Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Quoting Benjamin A Abrahamse babra...@mit.edu: I want to thank Benjamin for keeping an open mind about Open Library, in spite of its variance from real library practice. In my mind it isn't useful to try to determine whether Open Library is right or wrong, but to observe a different and interesting approach to a large body of bibliographic data. This could help us challenge some of our own assumptions, many of which are so long-held that to us in the library world they are as natural as the air we breath. To whit... Alphabetical indexing remains, I believe, the best way of showing users what a library does (and just as importantly) does not have (or license as the case may be). It may very well be that this function is not particularly useful for applications like Open Library which are closer in purpose, IMO, to universal bibliographies than true library catalogs. (This should not be taken as a dig at Open Library, which I support, but simply as a characterization of its function compared to most online catalogs.) For what it's worth our A to Z index of online journals is one of the most popular features we offer our users, because it allows them to see, quickly and easily, what resources are available to them through our library. Alphabetical order is in the general category of known orders. That is, if you are seeking a particular place in a large body of whatever it helps if that body is in a known order. 1,2,3... a,b,c... are common ones that are widely shared. But both of those require that the seeker have very precise knowledge of what is being sought, and exactly how it is named in the body. A biologist may be very comfortable finding honey bees in this list: Kingdom:Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Subclass: Pterygota Infraclass: Neoptera Superorder: Endopterygota Order: Hymenoptera Suborder: Apocrita Family: Apidae Subfamily: Apinae Tribe: Apini Genus: Apis While a civilian would be more successful with: Honey Honey ants Honey bees Both are known orders, to the respective knower. But why would someone looking for Honey bees be in an alphabetical list to begin with? If we match the need with the best tools to satisfy the need, I contend that the situations in which an alphabetical list is useful are few. Which doesn't mean that one should never have an alphabetical order option, but that it should be presented only when that is the best way to navigate to ones answer. That users doing, say, a search on Honey bees are served by a returned list of books ordered alphabetically by author is of course questionable. That library catalogs have relied (in the past) so heavily on alphabetical order is some indication that we have expected (or hoped) that our users would approach the library with something quite specific in mind -- so specific that a known order would be useful. There is also the assumption that seeking is very linguistic -- that users come to the catalog with words. That is undoubtedly true for some library users, those who come to the catalog looking for a particular author or title (although you could argue that searching, rather than browsing, satisfies that type of query). Rather than promoting alphabetical order over any other order, for example, order by circulation figures, it would be good to actually analyze the user's situation: - what knowledge does the user bring with him when beginning a search? - what is the user's expectation about the retrieval? Is he expecting a single item? Is he hoping for a large set? - how much time and energy is the user willing to put in to find the right book? - how will the user recognize the right book from the catalog entry? In FRBR we have the four user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain. These are fully imbued with the assumption of user knowledge. to find entities that correspond to the user's stated search criteria (i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file or database as the result of a search using an attribute or relationship of the entity); This seems to eliminate the possibility that the user could be successful in the library catalog with a need like: I just finished Twilight and loved it. What else might I like? Yet that is a legitimate query to bring to the library, and even to the library catalog. Perhaps we should spend some time re-writing the FRBR user tasks, expanding them to meet a wider variety of user needs. Then we could look at our catalogs and say: What does this mean in terms of catalog functionality? I maintain that alphabetical order will not be at the top of our list, but will probably appear along some user tasks. kc -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Weinheimer Jim schrieb: This is a description of a very interesting meeting over metadata, with many groups involved. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-exposes-book-metadata-privates.html Most edifying as well as sobering indeed. Do we conclude that ONIX should replace MARC? Karen Coyle said in that meeting: ... the team tried to figure out when alphabetical sorting was really required, and the answer turned out to be 'never'. Does that mean alphabetical index displays of names, titles, subjects etc. can safely be considered dead? We've long suspicioned that non-librarians neither want them nor understand them in the first place. Decisions to abolish them should, however, not be based on suspicion but evidence. Do we have it? Is that team's conclusion evidence? If so, to the dustheap with non-sort markers and indicators! B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Does that mean alphabetical index displays of names, titles, subjects etc. can safely be considered dead? I, for one, happen to like them. As a user, I always find it frustrating whenever I can't sort a list according to some transparent logic, be it alphabetical or chronological or by another scalable measure. - Dr. Christoph Schmidt-Supprian Assistant Librarian Bibliographic Data Management Trinity College Library Dublin On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Bernhard Eversberg e...@biblio.tu-bs.dewrote: Weinheimer Jim schrieb: This is a description of a very interesting meeting over metadata, with many groups involved. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-exposes-book-metadata-privates.html Most edifying as well as sobering indeed. Do we conclude that ONIX should replace MARC? Karen Coyle said in that meeting: ... the team tried to figure out when alphabetical sorting was really required, and the answer turned out to be 'never'. Does that mean alphabetical index displays of names, titles, subjects etc. can safely be considered dead? We've long suspicioned that non-librarians neither want them nor understand them in the first place. Decisions to abolish them should, however, not be based on suspicion but evidence. Do we have it? Is that team's conclusion evidence? If so, to the dustheap with non-sort markers and indicators! B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Karen Coyle said in that meeting: ... the team tried to figure out when alphabetical sorting was really required, and the answer turned out to be 'never'. Does that mean alphabetical index displays of names, titles, subjects etc. can safely be considered dead? We've long suspicioned that non-librarians neither want them nor understand them in the first place. Decisions to abolish them should, however, not be based on suspicion but evidence. Do we have it? Is that team's conclusion evidence? If so, to the dustheap with non-sort markers and indicators! /snip This would demand some research. I would say that LCSH, i.e. subject heading strings, lose most of their coherence when they are not browsed alphabetically (and even then they are difficult). With personal names, I would think that people would find it very helpful to arrange all of the Robert Johnsons by surname instead of by first name (Bob, Rob, Robbie, etc.), but I think we could learn a lot from Wikipedia on this. I just cannot agree that surname-forename Johnson, Robert is so foreign for people's understanding. I think alphabetical arrangement is highly useful for finding sub-bodies of corporate bodies. (Of course, all of this assumes cross-references) As far as book titles go, my research has shown that alphabetical arrangement is rather recent. In several card catalogs, there were no title added entry cards made, only for title main entry. And in earlier times, in manuscript catalogs, I often found that even title main entry was not used. If there was no clear author, these items got placed into the section Anonymous, Pseudonymous, etc. Works by order of acquisition(!). That was really bad. Browsing by title may not be that important today with keyword retrieval since people should be able to sort in other ways. I believe that is the only place for non-filing indicators (other than series titles), but I may be wrong? James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome via Pietro Roselli, 4 00153 Rome, Italy voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258 fax-011 39 06 58330992
Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Browsing by title may not be that important today with keyword retrieval since people should be able to sort in other ways. I believe that is the only place for non-filing indicators (other than series titles), but I may be wrong? They were only talking about books at that meeting, weren't they? (After all, there was a clear book industry bias) Requirements for series' and periodicals' titles may be a different story in this aspect. Try finding periodicals in GBS. But they'll be getting to that, no doubt... In large catalogs, an alphabetized title index can be helpful when you know only the beginning of the title and when it is unspecific so you are not sure what precise keywords to use to find it. Or so is my old-fashioned view. B.Eversberg
