Tag Archives: e-journals

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.

The Abbott Report

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I recently read a final report from the task force on the university library at The University of Chicago, written by Andrew Abbott, a professor of sociology there. It is fascinating reading and I hope it will receive widespread attention because it touches upon many issues that large academic and research libraries are facing. The angle at Chicago may be somewhat different than some other places but I think it is broadly illustrative and informative. It is interesting to note Abbott’s discussion on the theory of library research. For example, he boldy states the following:

“There is a good deal of writing about libraries and library knowledge from an informational science (IS) standpoint, but the theory of knowledge it presupposes is rooted, like IS itself, in engineering-based theories of information that turn out to be largely irrelevant to what it is that humanistic research actually produces. And in any case the information science literature arises basically within the professional debates, which to this writer seem driven more by the familiar dynamics of interprofessional competition than by deep thinking about knowledge.” (emphasis mine)

Another highly interesting point made in this report is that research data on library usage at Chicago points to the fact that the dramatically increased availability of e-resources such as e-journals, e-books, and databases has not replaced reliance by Chicago students on traditional library material. As Abbott puts it:

“There is no evidence whatever of substitution of electronic for print resources at the individual level. The two seem synergistic.”

This is great stuff because it flies in the face of assumptions that we too easily make about e-resources vs. print materials. We often assume, in other words, that print resources are less valuable, less often used with the advent of e-resources. Granted, the mix of students and the culture at Chicago may be somewhat unusual, but even so, this conclusion has significant ramifications.

There is more, much more here to enjoy and to stimulate thinking about the role of libraries.

Not sure where to even begin

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I’m not sure where to even begin with this blog post…By that I mean that so much is happening and there is so much that I’ve wanted to comment on here but haven’t done so, such that my brain is scrambled (well, more so than usual).

For example, I continue to be incredibly impressed with Tim Spalding and his introduction of LibraryThing Mobile, something I plan to make use of on a regular basis. I cannot say enough good things about the ongoing excellence and customer focus shown by Tim and his growing team. Congratulations and kudos to LibraryThing! Here’s to your ongoing success.

Then there is the hectic time at work during the past few weeks, as I have been trying to come up to speed with all of the aspects of my job. We are really focused as a group on how to best manage journal information, particularly for e-journals. There is a lot of detail I could go into but this issue gets to the heart of how our various systems interact.

I have been working very hard to prepare for the class that I will be teaching this summer (LIS578LE: Technical Services Functions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science). Class starts next week and I will be on campus at UIUC Monday through Wednesday. Tuesday and Wednesday we will meet together as a class all day. Some highlights of this preparation include the fact that this time around, I will be integrating blogs and a wiki into the class. Also for the first time I am offering students the option of purchasing a course packet. Twenty three students are currently enrolled in the class and one of the neat things about the class this year is that the thought are broken… blogmeister, Mark Lindner, will be my assigned GA from GSLIS, helping me conduct each live class session by setting up the RealAudio feed, initiating and recording my phone connection, and doing other technical support.

A lot more stuff remains to be commented on here but that’s all for now.

EndUser 2006 photos and other impressions [Updated]

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Yesterday I managed to take some photos at EndUser 2006. Here is a photo set on Flickr. Lots of friends and acquaintences were there and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them. I also got to meet a few new folks including one who introduced himself to me as someone who enjoys reading this blog. (It’s kind of nice but also odd when this happens.) I spent some time talking to Ross Singer and enjoyed our conversation about the state of ILS vendors and relations with their library partners. Some of the Library 2.0 oriented sessions were extremely popular with standing room only as well as an overflow into the hallway outside. I particularly appreciated meeting up with my old classmate, Amanda Xu. We were in library school at UIUC together and were in many of the same classes.

The evening finished up with a nice customer reception. I was able to spend more time talking to friends such as Gaele Gillespie from the University of Kansas, Kevin Randall from Northwestern University, Beth Holley from the University of Alabama, and Kat McGrath from the University of British Columbia. [It was also great to meet up with Wayne Jones, from Queen's University, under whose editorial direction I am currently working as part of a group of people writing about the management of e-journals for a book to be published by Haworth Press.] NASIG was well represented! All in all it was an eventful day.