habitually probing generalist

Or should that be crappy corporate compromises?  Or maybe better, metadata makes me maniacal?

I am hoping to make an annotated bibliography of the literature surrounding the education of catalogers and metadata librarians.  Education is to be be construed as formal schooling, on-the-job training, continuing education, ….

In Oct 2005 I went and talked to my now current Adv. Cat prof to talk about my plans for the CAS I have applied for.  She pointed out a Haworth monograph edited by Janet Swan Hill on just this topic:  Education for cataloging and the organization of information: pitfalls and pendulum.  It was co-published (as in simultaneously) as Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Volume 34, Numbers 1/2 and 3 2002.

That is the format I was familiar with it in.  I had already printed and read several essays from it via the Haworth Press Online through the library gateway.  Mattter-of-fact, CCQ and several other Haworth LIS titles are only available electronically in our library.

I put the monograph (pbk) on my Amazon wish list and got it for Christmas from my wonderful brother-in-law.  Thinking of my latent bibliography I was going to enter the articles into EndNote, which I have on my PC only.  But how was I going to account for their simultaneous publication; i.e., as a special issue of a journal with an ISSN, and as a monograph with an ISBN (actually 2, diff. bindings)?

Remember, the function of my bibliography is to provide access to a certain sub-group of literature.  If a piece is available in multiple places that should be accounted for.

So it got put off.  Till now. 

It seems our profession uses Chicago and APA styles primarily.  <cough>Damned embarrassing</cough>  Hmm.  What does Chicago say about simultaneous or co-publishing?

I went to the library today.  To find that answer, among others.  Hopefully even to generate questions.  And see people with even more hope (ooh, deliciously ambiguous…)

Chicago seems to sidestep the question.  So does most everyone else I can find.  I’m clear on the listing of the one that you actually use for a citation.  I’m not worried about citing.  My concern is access.  And, as you’ll see, if I can solve this then it will provide much needed access to this literature.

Most other things I can think of fail me too.  Miraculously, the OPAC is about the best.  At least searching one way.  But then, almost all the other uses of this data serve different functions, as does the OPAC.

I have been told that there are a few other publishers like Haworth, but that they are the worst.  Many of their journals (at least in LIS) are published as special issues and as monographs simultaneously.

Haworth has a preferred way of citing.  They put it several places in the journal issues and in the monograph, and also in the footer of the first page of every article in both formats.  E.g.,

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: "Why Does Everybody Hate Cataloging?" Hoerman, Heidi Lee. Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 34, No. 1/2, 2002, pp.31-41; and Education for Cataloging and the Organization of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum (ed: Janet Swan Hill) The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2002, pp. 31-41.

Pagination is the same in both formats.  But otherwise … what was that mess?  And, how it is supposed to be encoded in various indexes and catalogs, and more importantly, in bibliographies?

I checked for the indexing of these articles in Library Literature and LISA and they both only list CCQ.  I found a later article on the same topic by Janet Swan Hill in LR&TS where she cites several of these articles.  She uses the monograph in her citations.  So a bibliography that pointed out both sources would provide greater access than our current indexes and citation practices.

The OPAC to the rescue. 

But only for the staunch.  And those who know what hints to look for.  This was directly irrelevant to my present task, but I was trying to consider the case empirically.  I wanted to see how other systems "index" these entities.

We subscribe (electronically) to CCQ.  UIUC does not own the monograph.  But it is owned by several libraries in our consortium.  I looked closely at the monograph record and found an Other Title of "Cataloging & Classification Quarterly" and a Notes stating "Co-published simultaneously as Cataloging & classification quarterly, v. 34, nos. 1-3, 2002."  I take a look at the MARC form of the record and see that it’s a 730 and a 500 as suspected.  Those strategically placed bits of information could help someone looking for one or more of these articles.  Which searches is that Other Title field indexed in, though?  I’m assuming the notes field is indexed in Keyword Anywhere searches; but any others?  (And, please, I realize this may well vary from library to library, even if using the same ILS.  That is why I ask; there is no standard answer.)

The record for CCQ has a Has Supplement "Monographic supplement … to Cataloging & classification quarterly" (770).  Not exactly useful.

So what am I to do?  The best "advice" that I seeing so far is to include the co-published information in a note.  This will be an annotated bibliography so that is doable.  But, how will the Notes be indexed and in relation to other searches?  The other alternative seems to be to treat them as separate editions and to include both.

Are any of you out there familiar with Haworth?  Does Haworth do this routinely in other subject areas?  If so, how do the indexing/bibliographic structures within your subject discipline handle this simultaneous publication?

What other publishers do this?  I was reminded of the New Directions in series.  That one used to cause me nightmares when I did e-reserves.  I’d get a citation in one format but we had the other one, or both, but the monograph wasn’t analyzed so I couldn’t cross-ref to it from the journal, and the journal’s record only said something "useful" like the Has Supplement "Monographic supplement … to …."  Or something like that anyway.  It was such a nightmare that I have blocked most of it from memory.  I remember after one particular search for an article I needed for e-reserves, and after including several librarians on the Education floor, the monograph edition was found still waiting to be cataloged after 5 years.  It had gotten misplaced.

I welcome any suggestions on how to handle this.  Also, any warnings for other non-standard citation issues I might run into, because oh do I know that they are waiting in the wings to pounce, would be welcome.  Somehow I think I found the biggest bear already though!

If I only had to do the bibliography for Advanced Cat & Class I’d be set.  Plop it in EndNote or just type it up in Word and spit it out.  Either put the info in the Annotation or treat them as two editions, or both, and be done with it.

But my goal is to make this publicly available in whatever format one wants it (within reason).  I have to encode some type of item for Metadata class in 3-4 different schemas, then build a static repository page from which to harvest my records via OAI-PMH, and then construct my own encoding scheme which is better than the ones I used previously.  So, of course, I foolishly chose citations, specifically for annotated bibliographies as my format. 

I am going to talk to my Metadata prof on Tuesday morning to make sure I’m on the right track here.  In the meantime, I’m probably going to use TEI, DC, something else, and, if I am understanding it correctly, Bruce D’Arcus’ XBiblio and Citation Oriented Bibliographic Vocabulary.  Thanks to Catalogablog for pointing me to this!

My goal is to have my annotated bibliography marked up in some XML-based encoding schema and to be able to transform it on demand into various citation styles (Chicago, APA, something sensible…) and into various presentational formats (PDF, Word doc, HTML, OAI harvestable…).  That is the ultimate goal; not the end of semester goal.

Haworth has a recommendation for citing their co-published materials; but within LIS it looks as if they are ignored.  And that may well be for practical reasons.  Have I bit off more than I can chew (at least in one semester)?  Quite possibly.

Comments, suggestions, smart-assed comments welcome.  But please, none of that famous crap about "living in interesting times," or "at least you’ll learn a lot!"  Will I ever learn to choose something easy?  No.  So I guess I should ask will I ever come to grips with the fact that I cannot take the easy way when it comes to learning.  Is there an easy way?

And if I said something stupid above, fine.  Please point it out.  But remember that I am still learning here.  And I am having to learn an awful lot of highly technical things all at once.  So gentle guidance is politely requested.