Transcript On Competition for Cataloguers Australian Committee on Cataloguing State Library of Queensland September 7, 2007 Karen Calhoun.

On Competition for Cataloguers
Australian Committee on Cataloguing
State Library of Queensland
September 7, 2007
Karen Calhoun
Miles Franklin,
1879-1954
Author of
My Brilliant Career
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30+ Years of Technological Advances in
Technical Services
Digital Libraries
The Internet
Local library systems
Online cooperative cataloging
Ohio College Library Center (OCLC)
MARC Record
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Early 21st Century Technical
Services Landscape
Bibliographic
Desktop (TS
Data
Control &
Workstation)
Management
Metadata
New sources/types Network, hardware
Relational Data
of records
and software
Management
administration
New workflows
Transitions to new SQL: queries and
library systems
reports
(Windows, Web
clients)
New metadata
Macros; impt. of
More data
standards
ergonomics
manipulation, less
data entry
E-resources and Growing number of
Global change
digital collections
applications
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The Web
Authoring
Publishing
Web site
organization and
management
Digital library
management
systems
4
My Report to the Library of
Congress
 Calhoun, Karen. The Changing Nature
of the catalogue and its Integration
with Other Discovery Tools
 Washington, DC: Library of Congress,
March 17 2006
 http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-reportfinal.pdf
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My Thesis: We Need to Rethink
the Catalogue in Light of a
Changed World
 Research indicates the catalogue is
hard to use
 Content has changed
 Users have changed
 The library service model must
change
 The catalogue must change
WHO?
WHAT?
HOW?
WHERE?
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“Save the time of the reader.”
--S.R. Ranganathan, 1931
Library catalogues, cataloguing, and
cataloguers
 MARC, AACR, and LC
 Cooperative
cataloguing
 Affordability and
scalability
 More than descriptive
metadata
 Metadata is a strategic
issue for libraries
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Table 1: Challenges Facing
Traditional cataloguing
Affordability and
Scalability
Expense of cataloguing
Rapid growth of Web resources and
digital assets
Need more than descriptive
metadata
Interoperability issues
Competition for
Resources to Develop
New Library Services
Shrinking tech services
departments
Streamlining tech services
workflows
Increasing use of external sources
of data; automated cataloguing
methods
Changes in
Information-Seeking
Behavior
Preference for online information
Reliance on simple keyword search
Decline of subject searching
Expectation of seamless linking
Table 1, Continued: Challenges Facing
Traditional cataloguing
Availability of
Catalogue Librarians
In U.S.:
LIS grads not choosing cataloguing
Graying of the library profession
(demographics)
Significance of the
Catalogue
Catalogue is one part of a much
larger infosphere
Many new types of scholarly
information objects not covered by
catalogue
Future of Individual
Library Catalogues
Less emphasis on one catalogue
per library
Shift toward multiple catalogues
appearing as one catalogue; shared
catalogues; cataloguing or indexing
interwoven into the Web (e.g.,
Google Scholar, Open WorldCat,
Libraries Australia)
Librarianship: “There are few professions which
contribute so much to the saving of time and to
the progress of science.” –Library Journal, 1890
Being a 21st Century Librarian
 Starting points:
 Technology-driven research, teaching and
learning
 Disintermediation (decrease in guided
access to content)
 Global “infosphere”
 Accelerating shift in information seekers’
preferences for Web-based information and
multimedia formats
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Geocentric/
Aristotelian view:
The local
catalogue is the
sun
Heliocentric/
Copernican view:
The local
catalogue
is a planet
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A New Kind of Cataloguer
 Start by
examining
assumptions
 Information
objects of all
types
 Make collections
more visible and
easier to use
http://vivo.library.cornell.edu/
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What is “Full”?
Examining Assumptions
Product
Description
& Purchase
Information
More like this
Bibliographic
Information
Bibliographic
Information
Australian
Library Holdings
Library Holdings
Details
Subjects
Editions
Reviews
Editorial
Reviews &
Author Info
Inside the
Book
Tags, Ratings
Customer
Reviews
Lists
More
+ 3 more screens
With thanks to David Lankes: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/
2007/ALCTS.pdf
Opportunities for “New Age”
AND MORE!
Cataloguers
 Metadata recycling
and reuse
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•Leadership
•Project management
•Workflow analysis and
quality improvement
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The Continuing Importance of
Books
 Books and
serials are not
dead, and they
are not yet
digital
 ARL libraries
spent the lion’s
share of US$665
million on books
and serials in
2004
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The Rise of Special Collections and
Archives
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Digitization Projects
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“Instead of being a hoarder of containers, the
library must become the facilitator of retrieval
and dissemination.”—William Wulf, 2003
A New Way to Work
Blakeley, Daniel H.
Cornell Center for Materials Research Facility Staff page
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“2 ½ cheers for Google.”
--Paul Duguid, May 5 2003, Cornell University
Library Collections on the Network
 Library must be where the users’ eyes
are
 Interconnections, interoperability, and
information delivery
 Offsite storage and the challenge to
browsing
 Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships
 Much more robust and interconnected
discovery and content delivery systems
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Picture Australia
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Libraries Australia: A World of
Information
ORAL HISTORIES
Libraries Australia, CBS and
WorldCat





1 July 2007
All Libraries Australia subscribers
Access to WorldCat for cataloguing
Search access for end users
Governing members of OCLC
 http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaust
ralia/questions.html#oclc
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Libraries
Australia
Teratext
PUSH
L
O
G
Libraries
Australia
CBS
SRU UPDATE M21
WorldCat
WorldCat identifiers,
FRBR work id
Synchronization: A Case Study
of Metadata Exchange and Reuse
Table 2 : Forecasts and Implications for
Metadata Specialists
Increasing investment
in access systems
Help build new kinds of systems for
IR and delivery; many new kinds of
metadata; emphasis on re-use,
interconnections, interoperability
Active participation in
the university
community
Blurring of lines between what has
been public services and technical
services; project and team-based
workplaces; involvement in
constituents’ projects and digital
asset management; consulting
work; decreasing involvement in
traditional cataloguing duties
Technology-driven
research, teaching and
learning
Need for “IT fluency,” esp.
metadata specialists; increasing
involvement in large-scale digital
library research, development, and
production projects
Table 2 Continued: Forecasts and Implications
for Metadata Specialists
Disintermediation and
user self-sufficiency
Catalogue librarians have always
served those who want to work
autonomously; metadata specialists
will also enhance ease of use
through expertise in indexing, data
organization and management,
access vocabularies, taxonomies,
ontologies, etc. Rising need for
understanding of visualization and
other techniques to support
browsing. Increasing use of
metadata for linking of wide array
of information objects
Global infosphere,
Web-based
information, and
multimedia
Metadata specialists will
develop/lobby for standards and
best practices, but proliferation of
systems and object types will
continue; continued need for
integrating frameworks and
interoperability tools
Thank You!
 Being a Librarian: Metadata and
Metadata Specialists in the Twentyfirst Century
 Library Hi Tech, v25 n2 (Summer 2007)
 Preprint 17 December 2004
 http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/hand
le/1813/2231
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