Dear Yan and all,
Thank you for bringing up this interesting topic. According to the
BISG http://www.bisg.org/activities-programs/activity.php?n=d&id=47&cid=20,
"the best person to assign the [BISAC] codes to your titles is the
person who knows the most about the content of the book. Most likely
this will be the editor or, perhaps, a marketing department
associate." This means that libraries are losing their capacity to
adapt the system to their local needs. I suppose people who assign
those codes have a background on Marketing or Business, although in
order to adapt them to libraries (or even to bookstores) some training
in Organization of Information I would say is needed, as well as for
the development of the scheme.
All the best
Daniel
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Yan Ma <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Daniel,
>
> Good to hear from you in Spain!!! Thank you for your time and professional
> insight! I truly appreciated it. My deep concern is what our LIS education
> will do for our students if they are not given the education and training in
> information organization for the challenges to organize a small, medium, or
> large collection or the information on the Internet.
>
> There is a belief in our school that this organization of information is
> left to the vendors to deliver to libraries. Students do not need to learn
> Dewey or any other system. My question is: Even so, who train the staff
> working for the vendors? Yahoo and Goole hire LIS graduates.
>
> Are you coming to ALISE in 2013?
>
> Thank you,
>
> --Yan
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:55 AM, Daniel Martínez Ávila
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> I do not think the "bookstore model" (BISAC? BIC2? THEMA?) is good
>> enough for a school unless your school is like a bookstore. For
>> instance, how many books on Civil War does your school have? DDC has
>> more than 60 categories on it while BISAC has only one. Of course the
>> solution for some libraries was to modify the scheme, but in that case
>> they lose the advantages of using a standard. This leads to another
>> problem: reclassification. I guess bookstores do not have to worry
>> about each new version of the scheme because, in due time, most titles
>> with inactivated codes will go out of print and the codes will retire
>> with the books. But I wonder if this apply to libraries too and if
>> vendors are willing to provide new codes for their out of print books
>> (provided that the library is not using a modification). Another
>> problem is the use of BISAC in the catalog, I also found that BISAC
>> codes are not retrieved in a Subject search, so libraries need to know
>> about MARC to fix that.
>>
>> I have been studying the application of BISAC in public libraries for
>> years and believe me that it is more than problematic, I would not
>> recommend any school/student to stop learning about IO because there
>> are many things to improve and fix.
>>
>> Daniel Martinez Avila
>> Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Yan Ma, Ph.D.
> Professor of Graduate School of Library & Information Studies and Film/Media
> Program
> Harrington School of Communications and Media
> Special Assistant to URI President on China Affairs
> Founding Director of the URI Confucius Institute, 2007-2011
> University of Rhode Island
> 94 West Alumni Ave.
> Kingston, RI 02881 USA
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Tel: 401-874-2819
> Fax: 401-874-4964
> http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/People/ma.html
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