Search (3 results, page 1 of 1)

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Abstract

This study presents preliminary themes surfaced from an ongoing ethnographic study. The research question is: how and where do cultures influence the cataloging practices of using U.S. standards to catalog Chinese materials? The author applies warrant as a lens for evaluating knowledge representation systems, and extends the application from examining classificatory decisions to cataloging decisions. Semantic warrant as a conceptual tool allows us to recognize and name the various rationales behind cataloging decisions, grants us explanatory power, and the language to "visualize" and reflect on the conflicting priorities in cataloging practices. Through participatory observation, the author recorded the cataloging practices of two Chinese catalogers working on the same cataloging project. One of the catalogers is U.S. trained, and another cataloger is a professor of Library and Information Science from China, who is also a subject expert and a cataloger of Chinese special collections. The study shows how the catalogers describe Chinese special collections using many U.S. cataloging and classification standards but from different approaches. The author presents particular cases derived from the fieldwork, with an emphasis on the many layers presented by cultures, principles, standards, and practices of different scope, each of which may represent conflicting warrants. From this, it is made clear that the conflicts of warrants influence cataloging practice. We may view the conflicting warrants as an interpretation of the tension between different semantic warrants and the globalization and localization of cataloging standards.

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Abstract

This think piece tells why the online library catalog fell from grace and why new directions pertaining to cataloging simplification and primary sources will not attract people back to the online catalog. It proposes an alternative direction that has greater likelihood of regaining the online catalog's lofty status and longtime users. Such a direction will require paradigm shifts in library cataloging and in the design and development of online library catalogs that heed catalog users' longtime demands for improvements to the searching experience. Our failure to respond accordingly may permanently exile scholarly and scientific information to a netherworld where no one searches while less reliable, accurate, and objective sources of information thrive in a paradise where people prefer to search for information.
The impetus for this essay is the library community's uncertainty regarding the present and future direction of the library catalog in the era of Google and mass digitization projects. The uncertainty is evident at the highest levels. Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress (LC), is struck by undergraduate students who favor digital resources over the online library catalog because such resources are available at anytime and from anywhere (Marcum, 2006). She suggests that "the detailed attention that we have been paying to descriptive cataloging may no longer be justified ... retooled catalogers could give more time to authority control, subject analysis, [and] resource identification and evaluation" (Marcum, 2006, 8). In an abrupt about-face, LC terminated series added entries in cataloging records, one of the few subject-rich fields in such records (Cataloging Policy and Support Office, 2006). Mann (2006b) and Schniderman (2006) cite evidence of LC's prevailing viewpoint in favor of simplifying cataloging at the expense of subject cataloging. LC commissioned Karen Calhoun (2006) to prepare a report on "revitalizing" the online library catalog. Calhoun's directive is clear: divert resources from cataloging mass-produced formats (e.g., books) to cataloging the unique primary sources (e.g., archives, special collections, teaching objects, research by-products). She sums up her rationale for such a directive, "The existing local catalog's market position has eroded to the point where there is real concern for its ability to weather the competition for information seekers' attention" (p. 10). At the University of California Libraries (2005), a task force's recommendations parallel those in Calhoun report especially regarding the elimination of subject headings in favor of automatically generated metadata. Contemplating these events prompted me to revisit the glorious past of the online library catalog. For a decade and a half beginning in the early 1980s, the online library catalog was the jewel in the crown when people eagerly queued at its terminals to find information written by the world's experts. I despair how eagerly people now embrace Google because of the suspect provenance of the information Google retrieves. Long ago, we could have added more value to the online library catalog but the only thing we changed was the catalog's medium. Our failure to act back then cost the online catalog the crown. Now that the era of mass digitization has begun, we have a second chance at redesigning the online library catalog, getting it right, coaxing back old users, and attracting new ones. Let's revisit the past, reconsidering missed opportunities, reassessing their merits, combining them with new directions, making bold decisions and acting decisively on them.

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Abstract

There is evidence that many individuals and organizations in the library world do not support the work taking place to develop a next generation of the library cataloging rules. The authors describe the tensions existing between those advocating an incremental change to cataloging process and others who desire a bolder library entry into the digital era. Libraries have lost their place as primary information providers, surpassed by more agile (and in many cases wealthier) purveyors of digital information delivery services. Although libraries still manage materials that are not available elsewhere, the library's approach to user service and the user interface is not competing successfully against services like Amazon or Google. If libraries are to avoid further marginalization, they need to make a fundamental change in their approach to user services. The library's signature service, its catalog, uses rules for cataloging that are remnants of a long departed technology: the card catalog. Modifications to the rules, such as those proposed by the Resource Description and Access (RDA) development effort, can only keep us rooted firmly in the 20th, if not the 19th century. A more radical change is required that will contribute to the library of the future, re-imagined and integrated with the chosen workflow of its users.