habitually probing generalist

School may not start until next Tuesday, but I’m trying to get a start on some of my readings for class(es).  I started with the readings for week 2 of advanced cataloging (primarily because it is the 1st list I had available).

They are:

Gorman, M. "Cataloging in an Electronic Age," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly v. 36, no. 3-4 (2003). 

To be skimmed, but you know me.  I’m going to read it or not.  I do very little skimming.  To be discussed below.

Tillett, B. (2004). Cataloging for the Future. Windsor lecture UIUC
(web) http://puboff.lis.uiuc.edu/catalog/windsor/windsor_tillett.html
(pdf) http://puboff.lis.uiuc.edu/catalog/windsor/windsor_tillett.pdf
(audio) Link to the audio recording (Real media) 

I actually think you all may have access to these links too.  I attended this lecture so I read the pdf version.

Blair, S. Toward a Code of Ethics for Cataloging. Technical Services Quarterly v. 23 no. 1 (2005) p. 13-26.

As you can see, I read Blair last July.  I should reread it I guess, but I have a couple weeks.  And you thought I was silly to read extra professional literature while in school, didn’t you?

Hill, Janet Swan. (2005). Cataloging boot camp: The training issue for
catalogers. Address at the ACRL 12th Annual Conference. April 7–10,
2005, Minneapolis, Minnesota. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/hill05.pdf

I already read the others earlier, but read Gorman this morning.  While he has been known to say something intelligent on occasion (seriously), and while he even does in this article in a few places, it is also full of extremist statements.  [I have been known to do so sometimes myself, often inadvertently. Please, please, please point them out to me when I do.]

"…to take an electronic document with the life-span and cosmic significance of a May bug…" (6).

• This is denigrating to a species of life with at least as much ecological significance as Gorman himself, and to the fact that much of value is available (often only) in electronic form.
• It also conflates the problem and current state of electronic availability/preservation with the future state.  I myself am quite a pessimist about issues of the long-term preservation of electronic documents, but I do not dismiss all efforts out of hand; progress will be made.
• It ignores the case that catalogers only catalog what has already been decided to have significance; they do NOT catalog everything (acknowledged on p. 11 under "ephemera.")

"…we have reached near-perfection in bibliographic control of “traditional” library materials…" (6).

Have we now?

• Then why do we read articles about issues with subject headings, authority control,…?
• Just what was/is Sandy Berman up to?
• Do we not still have problems with transliteration?
• Completely glosses over major issues.

"There is, of course, no such thing as “MARC cataloguing”–MARC is the way in which we encode the results of the cataloguing process and has little or no influence on that process" (9).

• I guess this could be true depending on how one chooses to parse out his meaning, and although I have lots of vaguely formed criticisms that I can’t quite bring to the surface, here’s one: 
• Also true, but only if one ignores the purpose of cataloging and its impact on the use of the final result.  The catalog record is not the purpose, nor the final result of the process.  The encoding process and the use of that encoding schema (think OPAC) has an immense influence on the process.  This one is kind of cheap because I vastly boadened the meaning of "process."

"…the evanescence and mutability of electronic documents. Those characteristics, which any true librarian deplores, are really the logical outcome of the history of human communication–each format produces more documents than its predecessor, and each is less durable than its predecessor (10-11).

• Why "logical?"  Contingently historical?   Yes.  Logical?  I doubt that is even slightly supportable.
• "True librarians?"  I’m not even going to bother….

"Does an e-mail message exist if it is deleted unopened" (11)?

• Drop the pop philosophy; it makes you look like an even bigger fool.  If that’s possible lately.

"…pursuing the Great American Capitalist Dream in the sure and certain knowledge that not only is there a sucker born every minute but also that he or she is likely to spend a lot of time online" (11).

• Again, disparing to internet users.  The suckers he is referring to are just as likely to be watching "reality television" or doing something else.

The following list is from page 13.  My comments are the indented bullets seeing as his list imported as line breaks with little dots in front of them, but not as a list:

Here are the fundamental problems we encounter in trying to organize electronic documents and sites (other than those that are by-products of the print industries):
• there are too many of them

• OK, but we’re not interested in all.

• a lot of documents and sites have never been, and never will be, of interest to libraries and library users

• Assumes his idea of "interest."

• the vast majority of such electronic documents are of temporary use, local use, or no use at all

• Libraries don’t provide materials of temporary use?
• Libraries should be involved in providing local materials.
• Don’t catalog those of no use, just as we now don’t catalog materials of no use. [Completely ignoring what "no use" may mean.

• we have little or no guarantee that any given electronic document is what it says it is

• James Frey and A Million Little Pieces
• Jayson Blair and the New York Times
• Bush administration paying for propaganda supporting its postion as "news."
• ...

• we have little or no assurance that any given document or site will be the same when next located, or that it will even exist

• Yes, the scale is vastly different, but books don't go missing or get misshelved?  Videos don't get stolen?

• there is nothing like the level of standardization of denotation and presentation that we find in books and other tangible library materials. (13)

• I am unsure what he means by this, although I have no doubt that counterexamples are easily available.

"A library burning to the ground today is a local tragedy; a library of manuscripts burning to the
ground was a cultural catastrophe from which there was no recovery" (13).

• Maybe he should look at the recent report that shows large portions of unique holdings in academic libraries.  I can't find the newer article I'm thinking of and I just know there was a recent one.  But there is always this one:  Perrault, Anna H. (1995).  "The Changing Print Resource Base of Academic Libraries in the United States."  Journal of Education for Library and
  Information Science 36, no. 4 (1995): 295-308.  It is flawed, as are most studies, but not critically.  Unfortunately, I cannot find my notes on it from class last semester and I wrote on a different reading that week....  Here is an article that critiques the Perrault study though:  Holleman, Curt. (1997).  "The Study of Subject Strengths, Overlap, and National Collecting Patterns: The Uses of the OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD and Alternatives to It."  Collection Management 22(1/2): 57-69.

"one huge difference between the manuscript age and the looming electronic age. PreGutenberg manuscripts were, by definition, created by an educated elite. Anyone doing a search using a search engine like AltaVista is soon made painfully aware that cyberspace is littered with the productions of ignorant, semi-literate, and/or crazed individuals" (13-14).

• Is this comment even worth addressing?  Maybe I'll just respond that a search of peer-reviewed journals quickly turns up ignorant comments made by educated, but crazed, individuals with delusions of being among the elite.

"We need, first, to decide what it is we seek to organize [as a means of ruling out material to be cataloged]. We can recognize pornography when we see it as well as any Supreme Court justice (14)."

• I don’t see his point (well, a little) and would like to suggest he read:  Dilevko, J. and L. Gottlieb.  "Selection and Cataloging of Adult Pornography Web Sites for Academic Libraries."  The Journal of Academic Librarianship v. 30 no. 1 (January 2004) p. 36-50.  It’s actually quite an interesting read.  Just one of the many articles I read before I was even accepted to library school.

Before we get to any kind of control, there is the question of identification of “worthwhile” materials. (15)

• Glad to see he recognizes it, if only from his definitions of "worthwhile" and "useful."

There are even more comments of a dismissive nature.  He also often makes a comment just to, in a sense, contradict himself later.  For example, see the first quote.  He dismisses the vast majority of electronic documents completely out of hand, and then later admits that, no, catalogers do not catalog everything by discussing our selectivity about ephemera.

In all fairness, I probably ought to point out the good things about this article, but reading and commenting on it has already taken up way too much time of my last Saturday before school starts.

Someday I may learn to skim when told to, but I’m not counting on it either.