It seems to me that there's another elephant in the room where we're talking about making catalog records available to the public, and that's the fact that most libraries depend on services from which they buy their metadata, most notably at this point one such as OCLC although there are a lot of book vendors that sell records as well. Some have wondered aloud whether OCLC's recent update in use/transfer policy has anything to do with Google's book search agreement.
I don't know whether it does or not, but several things about this makes me wonder: Would allowing commercial search engines access to one's records constitute infringement by the vendor? Speaking of ownership and distribution of proprietary information, Google Scholar pulls articles out of subscription databases, but to see that article you have to subscribe to the database it's part of. There are reasons apart from technical interoperability that has prevented Google from capitalizing on (for example) the Library of Congress holdings. I have wondered who will own the manifestation that is and will be created when Google scans books that are presently outside of copyright. The intellectual property will remain public domain, of course, but does the actual file resulting from the scan constitute the same thing as a publisher's version? Libraries don't hide their information in databases because they are jealous of their hoard. They are usually required to present their records in the manner dictated by their LIS and the company that provides their records. Few libraries produce all of their own catalog records anymore. Most of it is bought from vendors, and while this is currently offered most often in a MARC format ... the fact is that whatever format metadata takes in the future, it will likely be provided in large part by vendors because the cost of cataloging is significant. Yes, that's the element that library budget directors want to eliminate because they've heard of Google, but as Shawne D. Miksa points out ... how is any of this metadata for which we're hashing out standards going to be applied and by whom? It's not going to apply itself. Not yet anyway. If the library doesn't want to pay a vendor then they will have to hire a cataloger (or indexer or metadata specialist or whatever the equivalent will be called), and if the library can't afford someone in this position then it will have to adhere to the terms provided by the vendor of said metadata. I agree that we need to provide a seamless interface for the user, because the user doesn't want a lot of roadblocks on their path to information. However, we need to bear in mind that the resources we identify ourselves with collectively are not all going to be equal--not in terms of quality of information, not in terms of free availability of information, and not in terms of impartiality of information. All of this is a separate, rather esoteric discussion from that of considering which data tags we should use and how we should use them, but these are a series of issues that affect how "freely" we can share information. Librarians are notoriously altruistic with regard to sharing information--commercial interests are notoriously less so. And as much as we admire Google's ability to connect with a wide variety of users, it's still a commercial concern and does make stipulations on how its services are utilized by others. My point is that as we keep the users in mind when we develop our framework, we also need to bear in mind that the product we offer those users differs in a lot of ways than the product offered by entities such as search engines. We shouldn't discard elements that we've found helpful or even necessary in the past for the sake of trying to fit ourselves into an ill-fitting mold because that's what we think will make us attractive. We should use our experience as a foundation upon which we evolve using the things we learn to enhance our services. It doesn't have to be either or. It should be a complementary fusion of both approaches. Robin M. Mize Head of Technical Services Brenau Trustee Library Gainesville GA, 30501 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Myers, John F. wrote:
The issue is that we hide our catalog records in our catalogs. While the public face of those catalogs is a WebOPAC, this is only an html based interface to the catalog data, an interface that is inherently self contained. The actual records are not searchable via a search originating on the open web. That is, I can't google or yahoo "Gone with the Wind" along with my locale to discover that my local library has a copy of the book or the movie available. If I have understood anything that Diane Hillmann has said over the past few years it's that this segregation of our catalog records from the larger web is possibly the greatest threat to our relevance in the future. We will be like that island in Dr. Doolittle that breaks off from the mainland and floats, lost, unknown and locked in time, while the rest of the world moves forward. Second to that is the insistence on creating catalog records that, at their core, are still only visually parsable. This needs to be rectified by the creation of cataloging standards and data structures that offer the ability to use programming to machine harvest data, then manipulate and insert it into well formed catalog record shells. This is necessary, not only to address the productivity issues surrounding the explosion of digital resources, but also to keep cataloging current with evolving information management practices which have grown more sophisticated than the essentially linear !
data structures we inherited from the card catalog and that we use MARC to recreate.
We made a huge stride when we went from reproducing a description for each access point in a card catalog to using online systems to build indexes that pointed to a single copy of that description, but where each description holds copies of the access points. It is time to evolve to the next level, where there is a single copy of each of the access points and then the descriptions point to them (and probably more that I haven't quite comprehended yet). Of course half the time I don't quite follow all the ins and outs and another third of the time I'm afraid that my profession is going to morph beyond recognition (and possibly my abilities). But the sixth of the time that I really get it, I'm excited enough to hope. (With apologies if I've wandered somewhat from the initial premise or if I've misrepresented Diane.) John Myers, Catalog Librarian Schaffer Library, Union College Schenectady NY 12308 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 518-388-6623 ________________________________ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access on behalf of Miksa, Shawne [snip] This idea of "hoarding" and "hiding" is difficult to understand as it makes it sound as if librarians, and especially those who catalog, are cave dwellers who can't speak.
