using categories I will now just focus on tags. And these tags will be Technorati tags, because in my experience, Technorati is arguably the blog search and navigation tool of choice.

Start of class

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Last week I met face-to-face with the students who signed up for LIS578LE: Technical Services Functions at UIUC GSLIS. Overall it was a great time, including an informative meeting with librarians and staff who work in technical services areas at the Main Library at UIUC, followed by a guided tour. This invariably serves to put some immediate context to the topics covered in the course and all of the students enjoyed it a lot. Many remarked on the energy and passion for their jobs that our hosts at UIUC demonstrated. One student described his impression of their work at UIUC as “drinking from the fire hose.” I thought that was a pretty apt description :-) A major focus for discussion during the visit and tour was Karen Calhoun’s recently released report on rethinking the role of the OPAC, commissioned by the Library of Congress. This is required reading for the course section on cataloging (a few weeks away yet) and we will discuss it more in depth at that time, but the basic themes contained in the report, and debated by the students and the UIUC librarians and staff, are ones about which it is hard to remain neutral.

There are 22 people in the class and as Mark Lindner remarked on his blog, this has the makings of an excellent group, with varied backgrounds and interests. (By the way, it was great to finally meet Mark in person! A great guy, and one whom I am pleased to work with.) Several students in the class work in public libraries; one works in a school library. As usual there are other students who have no library (let alone technical services) experience, and then there are those who have worked for several years in this area already. All of them bring valuable insights to class discussions.

This year I departed from the norm by having the class meet for part of a second day (usually one day is all we get; the rest of the semester is conducted entirely online). The main focus of this portion of the time together was on discussion about the tour and visit with UIUC technical services folks, followed by a crash course in setting up blogs and the class wiki. There may be some who found this new stuff a bit overwhelming, and that is to be expected. However I tried to point out the importance of getting involved, personally, in investigating these new forms of communication and collaboration. GSLIS has a technology platform for conducting online courses that has stood the test of time — 10 years, to be exact — very well, but there are many aspects that need to be updated. The tech support folks are wonderful, incredible people. They already have begun investigating and testing a new platform for conducting classes, called Moodle (it’s open source to boot). Two of the LEEP courses this summer are using this new platform, which contains built-in support for wikis, blogging capabilities, RSS, etc. For the technical services course I teach, I have had to go outside of the bounds of the LEEP technology to integrate blogs. I chose WordPress.com as the best overall platform for a balance of ease of setup and use as well as a rich set of features (and of course, it is free). A general class blog is now operational and most students have successfully set up individual blogs as well. One of the main assignments of this course is what I’ve termed a reflective journal. It struck me that this assignment would make a perfect match with blogging technology, and it would have the secondary benefit of helping to generate and sustain conversations about themes in the course in ways that a generic bulletin board setup could not. This is all somewhat experimental of course, and we’ll see how people take to the new stuff. So far, I am really pleased.

Oh, one other new tool that I am excited about in terms of teaching this course is the new ability I have to do application sharing via another open source software called Web Huddle. This will make introducing students to ERMS, for instance, much more fruitful than, say, a PowerPoint presentation.

Now I’ve got to prepare more for tomorrow’s first online “live” session, on the topic of acquisitions and collection development. Unfortunately I have had serious problems with connecting to the GSLIS server from my workplace, such that I am forced to conduct tomorrow’s session from home, where there isn’t aren’t such tight restrictions on network traffic!

Notes on another presentation about tagging

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I’ve pointed several times to the You’re It! blog because there is a lot of useful information to be found there about tagging in a context that is much broader than the library world.  (In fact, I have yet to see or recall any mention of libraries so far in what has been written there.)

Today there is another interesting post, this time, containing notes on a presentation given by Rashmi Sinha entitled "Sorting, Tagging and Social Information Architecture or The Missing Chapter in the Polar Bear Book."  I highly recommend that library folks who might be interested in tagging vis-à-vis cataloging take a look and digest some of the points contained in this report.  Sinha compares tagging to taxonomy (akin to library cataloging).

Just one of the many interesting things mentioned was the following table comparing the two:

Sorting Tagging
higher cognitive cost lower
richer data less rich data
harder to aggregate socially easy to aggregate socially

The author also describes the ways in which Sinha describes tagging as useful, and includes a statement — made by himself or by Sinha, I’m not sure — to the effect that "Categorization is going to make a comeback."

Questioning the usefulness of tagging [Updated]

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It was interesting to read this report from CNET on a meeting to discuss how to improve tagging. Underlying the meeting was a common understanding that tagging as it currently stands is not as useful as it could or should be. The main reason for this lack of usefulness, according to the participants, is the lack of context for a particular tag. The concluding sentence of the report states:

“…it is easy to imagine that a year or two from now, everyone will know what tagging is because it will just work.”

I found this report interesting for two reasons. First, it acknowledges that tagging has problems. I find that encouraging. Second, it is interesting because the discussion was unable to reach any recognizable solution to the lack of usefulness of tagging. The concluding statement above is really simplistic, in my view, and points once again to the intellectual vacuum in which the discussions are taking place (see Tim Spalding’s excellent commentary on this in response to one of my previous posts on this topic). Why oh why does noone mention or think of library cataloging? Maybe it’s because we have historically been anything but transparent in explaining and making sense of why libraries arrange information the way they do to our users. Also libraries continue to be pigeonholed as repositories and maintainers of a certain kind of information only and therefore aren’t even on the radar of people’s minds when it comes to the task of organizing or making sense of digital information.

[Updated 3/12/2006: Just found a link on the You're It! blog to notes on the session mentioned in the CNET article, including a link to a Flickr photo set. Good stuff!]

Are folksonomies really the better way?

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I’m thoroughly enjoying conversations with my mentee @ the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science. He is very familiar with Web 2.0 and so naturally we have already begun a dialog about the viability of the library side of this technology trend, known as Library 2.0. I have made clear my doubts and dislikes about both the term and the movement before this. But my thoughts and views are still evolving and I am still coming to grips with some of the implications for libraries of new stuff like folksonomies. The folksonomies part of Library 2.0 in particular seems to stick in my head, maybe because I have a strong background in cataloging in academic libraries.

Below is something I wrote to my mentee in response to some points about folksonomies and I include it here simply to demonstrate or expose my line of thought. As I noted to my mentee, if I am way off base here, please take me up on it. At least feel free to challenge whatever I’ve written. After thinking about this further, I am wondering if I’m pursuing this from a logical point of view as an “either/or” situation. (Taxonomies or folksonomies.) Instead I think it is really, or will really be, a “both/and” situation.

The one thing that I still have a problem with (not with you, or what you wrote) is … and I struggle to figure out what the right words are to describe this … the ignorance of the past in libraries, even of the recent past. I understand that this is natural among those who style themselves as revolutionaries as they try to get the library community to break free of tradition and the “this is how we’ve always done it” inertia that is so prevalent. It’s not just that the past is dismissed, but that it seems — to me — to be dismissed without any awareness of or concern for the heart of WHY things are or were the way they are/were. That libraries have always striven for user interaction. Even in what some might describe as the hardest case scenario, that of the library (card) catalog, any library worth its salt pays attention to user’s needs and has updated catalog records with subject headings or subject keywords that help meet a user’s needs at his or her request. No, this is not the same as the user him/herself updating the record, I realize that. But this idea of the user having no input into the catalog is an over generalization.

What today we call folksonomies has or can have been implemented in library catalogs. It’s just that that was not how libraries or librarians felt was the best way to organize information. And I am not so sure that folksonomies and tagging and giving the power to the user really is the best way to organize information. Sure, I understand tag clouds, and I understand that there are cool ways via complicated algorithms (e.g. in LibraryThing) to auto categorize item A that’s been tagged one way with item B that’s tagged in a different way. But I have yet to see any concrete, systematic evidence that this is a better way of organizing information broadly (not just within a small user community or for one individual user). We are largely going on a premise here. As you say there will likely spring up (if there hasn’t been already) a surge of research in library journals about this very thing.

My point here is that the very basis of why we cataloged things the way we did was to serve the user, not to hinder any access. It’s a different side of the coin that many people who are excited about the library/web 2.0 stuff just don’t seem willing to accept, in part at least because they have no real idea of the foundations of modern cataloging practice.

Maybe I’m really building a straw man argument here. And I certainly have a struggle to articulate these thoughts. But take them as they are and if I’m not making sense or my points aren’t really valid, take me up on it.

LibraryThing and cataloging nirvana, er, FRBR

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I’ve mentioned LibraryThing several times already, but I have to write about it again, this time, because of its groundbreaking and chaotic foray into cataloging nirvana, er, FRBR. Basically Tim Spalding has set LibraryThingers (LibraryThingamabobbers?) loose on figuring out what a “work” is and combining multiple versions of a work together into a “work” view in a way similar to what FRBR describes. David Bigwood of Catalogablog has already discussed this here as have Sarah Houghton of The Librarian in Black and William Denton of The FRBR Blog (see list of links here).

After working with this capability for a while, I think it is definitely a huge, big deal. As Tim writes, the intent of providing this capability in LibraryThing is social and socio-statistical (see the link to the comment from him for more explanation). And it is user controlled. Those aspects may seem like no big deal but in reality, they represent something completely different from what catalogers have attempted to do for decades in a largely self-contained, controlled environment. Just take a look at the discussions among LibraryThingers via the LibraryThing blog or the Google Group devoted to discussing LibraryThing to get some idea of how this capability is playing out. Like I stated earlier, it is not just cool and useful, it is chaotic by its very nature.

I’ve spent several hours lately, trying to pull together disparate bibliographic entries in LibraryThing using this new capability. I’ve only done some authors and left others alone. I’ve made a few mistakes but by and large, I think I’ve managed to contribute some useful work. Authors I’ve worked on include Herge (author of the Tintin series), P.D. James, and Frank Peretti.

It is a bit strange, as a former cataloging manager and serials cataloger in a large academic library, to be doing this. But it’s gratifying, too, and in many ways, that’s the point.
I think we are only just beginning to understand the ramifications of this kind of user-level, user-controlled interaction with bibliographic data (and data that is not necessarily or purely MARC-based). Some of the issues that have already arisen include whether or not to combine all language editions of a work together, authority control, how to handle editors vs. authors, and so on. All of these things have solutions or at least have been discussed for forever among professional catalogers and it is quite interesting to see how the discussion is going among a group that is largely made up of “self-proclaimed” catalogers. As Tim calls it, “Everyone’s a librarian.” Interesting stuff.

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!