 |
 |
Danielle said: "I think we all agree that we need more investments in cataloging and metadata creation, not fewer, although those investments *will not and cannot be targeted at traditional cataloging, the way we've 'always' done it.* Yee and others would be much better equipped to argue against outsourcing and eliminating cataloging practices if they recognized that essential truth... I'm a medievalist by training..." (end) Danielle, I think the way we've done it in the past 100 years is in several ways the best way (not in all, to be sure), albeit the tradition is not long as you say. I just posted the following on AUTOCAT: I hope everyone is willing to suffer my getting philosophical. Everyone is so big on "conversation" these days: Conversation is knowledge, etc. (I think "content", in some sense, too). Admittedly, I think blogs for instance, are great, even as they admittedly can give us just another way of avoiding the "on the ground", "face-to-face" realities we physically encounter. And of course, I don't deny that in all of this participating, dialoging, conversing, etc. there is "love" and "community" to be found online (see Clay Shirkey here: http://tinyurl.com/2em6zs ), in some sense, but it seems to me that love is *especially willing* to engage in difficult and substantial conversations surrounding practical, on the ground realities (not displacing the need for theories!) - something I do not sense is happening in the area of vocabulary control for instance (do some in the library / library cataloging world think this is going to mysteriously happen "on the fly", "as we go", etc.? [like Wikipedia] - are there more concrete reasons [besides faith] for thinking these things will be effectively taken care of that I am not aware of?) Now - and I am getting to the point - it seems to me that it is not only an act of love to pay close and careful attention (being like a collector who finds things to be interesting and unique) to specific items as well as the broader [again: unique and interesting] contexts that we, as catalogers deal with. It is also love when librarians *explicitly recognize the need* to call something out there in our shared world *these words and not other words - this form and not other forms* for the sake of common understanding (we may not totally agree with everything, but...) - because we ultimately want to not only be able to recognize others, but to be involved with them - and to hopefully accomplish great work with them. This is what catalogers do as they carefully and lovingly examine and describe items in their larger contexts for the sake of making things findable through words that the wider community can recognize and identify with (not always their first picks, but we try to fix that to by working together). Clay Shirkey may call what we do "imposing your words, classifications, taxonomies on me" (i.e. power, domination, see his article "Ontology is Overrated" for more) and look for love in other places, but I would appeal to him to recognize that if that is indeed the case to some extent, there is also great love mixed in here as well. Now - if we in the larger library community don't see the importance of the hard work of doing this among ourselves - and this is where the lack of emphasis on cataloging in our profession comes in - how will we find good, effective cooperation (hopefully for the common good) with the other metadata communities? Or does anyone think all of this can be taken care of by making all our authority records web-pages (URIs), or something like that? I am interested to hear more about how this might work. Anyone want to tackle that (start new thread :) )? Nathan Rinne Media Cataloging Technician ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC) 11200 93rd Ave. North Maple Grove, MN. 55369 Work phone: 763-391-7183 -----Original Message----- From: Discussion List for issues related to cataloging & metadata education & training [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Danielle Plumer Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 10:28 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Martha Yee's comments on LIS education (fwd) The text of Martha Yee's paper, for those not on AUTOCAT (like me), has been posted on the cataloging wiki at James Madison University as a word document. You can get it at http://tinyurl.com/2vcqvx My major concern with Yee's paper, and with others like it, is that she doesn't seem willing to admit that the tools being used for automated indexing and classification of materials are extremely complex and the subject of massive investments in research and development. Google and Amazon's algorithms are much more than "word counting or counting the number of times users gain access to a particular URL," and the presence of these over-simplistic and indeed mistaken attacks makes me uninclined to give any of Yee's other arguments much credence. Where automated systems really shine is with textually-rich materials, particularly full-text, an area with which library cataloging has not traditionally been concerned. Automated systems can do nothing with a physical object if it has not already been converted to digital form; instead, these systems rely on human-created surrogates (metadata) generated by publishers, authors, readers, and, yes, catalogers. I myself am convinced that more and more materials will be available digitally in the future, including not only new works but also products of retrospective conversion. It therefore seems common sense to me that cataloging needs to learn to use these new tools, and, therefore, that cataloging education needs to change to include more and different methods of information organization. I actually applaud organization of information courses that look at how supermarkets are organized! Although neither a professor of cataloging nor a cataloger myself (or so I've been told, as I work primarily with non-MARC metadata), I have great respect for cataloging, and, indeed, I know folks at Google and Yahoo! who express continued respect for and appreciation of the work of catalogers. I think we all agree that we need more investments in cataloging and metadata creation, not fewer, although those investments will not and cannot be targeted at traditional cataloging, the way we've "always" done it. Yee and others would be much better equipped to argue against outsourcing and eliminating cataloging practices if they recognized that essential truth. N.B. I'm a medievalist by training, so I have to point out that our "traditions" of cataloging have mostly been developed in a mere century of practice! I don't think that's quite enough time to show that they have "permanent" utility. Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Ph.D., M.S.I.S. Coordinator, Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) [log in to unmask] +++Opinions expressed in this email are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative, or any other organization+++