Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)
I feel a need to chime in here as well...
I'm going to get theoretical and quote some passages from Elaine Svenonius
(Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization)..
First, she paraphrases Hans Peter Luhn, the so-called "inventor" of keyword
searching: "[Luhn] made it clear that keyword searching could never supplant
the kind of scholarly, retrospective searching that calls into play the panoply
of features mandated by the traditional bibliographic
objectives...bibliographic systems are many and take varied forms; no single
one need aspire to meet all the needs of all users."
Secondly, she very succinctly and eloquently summarizes the argument for models
like FRBR in the first place: "To [traditional objectives] can be added a
further evolutionary step--that is, the adoption by catalogs of a navigation
objective in response to the need for bibliographic relationships (emphasis
mine) to guide the seeking of information. The bibliographic objectives thus
can be seen as historically determined...A final argument in defense of
full-featured (emphasis mine) bibliographic systems is that they are required
if knowledge is to advance. Progress depends on cumulative scholarship, which
in turn depends on scholars' ability to access all that has been created by
human intellect. Ensuring such access is the goal of ongoing efforts to achieve
universal bibliographic control."
That last concept ("universal bibliographic control") may seem a stilted and
idealistic concept, but is it not our highest ideal as catalogers/metadata
creators? Keyword searching, no matter how sexy, could never accomplish this.
That said, keyword searching and highly-structured descriptions and
relationships can co-exist. Such complexity can be in the background, hidden
from the casual user, but available for those who need it.
Some food for thought for this rainy (at least in Indiana) Friday
morning...Casey Alan Mullin -- MLS Candidate -- School of Library and
Information Science -- Metadata Assistant - Variations3 Digital Music Library
-- Indiana University
> Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:45:16 +0200> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re:
> [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)> To:
> RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA> > -Original Message-> From: Resource
> Description and Access / Resource Description and Access> [mailto:[EMAIL
> PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rhonda Marker> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 4:29
> PM> To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA> Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was:
> Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)> > I've been lurking since the list began, but
> will dart out into the open> just this once.> > You ask what difference it
> will make to try to bring both precision and> recall to searches (my
> vocabulary, not yours). For some tasks, such as> finding enough to write an
> undergraduate essay, perhaps itadds very> little beyond what a simple keyword
> search would accomplish. For other> tasks, a more comprehensive result is
> vitally important-- for graduate> level research, for many STM
> (science-technology-medicine) topics, and> I'm sure others could give many
> more categories of things and even> specific instances. I guess my point is
> that the General Searcher is not> our only user. Having a model like FRBR
> helps us organize our efforts so> that whatever our resources allow us to do,
> we can do in a purposeful,> concerted way.> ---> > I
> haven't read that FRBR or RDA will make it easier for people to find> things,
> except in the sense that the FRBR displays may provide more useful>
> collocation of similar records (by work/expression/manifestation/item).> >
> And when we bring "precision and recall" into the equation, I don't know if>
> this has anything to do with RDA or even with human cataloging.>
> Traditionally, precision and recall have had to do with evaluating the>
> results of automated keyword searching, where they have been seen as>
> canceling one another out, i.e. the greater the precision, the lower the>
> recall, or the greater the recall, the lower the precision. A good>
> discussion of this is at:>
> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/06/22/PandR. Essentially, a>
> keyword search in a full-text database for "baths of Titus" could bring up>
> information on the Baths of Titus here in Rome (which is what I would want)>
> but it could--who knows?--bring up items about growing fish in India or>
> pornographic sites. Google has gotten around this with their Page Rank>
> system.> > The traditional method for evaluating human indexing uses
> different> measures: specificity and exhaustivity. If you search
> human-created indexing> terms you would never get the completely out-of-bound
> results mentioned> above (unless the human could not read the text at all),
> but there can be> other problems. The example I use (from my own practice
> when I was still> learning) is a book I
Re: [RDA-L] What "they" are looking for
Bernard said on RDA-L:
>For "they" are mostly not after specific documents but after facts
>,,,
That depends on who "they" are. A university catalogue use study I
did decades ago found that freshmen/women primarily sought topical
information, but graduate students primarily sought known items (from
reading lists, reviews, faculty mentions). There was a gradual shift
from freshman/woman to graduate student through the five or six years.
I have never done a use study of a public library's catalogue, but I
know that my wife is most often seeking the latest PD James ("Adam is
back" she just discovered), or the DVD of a movie for which she has
seen a "Globe and Mail" review, such as "Young At Heart" (a
documentary about a senior choir).
For the freshman/woman topic searcher, keyword search is a great new
boon. But for the known item searcher, exact transcription of 245
title remains vital, along with 246s with numbers spelled out or as
numerals, and other likely to be searched variations, as well as
author.
Whatever else we have or don't have, I want the 245/246 (or their new
fangled next generation equivalents) in manifestation records, and I
want to be able to search them whether the "'Net" is up or down,
assuming that I have electricity via the grid or my newly installed
generator (we were seven days without electricity winter before last).
The brave new bibliographic world as described by James and Bernard
assumes services not universally available. Depending on the upcoming
US elections, perhaps even American libraries should not be too
certain of the stability of their present services.
While SLC does do some OPAC hosting, we don't push the service. There
is something to be said for the library's catalogue being self
contained and inhouse.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)
James wrote: "And when we bring "precision and recall" into the equation, I don't know if this has anything to do with RDA or even with human cataloging. Traditionally, precision and recall have had to do with evaluating the results of automated keyword searching," Just a side reference: look at the reports from the Cranfield Experiments that Cyril Cleverdon conducted back in the 1960s. There are several reports: Cleverdon, Cyril W. (1962). Report on the Testing and Analysis of an Investigation into the Comparative Efficiency of Indexing Systems. Cranfield, Eng. : College of Aeronautics, ASLIB Cranfield Research Project. Cleverdon, C. W., Jack Mills, and Michael Keen. (1966). Factors Determining the Performance of Indexing Systems. Vol. 1: Design, Parts 1 and 2. Vol. 2: Test Results. Cranfield, Eng. : College of Aeronautics, ASLIB Cranfield Research Project. These two citations taken from Svenonius, E. (2000). The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. ** Shawne D. Miksa, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Library and Information Sciences College of Information, Library Science, and Technology University of North Texas email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://courses.unt.edu/smiksa/index.htm office 940-565-3560 fax 940-565-3101 **
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks
Lieber Herr Eversberg, die Diskussion um Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der neuen Modelle/Regelwerke in der RDA-Liste habe ich in den letzten Tagen mit Interesse verfolgt und mit Kollegen diskutiert.. Jim Weinheimers Sorge ist, dass wir zuviel Energie auf die Entwicklung dieser neuen bibliographischen Standards verwenden und uns viel zu wenig um die Frage kümmern, welchen Platz die Bibliotheken wie in der künftigen Informationslandschaft einnehmen können. (Das hat vor Jahren schon Herr Dr. Kästner, Vorsitzender der APBB, kritisch zu den Regelwerksumstiegs- Plänen der DNB angemerkt.) Sie präzisieren und konkretisieren seine Sorge in gewisser Weise, wenn Sie darauf hinweisen, dass FRBR/RDA viel zu einseitig known-item-search- orientiert sind (Ich frage mich manchmal, ob sie überhaupt search-orientiert sind.). Abgesehen von der Feststellung, dass es sicher zu spät ist, solche Grundsatzfragen zu stellen, die womöglich den Prozess der Regelwerksentwicklung stoppen oder zumindest in eine ganz andere Richtung lenken könnten (wir wissen inzwischen allzu gut, wie lava-artig dieser zähe Prozess unaufhaltsam voran schreitet), hat sich uns die Frage gestellt, welche Antworten Herr Weinheimer und Sie auf die aufgeworfene wichtige Frage geben können, was Bibliotheken konkret tun müssten, um in der künftigen Informationswelt bestehen zu können. Wenn ich Herrn Weinheimers Sicht richtig deute, hat er sich in gewisser Weise damit abgefunden, dass Bibliotheken künftig ein Nischen-Dasein führen werden in der Informationslandschaft, weil ihre klassischen Dienste nicht ganz bedeutungslos sein werden. Diese Sicht der Dinge ist für mich eine sehr bittere, denn sie bedeutet zwangsläufig einen Reduktionsprozess im Bibliothekswesen: Es werden sehr viel weniger Bibliotheken vonnöten sein, um diese kleine Nische auszufüllen. Und wie diese Dinge nun einmal laufen, würde das bedeuten, dass die kleinen Bibliotheken verschwinden und nur einige große übrig bleiben - für einen leidenschaftlichen Spezialbibliothekar keine erfreuliche Perspektive ... Haben Sie noch Rettungsideen? Am 23 Oct 2008 um 8:46 hat Bernhard Eversberg geschrieben: > Kevin M. Randall wrote: > > > > > > The FRBR user tasks are nothing new at all, and I maintain as > always > > that they are essentially timeless and universal. > > They are, but only for the known-item search and its corollaries. > > I understood Jim Weinheimer as implying that the known-item search > is - and probably always was - rather a very narrow concept and > not > one that would match a large number of user queries. For "they" > are > mostly not after specific documents but after facts, figures, > formulas > and advice - in a word: answers. What they then conduct can be > called > a subject search, but we must not at once assume that all they > need > is the right LC subject heading. And this type of search is not > adequately addressed by FRBR. There, and in RDA, subject search > appears only as an afterthought. > > Sometimes - but by no means always - they know that what they need > may > be found in one particular book someone mentioned to them or was > cited > somewhere. Then and only then can FRBR machinations flex their > muscle > and help the patron along. > > But even known-item searches nowadays are not what they used to > be. > We now have many more criteria that can be used for such searches, > not just those of the old card days: just names and titles. The > most- > used criteria, keywords, are not really covered by AACR nor RDA > nor FRBR. Let alone new criteria like ToC data, abstracts, > user-supplied > tags. They come along as new additions to OPACs and their treatment > is > left to the vendors or implementers. Far too much and ever more is > left > to them, and ever narrower is thus the realm of what cataloging > rules > cover. They keep constricting themselves to the timeless criteria > of > scholarship, but even scholarship these days benefits a great deal > from > new ways of searching and new features of search devices. The > catalog > must be viewed in new ways, since its potential goes far beyond > what > card catalogs could achieve. Their timeless and universal > fucntions > are now only a fraction of a much larger spectrum. > > Ironically, what Google is best at is the known-item search. For > what it > essentially does is the matching of character strings in clever > ways, > and the better you know some peculiar character string and the surer > you > are that it must appear prominently in what you are looking for, > the > sooner will you find it via Google. Subject searches, the quest > for > answers, are an altogether different matter, as we all know. > Whether > Google knows it well enough, I'm in doubt. > > B. Eversberg Mit freundlichen Gruessen Armin Stephan Jefe de Biblioteca Augustana-Hochschule / Bibliothek D-91564 Neuendettelsau | | ,__o |_-\_<, | (*)/'(*)
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)
-Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rhonda Marker Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 4:29 PM To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?) I've been lurking since the list began, but will dart out into the open just this once. You ask what difference it will make to try to bring both precision and recall to searches (my vocabulary, not yours). For some tasks, such as finding enough to write an undergraduate essay, perhaps itadds very little beyond what a simple keyword search would accomplish. For other tasks, a more comprehensive result is vitally important-- for graduate level research, for many STM (science-technology-medicine) topics, and I'm sure others could give many more categories of things and even specific instances. I guess my point is that the General Searcher is not our only user. Having a model like FRBR helps us organize our efforts so that whatever our resources allow us to do, we can do in a purposeful, concerted way. --- I haven't read that FRBR or RDA will make it easier for people to find things, except in the sense that the FRBR displays may provide more useful collocation of similar records (by work/expression/manifestation/item). And when we bring "precision and recall" into the equation, I don't know if this has anything to do with RDA or even with human cataloging. Traditionally, precision and recall have had to do with evaluating the results of automated keyword searching, where they have been seen as canceling one another out, i.e. the greater the precision, the lower the recall, or the greater the recall, the lower the precision. A good discussion of this is at: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/06/22/PandR. Essentially, a keyword search in a full-text database for "baths of Titus" could bring up information on the Baths of Titus here in Rome (which is what I would want) but it could--who knows?--bring up items about growing fish in India or pornographic sites. Google has gotten around this with their Page Rank system. The traditional method for evaluating human indexing uses different measures: specificity and exhaustivity. If you search human-created indexing terms you would never get the completely out-of-bound results mentioned above (unless the human could not read the text at all), but there can be other problems. The example I use (from my own practice when I was still learning) is a book I had to catalog about the legal rights and responsibilities of pregnant women and new mothers in the Soviet Union. I found copy from a well-known law library that will remain nameless, and found the single subject: "Women--Soviet Union." While it is not as out of bounds as what you might get in a full-text keyword search, it is still wrong from a human indexing point of view. So, we can make it a bit more specific, but even if we put in Pregnant women--Soviet Union, that would not have been specific enough because we have to add the legal aspects. But if we left it there, it still would not be sufficiently exhaustive because we need something for new mothers. I have seen several people mix up the evaluation of human and computer indexing, and the page I gave above appears to do just that. Or perhaps the official definitions have changed and I'm just behind the times, I don't know. But I still don't believe that instituting FRBR or RDA will have any effect on either precision/recall or specificity/exhaustivity. James Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)
FRBR is a model for recording, perhaps for displaying, bibliographic data, not a model for retrieval. There is a terrible lack in our discussion about FRBR and RDA. At the moment it seems to be only a hope, that this model is a helpful model for future retrieval needs. Am 23 Oct 2008 um 10:28 hat Rhonda Marker geschrieben: > I've been lurking since the list began, but will dart out into the > open > just this once. > > You ask what difference it will make to try to bring both precision > and > recall to searches (my vocabulary, not yours). For some tasks, such > as > finding enough to write an undergraduate essay, perhaps itadds > very > little beyond what a simple keyword search would accomplish. For > other > tasks, a more comprehensive result is vitally important-- for > graduate > level research, for many STM (science-technology-medicine) topics, > and > I'm sure others could give many more categories of things and even > specific instances. I guess my point is that the General Searcher is > not > our only user. Having a model like FRBR helps us organize our > efforts so > that whatever our resources allow us to do, we can do in a > purposeful, > concerted way. > > Rhonda Marker > > > Weinheimer Jim wrote: > > > > I thought that Robin Mize had written an excellent response to > Jim > > Weinheimer, but once again Weinheimer insists that the FRBR user > tasks > > are not relevant. I'm wondering now if maybe the problem is > that > > Weinheimer is not characterizing the user tasks accurately. He > > says: "I don't believe that the user tasks are to 'find, > identify, > > select, and obtain' 'works, expressions, manifestations and > items.' I > > really don't think that is what people do today, I don't think > they > > particularly want to, and perhaps they never did." > > > > > > I don't want people to get the wrong impression that I think that > the > > FRBR user tasks are not relevant. I think that people do want to > find > > items by their authors and subjects (less by titles). The users I > have > > worked with believe they can do this now in Google because Google > has > > been very successfully designed to give results that make people > > "happy," but of course they are happy with an author search only > > because they don't know what they are missing. > > > > Research has shown, and my own experience concurs, that most > people > > believe they are good searchers. In the information literacy > classes I > > teach, I mention that most people believe they are good searchers, > but > > then I ask them, "Do I think I'm a good searcher?" and to the > > inevitable silence, I continue, "I don't know if I'm a good > searcher > > because I don't have any kind of yardstick to measure myself by. > When > > I search Google, Yahoo, Google Books, Google Scholar, and so on, > I > > don't know what I am searching, so I don't know what I am > missing. > > Also, I don't know if a specific search is "good" or "bad" based > only > > on the number of keyword hits. In a library catalog, I can > search > > "wwii" as a keyword, or "Samuel Clemens" and I can know exactly > what I > > am missing, and this way I can determine if I am a good searcher, > or > > not. In the Google-type searching, there is nothing like this. In > a > > library catalog, I can say that I am a good s! earcher, but in > Google, > > I don't know." I can go on and on and on about the problems of > Google. > > > > But I realize that it doesn't matter what I say. While I may make > a > > difference to the few people in the classroom who aren't asleep, > my > > words make very little difference in the scheme of things. People > like > > keyword searching. I do too. People think they are good searchers. > And > > Google searches can be very useful. I don't have to go on about > this. > > > > This is the world as it is and it's not going to go away. People > have > > discovered a universe of information resources out there and the > > library materials are only a tiny, and diminishing part of that > > universe. We can put our efforts toward making our small part of > the > > universe subject to the FRBR user tasks, which will be a lot of > work, > > and what difference will it make to our users? I don't think they > will > > even notice a difference. And remember that our users include > the > > people who determine the library budgets. Is this then the best > use of > > our resources.? > > > > It brings me no joy to point out these issues, but I think > somebody > > needs to do it. It's the future of our field. It's only reasonable > to > > ask that in the information landscape of today, is FRBR/RDA any > kind > > of a solution? Undertaking these changes will demand enormous > efforts > > from library staff and budgets, and we need to know that it will > be > > worth the effort. I question it and feel that the same efforts > would > > be better used in different areas. I may be wrong, but I think it > is > > vital to discuss it. > > > > If we
