[RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Actually, I think there are more factors involved than just powerful technology and limited imaginations. Consider organizational structures--the relationships which national library CIP programs are based on are not between an author and a cataloger, but between publishing companies and a national library. If every individual website creator could voluntarily demand CIP cataloging, that would be a major change to the CIP program, not just a new application of a tried-and-true model. It would likely overwhelm LC's ability to uphold its side of the bargain, since the allocation of limited human resources is another factor that the powerful technology and limited imaginations equation ignores. One way around this is the distribution of CIP creation to a host of other providers, as Mac suggests--but does this really have the same value, given that these alternate CIP sources presumably cannot be supply an LCCN or other national library record identifier for their data? Maybe instead of an extension of the CIP program, we need to imagine something new--a program that would distribute unique LCCNs without cataloging to content providers or operations like Quality Books and SLC. The LCCNs could then be embedded in the content providers' productions with or without accompanying metadata (following certain guidelines, of course). The LCCN identifier and the document itself, in whatever form, would then become the kernel of information from which various kinds of surrogate records could be developed and authorized at different levels. That might actually be affordable at an organizational level, at least until we run out of LCCNs. Stephen Original Message Subject:Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page? Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 18:21:27 +0100 From: Weinheimer Jim j.weinhei...@aur.edu Reply-To: j.weinhei...@aur.edu To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA J. McRee (Mac) Elrod wrote: Properly approached, and shown that included bibliographic data would increase hits, website creators might well welcome such a feature. Some publishers who fall outside LC's cataloguing in publication program pay Quality Books $50 for CIP for inclusion in their publications, because they have found it increases sales. Some Canadian publishers purchase CIP from us (at less cost because we do not establish the related authorities as does QB). Imbedded bibliographic data in websites could be thought of as CIP. It's not a new or novel concept. It would be best if website creators could be included in the LC and LAC CIP programs as are text publishers. No, it's not a new idea at all--that's one of its greatest advantages. It's simply a new application of a tried-and-true model, plus there would be a division of labor based on the most efficient workers: the initial record made by catalogers (with input from the creator), updates to the description by the creator, updates to headings by the cataloger, while everything remains under the watch of the selectors. If someone else wants the record, they could just take it from the embedded metadata. I am sure there could be numerous variations on this, but the main thing is to increase the number of people working to create and primarily, maintain the metadata. Many catalogers would see this as a loss of control of the record, and it would be since untrained people could make many mistakes, but nobody can convince me that a record created by an experience cataloger that becomes outdated, where the title no longer describes anything that exists and a URL that points into the 404 Not Found Twilight Zone is good for anything except to confuse everyone and provide bad publicity for our field. MARC should change in this scenario as well. First, to XML and then to allow some freedom for the creators, perhaps an area for some keywords of their choice, some special URLs for them, and other possible fields reserved for their use. And yes, for static digital resources, AACR2 has proven itself to be adequate. I think a lot can be done today that would help everyone concerned, from the selectors and catalogers, to the creators and researchers. The technology is so powerful today that we are only limited by our imaginations. Jim Weinheimer -- Stephen Hearn Authority Control Coordinator/Head, Database Management Section Technical Services, University Libraries, University of Minnesota 160 Wilson Library 309 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 Ph: 612-625-2328 / Fax: 612-625-3428
[RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Stephen Hearn wrote; Actually, I think there are more factors involved than just powerful technology and limited imaginations. Consider organizational structures--the relationships which national library CIP programs are based on are not between an author and a cataloger, but between publishing companies and a national library. If every individual website creator could voluntarily demand CIP cataloging, that would be a major change to the CIP program, not just a new application of a tried-and-true model. It would likely overwhelm LC's ability to uphold its side of the bargain, since the allocation of limited human resources is another factor that the powerful technology and limited imaginations equation ignores. One way around this is the distribution of CIP creation to a host of other providers, as Mac suggests--but does this really have the same value, given that these alternate CIP sources presumably cannot be supply an LCCN or other national library record identifier for their data? To clarify, I had this idea several years ago, but I never thought in such literal terms as LC being responsible for it all. That would obviously never work. I was thinking in macro terms of the field of professional librarianship retaining the traditional library contols of: selection, description, organization, access and trying to achieve this in the most efficient way possible. One way of looking at it is to assign responsibility for each task to the entity best suited to achieve it. My experience then, as it is now, is that the hard part of cataloging integrating resources is not the cataloging, but the maintenance. And more specifically, the maintenance of the descriptive elements: titles, dates, URLs. Finally, it seemed (and seems) to me futile that the same work of selection, description, organization, access--and now maintenance--is done over and over and over again in hundreds or thousands of libraries around the world. Such a model cannot be justified in the lon! g run. Th erefore, all library selectors responsible for selection, all library catalogers responsible for cataloging, web creators responsible for maintenance of the description. While creating an appropriate computer system is relatively easy today (isn't that simply an amazing statement to be able to make?!), I agree that the biggest hurdle is getting enough cooperation to organize something like this. I have never really thought that such a system stands a chance because the changes are simply too much for people to accept: catalogers would lose control over much of their records, all selectors, catalogers and creators would have to be involved in a single, cooperative endeavor, and local institutions may not see a lot of the benefit locally. For example, individual institutions would have to accept that their employee's work will often be more useful outside the local institution than within it (such as, when a selector in library A selects a site that a cataloger in Library B catalogs, but the record may be useful only for Library A), or as in your case, CIP, these records would be made by someone in the field authorized to create such a record,! but not just the national library. The biggest problem, which is even more important now than before is: why would a website creator or outside, for-profit publisher want to cooperate at all if this record is placed in some stinky, old library catalog? Huge problems are easy to point to. But, if we do not attempt some way to increase our efficiency in creating and maintaining the records for online integrating resources, then I submit there is little sense to add them to the catalog in the first place. Yet if we decide to not add them, I maintain that we immediately seriously marginalize our own usefulness to the information world that people increasingly use and we justify the stereotype that the library world is populated with people who cannot change. But we must question whether the note Description based on web page (viewed Jan. 2, 2003) i s useful for much of anything if everything in the record has changed. I said that it is a cry of despair from the cataloger because the old ways just don't work for these materials. And finally, I have a sneaking suspicion that all our bibliographic records will eventually all be thrown in together into a gigantic Google soup pot anyway, which will search literally everything that is online, whether it comes from the Germans, French or Romanians, while variant records will be handled as Google Scholar handles duplicates now with the versions. Or they might come up with something else. I think we can create something better than that. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Weinheimer Jim wrote: The biggest problem, which is even more important now than before is: why would a website creator or outside, for-profit publisher want to cooperate at all if this record is placed in some stinky, old library catalog? Huge problems are easy to point to. Just to note on the idea of pushing out the creation of cataloging to the creator, that was the original impetus behind Dublin Core http://dublincore.org/about/history/ and it has failed, even though it promised to make web searching more accurate (not put data into library catalogs). Creators aren't interested, especially as long as their work can be found, without that effort, through search engines. You can argue all day about how much better things would be if we had metadata for the title and the creator and the current date, but we've been there, done that, to no avail. It is possible to extract some metadata from web documents, and it's possible that Google may make use of some of the html coding in its indexing. But I am convinced that we're going to have to get along without much human cooperation. kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
I agree that pushing out cataloging doesn't result in consistent data records, but that's not really what I was suggesting. My suggestion was that it might be possible to push out the assigning of unique identifiers to be used in description and access records, if the process of doing so could be well automated and the agency doing so had the necessary credibility. If all I got from a website's metadata was the LCCN that the creator had received and assigned to it, that could be used to aggregate all the available efforts to describe or catalog the website in more formal ways. The level and authority of any record found would be reflected in the record; the LCCN would promise nothing except uniqueness. Guidelines would be needed only to ensure uniqueness--to advise against using the same one for different productions, etc. Kind of a URI, only more universal. Of course, experience teaches that no voluntary system is perfect. There are publishers which re-use their ISBNs. But the threshhold for success in assigning a unique identifier correctly is a bit lower than that for creating good cataloging, so the rate of success would hopefully be higher. Stephen Karen Coyle wrote: Weinheimer Jim wrote: The biggest problem, which is even more important now than before is: why would a website creator or outside, for-profit publisher want to cooperate at all if this record is placed in some stinky, old library catalog? Huge problems are easy to point to. Just to note on the idea of pushing out the creation of cataloging to the creator, that was the original impetus behind Dublin Core http://dublincore.org/about/history/ and it has failed, even though it promised to make web searching more accurate (not put data into library catalogs). Creators aren't interested, especially as long as their work can be found, without that effort, through search engines. You can argue all day about how much better things would be if we had metadata for the title and the creator and the current date, but we've been there, done that, to no avail. It is possible to extract some metadata from web documents, and it's possible that Google may make use of some of the html coding in its indexing. But I am convinced that we're going to have to get along without much human cooperation. kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 -- Stephen Hearn Authority Control Coordinator/Head, Database Management Section Technical Services, University Libraries, University of Minnesota 160 Wilson Library 309 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 Ph: 612-625-2328 / Fax: 612-625-3428
Re: [RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Karen Coyle wrote:  Just to note on the idea of pushing out the creation of cataloging to  the creator, that was the original impetus behind Dublin Core      http://dublincore.org/about/history/   and it has failed, even though it promised to make web searching more  accurate (not put data into library catalogs). Creators aren't  interested, especially as long as their work can be found, without that  effort, through search engines. You can argue all day about how much  better things would be if we had metadata for the title and the creator  and the current date, but we've been there, done that, to no avail. It  is possible to extract some metadata from web documents, and it's  possible that Google may make use of some of the html coding in its  indexing. But I am convinced that we're going to have to get along  without much human cooperation. Pardons for yet another clarification, but I don't believe that record *creation* could ever work with creators, whether it is in Dublin Core or whatever. This would be much like expecting a car owner to actually make the automobile. But, automobile owners are expected to *maintain* their cars, and this is what I think would have a better chance, that is, so long as it is something very simple, related to updating titles, dates of update, and a few other points. Still, I don't know if it would work at all. Jim Weinheimer
