Profession

What is the future of the profession of cataloging? This lunch I read the article "Knowledge Access Management at Lied Library: Cataloging and Web Site Reengineering" by Brad Eden and Kenneth J. Bierman Library Hi Tech Vol. 20. no. 1. (2002) pp. 90-103. It concludes with visions for the cataloging department. Scanning and digitizing, shifting the focus to e-resources, an e-text center, finding grants, continuing education and collaboration with other technology departments on and off campus. I'm not sure all of these belong in the Knowledge Access Management department, which their cataloging department has morphed into. Surely, there is a place for metadata or cataloging in scanning and e-texts but I'm not sure we should be creating the content or even keying the data.

Resource Description Framework

The RDF Primer is an introduction to this possibly important standard.

"The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the World Wide Web. It is particularly intended for representing metadata about Web resources, such as the title, author, and modification date of a Web page, the copyright and syndication information about a Web document, the availability schedule for some shared resource, or the description of a Web user's preferences for information delivery. RDF provides a common framework for expressing this information in such a way that it can be exchanged between applications without loss of meaning. Since it is a common framework, application designers can leverage the availability of common RDF parsers and processing tools. Exchanging information between different applications means that the information may be made available to applications other than those for which it was originally created. This Primer is designed to provide the reader the basic fundamentals required to effectively use RDF in their particular applications."--abstract.

Standard Address Number (SAN)

Here is a standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.43 - 1993(R2001) Standard Address Number (SAN) for the Publishing Industry which has been around quite some time. Is anyone using it? Does it make life easier for anyone? Is number this on your letterhead? Just curious.

Summaries or Abstracts

I notice the 10th Biennial OLAC Conference is having a session on creating annotations. That is something I feel is long overdue. There has been little guidance on just how to construct a good abstract for field 520. There is a NISO standard ANSI/NISO Z39.14 - 1997 Guidelines for Abstracts but that is not a good fit. There is a very good article by Sheila S. Intner "Writing Summary Notes for Films and Videos" Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Vol. 9(2) 1988. That is now 15 years old. It is about time we made the effort to learn how to construct more useful summary notes. Thanks to the OLAC folks for having this session.

Another Controlled Vocabulary

The NASA Thesaurus is available in PDF format online. This is a huge document, over 1200 pages, so do not try this with a dial up connection. The whole print document is available including the introductory text.

Recently on AUTOCAT someone asked the question "what to read in the area of subject headings and classification?" I do believe that the introduction of several thesaurus and subject heading lists would be a valuable part of that reading list. They provide concrete examples of how and why the list was constructed. The AAT and DDC have perhaps the best introductions but the others give the reader some contrast and renforcement of principles.

Schedule G

The fourth edition (1976) of Class G (Geography. Maps. Anthropology. Recreation) included a section entitled Special Instructions and Tables of Subdivisions for Atlases and Maps, which included detailed information on how to construct call numbers and apply the various tables of subdivisions that are used with subclass G when classifying cartographic materials. These instructions were not included in the 2001 edition of Class G, but have now been updated and are available.

The pages are formatted to be trimmed down and tipped into the schedule book.

Genre Terms

I mentioned the classification scheme for recorded sound, ANSCR. The Library of Congress has a short list of genre terms to use with sound recordings of radio programs, the Radio Form/Genre Terms Guide. None have to do with music. The list is fairly short. If used it would seem necessary to use it in conjunction with another source for terminology.

Controlled Vocabulary

There are plenty of subject, name, genre and form controlled vocabulary lists available. Most commonly used in libraries are the name and subject lists from the Library of Congress. Another source is the Getty lists. Besides being useful in themselves, they are an excellent source of terms for the SACO and NACO programs.

The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a structured vocabulary of around 125,000 terms, scope notes, and other information for describing fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture.

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) is a structured vocabulary of around 1,000,000 geographic names, including vernacular and historical names, coordinates, and place types, and focusing on places important for the study of art and architecture.

The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a structured vocabulary containing around 220,000 names and biographical information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.

Classification

My local public library uses the Alpha-Numeric System for Classification of Recordings (ANSCR). It is showing its age, some of the categories are too small and others too large for a popular music collection in a good-sized public library. Still, it has provided access to these materials for quite some time and should be included in any listing of classification schemes.

Cataloging Skills

Recently on AUTOCAT, there has been discussion about the skills needed by a cataloger. Here is my 2 cents. Catalogers are concerned with national and international standards. We have MARC21, AACR, the ISBDs, Z39.50 and so on. We like standards, interoperability, and sharing. However, our reference staff and users come from our local community. They may call a water fountain a bubbler or a submarine sandwich a hero, grinder, po'boy or whatever. They have no sense of standards, just usage. To create a catalog for our users we must be aware of local usage. We can see only the forest and not the trees, while our users and the reference staff who deal with them see only the trees.

Both reference and tech services would benefit from seeing things from the different perspective. It would be ideal if catalogers could sit on the reference desk for four hours a week. Reference staff could work on MARC records for their four hours, adding genre/form headings would be useful and not too much of a stretch. Then catalogers could go back and create some of those cross references in the authority file, add annotations using language of the patron's, create headings for characters that would benefit their local users. The reference folks could see that we are not just making it up to have job security.

Genre and Form Headings

I've just finished reading the article "Genre and Form Lists for Moving image and Materials: A Comparison" by Martha M. Yee in The Audiovisual Cataloging Current. It is well worth a read and thoughtful consideration. The two lists compared are the Moving Image Genre-Form Guide and LCSH. It makes too many points, about the construction and uses of genre and form headings, to summarize. She ends by endorsing LCSH with reservations, and a list of recommendations for the improvement of LCSH.

If anyone understands Blogger and wants to give me some guidance with the technical side that would be nice. I cannot seem to get items to display in the places I want them. For instance, I'd like to see the extreme-dm icon at the bottom of the page and the subscription form higher. Even a pointer to a quick guide would be nice. I have paid the $12.00 so you should soon not be subjected to the ad at the top.

MeSH

I mentioned how much I liked the idea of free download of the GSAFD MARC records. It turns out the Medical Subject Headings have been available for quite some time for free download. They are available in MARC, XML and ASCII. OCLC still does not provide access to the MESH authority records.

The staff of Ehrman Medical Library, NYU School of Medicine have developed a product m[n]m. This PERL program provides a way to update the locally needed records from the entire file provided from the download.

Digital Libraries

The conference "NetLab and friends - Tribute and outlook after 10 years of digital library development" took place 10-12 April 2002 with 140 participants from 23 countries. The programme included 18 speakers and comprised of five sessions: Visions, future issues and current development, Interoperability and integration of heterogeneous sources, Semantic web and knowledge organisation, Nordic libraries and their digital library solutions and Tension between visions and reality.

The presentations from the conference are now available.

Some of the talks include:
Community, Consensus, and the Trajectory of Progress: Reflections on the Dublin Core experience and what it tells us about the future.
RDF Query by example.
LDAP based repositories for Metadata and Ontologies.
Semantic problems of thesaurus mapping.

MARC Tool

The latest issue of Information Technology & Libraries has the article "MARC It Your Way: MARC.pm" by Anne Highsmith ... [et al.], abstract available. MARC.pm is an Open Source tool for tasks with MARC records. It is very adaptable, and the article gives some examples. Chuck Bearden, one of the developers, was one of my classmates in the MLS program at the University of North Texas.

Sandy Berman

The talk Sandy Berman gave to the students at the University of Washington is available as a QuickTime streaming video. Can't say anything about the content since my machine does not seem able to handle that format. It is in 3 parts, each about 30 min.

Authority Records

This from the latest LC Cataloging Newsline:

For some time now, LC's Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) has been processing and distributing to subscribers, including the bibliographic utilities, name authority records derived from the National Library of Canada that contain 7XX fields. NACO members will soon begin seeing 7XX "linking references" in name authority records originating from other institutions. These linking references are AACR2 authoritative forms of name used in national bibliographies or for other special purposes by national libraries/bibliographic entities.

Interim instructions, pending the release of revised documentation, are available at the PCC Web site at URL http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/7xx.html [May 2002]

This is excellent news, one step closer to a patron friendly authority access system. Where each institution or even each user can select the form of names they desire to use. Currently only the Library of Canada has input. Soon the Library of South Africa will as well.

Classification

Still on the classification topic. There has been some discussion on a list of what classification schemes are used in Europe. As I remember Dewey and the Universial Decimal Classification (UDC) are the most common. The Bliss Classification is used in some UK libraries. Any others?

General Material Designations

I've just heard that there is discussion about eliminating the GMD. Here are some the specific questions being asked:

1. GMD helps patrons find, separate, collocate, and select records for print and non-print materials. Since non-print materials are often the minority in collections, is the GMD the best way to alert users of the catalog?
2. How are GMD's best applied when describing reproductions and multiple resources such as digital sound recording?
3. Professional report inconsistencies of how to use GMD particularly for non-print materials- so will rules oriented towards print materials help?
4. When should a GMD be in a record (e.g. even if there is no intrinsic relation to a transcribed title), how specific should it be?
5. Materials are described via the GMD, should they be relegated to subject classification?
6. Is SMD an alterative for GMD?
7. GMD is perceived as an example of broad issues in the rules. Thus, should GMD be addressed at all through cataloging rules?

If you have an opinion on this let the members of CC:DA know.

Serial Subscriptions

"Recently, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization and DLF, the Digital Library Federation announced the undertaking of a two month study to evaluate the current use and potential of standards to facilitate the exchange of serials subscription information for both print and electronic resources. NISO would like to know more about how libraries gather, use and share subscription information.

A questionnaire for libraries has been placed on the NISO web site. Because NISO supports the development of standards for the information community based on consensus among constitiuents, we are grateful for the interest of libraries who benefit so much from these standards.

Please take some time to visit the NISO web site and fill out the survey which can be found at: http://www.niso.org/survey/serials.cfm. The survey will close on May 30. A final report on this study, including recommendations, will be on the NISO website in late June."--from an e-mail received 4/26/02

Electronic Resources

One of my pet peeves is how useless Area 3 (field 256 in MARC) is for computer files. Our AACR options are to use the terms: Electronic data or Electronic program(s) or a combination of the two. That does not give our users much information. They already know it is an electronic resource from the GMD. This only adds the fact it is a program or data. The list from ISBD(ER) is much more descriptive and informative. This list lets the user know if it is a map, journal, image, font, sound, CAD program or whatever. Something a user can understand and base a decision on. I'd be happy with either doing away with Area 3 or adopting the useful terms from IFLA.