… but broken for much longer.

This blog, Off the Mark, is 2 years old today. I shall refrain from calling it an anniversary, as such, since last year we sort of decided that my blogging anniversary ought to be from the start of my 1st public blog, …the thoughts are broken…, which debuted in January 2005. It was “decided” that this is really a continuation of the first and I cannot really disagree, even if I could employ serials cataloging and FRBR terminology to show otherwise.

Here’s what I wrote on my 3rd blogging anniversary back in January of this year.

There appear to have been 157 published posts here in the last year. Forty-seven of those were “Some things read this week …” posts, while there were another 8-10 that commented on that “column.” I posted 2 of the 3 poems that I wrote; “fallen” and “Stargazing.” Wow, what vastly different views of the world!

In the larger scheme of both blogs and my blogging overall, I have 961 posts, 5 in draft, and I’m remembering 3 specific ones that were published and then pulled at some point [not a light decision]. Will I reach a thousand posts by the end of the calendar year, or perhaps my 4th blogging anniversary in January? Who can say? Based on historical statistics I will easily. Based on current output and current thinking I would say no. We’ll see.

Things have been somewhat quiet around here lately and I expect them to stay that way for several reasons for a while, at least. I am doing some serious thinking about and work on my communication styles. I want to change a fair bit about how I say some things. Topics will probably stay much the same, although much of the personal productiveness and questioning of personal narrative will (has) generated some “new” topics for me; i.e., new for the blog.

So, while I really do not want to mark this as an official anniversary I do want to take this moment to note some of this and to say “Thank you” to any who read, comment, and critique. I take feedback here quite seriously. I simply cannot grow without the voice and help of others.

Quick shout-out to LISHost for hosting and support for the past 2 years.

Sunday, 10 Feb 2008

Maxwell, Robert L. 2008. FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed. Chicago: American Library Association.

Most of the holdup on this post was in trying to get good comments on this down. I cannot finish them right now, though, so I have cut what I did write and moved it to a separate draft review. But for now:

So far I can say that I would recommend this book, but with a few caveats. The most important is stressed by the author in the introduction and that is that is it based on several documents that are not in their final form, particularly FRAD.

This is an important book. It needs to be read by most librarian-types. But it will be more than difficult for many, including the willing, I fear.

I hope to be able to write more on this important book and even try publishing it.

Monday, 11 Feb 2008

Harris, Roy. 2005. The Semantics of Science. London: Continuum.

Finished this for the 2nd time.

Monday – Thursday, 11 – 14 Feb 2008

Kari, Jarkko, and Jenna Hartel. 2007. Information and higher things in life: Addressing the pleasurable and the profound in information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58, no. 8:1131-1147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20585 (Accessed February 8, 2008).

Kirsten, Into the Stacks, pointed me to this and I’m glad she did. Thanks, Kirsten.

This was a bus and lunch article for a couple of days, which is no reflection on it s quality or whether I liked it; only of my limited contexts for reading over those days. There were several things of reasonable length that all took me a couple days to get through around this time.

Kirsten expresses some concern for the distinction between higher and lower things. I do share that concern but I think the authors covered it as well as possible. They basically say that this dichotomy is simply a useful model to address an important—but currently lacking—perspective of information use in people’s lives. And I fully agree with the critique and proposals. My main caveat is that others respect that useful but false dichotomy as the (currently) useful explanatory concept that it is. A second concern, in individual studies, would be how higher and lower get operationalized since they really aren’t that kind of concept.

For me, this article presents an important critique, especially of the “information as problem-solving” paradigm [which I too find as utterly naive], and provides much fodder for the use of domain analysis. Its critique and methods can certainly be spun Integrationally and it will, thus, almost certainly make it into my paper as an Integrationist-type critique of the concepts of information, information need, information use, et. al.

I thought Kirsten did an excellent job relating the concepts into a lived example for her and communities of yoga practice. I’m not so good at those things myself—especially on short notice— and I’m already way behind on this post. If one were to take these ideas seriously then the possibilities for info use research has just mushroomed for you. And that could and should feed back into interface design, classificatory structures, vocabularies and indexing practices, ….

Kirsten was right that they cite Hjørland quite a bit, but it is interesting how all 7 cites to 5 articles are on one page in the section on A Research Front. They point out several ways Hjørland’s ideas are useful in this area, which just supports my contentions above.

Saturday, 16 Feb 2008

LeBlanc, Jim, and Martin Kurth. 2008. An Operational Model for Library Metadata Maintenance. Library Resources & Technical Services 52, no. 1:54-59.

Very interesting article that presents a model to operationalize thinking about library metadata maintenance. While it is quite probable that there are other ways to model this domain, this model looks to be quite useful for helping to think through what should be considered and at what, if any, level of commitment.

Highly recommended for anyone involved in the maintenance of library metadata.

Sunday, 4 Nov

Romero Guillém, María Dolores. “Graeco-Latin vocabulary in ESP texts and its pedagogical implications.” In Inchaurralde, Carlos (Ed.) Perspectives on Semantics and Specialised Languages. Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, 1994: 285-293.

Green Rebecca. “Conceptual Universals in Knowledge Organization and Representation.” [Keynote Address] In López-Huertas, María J. Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Organization for the 21st Century. Integration of Knowledge across Boundaries. Proceedings of the Seventh International ISKO Conference, 10-13 July 2002, Granada, Spain. Advances in Knowledge Organization, 8 (2002): 15-27.

Harris, Roy. The Language-makers. London: Duckworth, 1980. [Re-reading]

• Ch. 6.
• Ch. 7

Harel, David. Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can’t Do. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [for LIS452]

• Ch. 4: Sometimes we just don’t know

Monday, 5 Nov

Solnit, Rebecca. “Finding time: the fast, the bad, the ugly, the alternatives.” Orion Magazine September/October 2007.

Found via Library Juice. Thanks, Rory!

For variety’s sake I’ll use a different paragraph to give the gist of the article:

The conundrum is that the language to describe the ineffable splendors and possibilities of our lives takes time to master, takes a certain unhurried engagement with the tasks of description, assessment, critique, and conversation; that to speak this slow language you must slow down, and to slow down you must have some inkling of what you will gain by doing so. It’s not an elite language; nomadic and remote tribal peoples are now quite good at picking and choosing from development’s cascade of new toys, and so are some of the cash-poor, culture-rich people in places like Louisiana. Poetry is good training in speaking it, and skepticism is helpful in rejecting the four horsemen of this apocalypse, but they both require a mind that likes to roam around and the time in which to do it.

Monday – Wednesday, 5 – 7 Nov

Harris, Roy. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. 1st ed, Kidlington, Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1998. [Re-reading]

• Ch. 1: Language and Communication [Mon-Tue]
• Ch. 2: Language and the Language Myth [Tue-Wed]

Wednesday, 7 Nov

Renear, Allen H. and David Dubin. “Three of the Four FRBR Group 1 Entity Types are Roles, not Types.” In Grove, Andrew and Abebe Rorissa, Eds. Proceedings of the 70th ASIS&T Annual Meeting Volume 44 2007: Joining Research and Practice: Social Computing and Information Science, October 19-24, Milwaukee, WI.

There are things I want to say about this but will refrain for now. At the moment, I only want to ask, “Why?”

Thursday – Friday, 8 – 9 Nov

Harris, Roy. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. 1st ed, Kidlington, Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1998. [Re-reading]

• Ch. 3: Language and Meaning
• Ch 4: Language and Discourse

Thursday, Saturday, 8, 10 Nov

Richter, Melvin. “Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas.” Journal of the History of Ideas 48(2), Apr.-Jun., 1987:247-263. [via JSTOR]

Was cited by one of the chapters I was reading in the book on Begriffsgeschichte last week. This does a somewhat better job of saying what Begriffsgeschichte is, at least if one is looking for a single article/chapter length look.

Saturday, 10 Nov

Harris, Roy. The Language-makers. London: Duckworth, 1980. [Re-reading]

• Ch. 8.

Mertz, David. Text Processing in Python. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2003.

• Appendix A: Selective and Impressionistic Short Review of Python

Sunday, 2 Sep

Bade, David. “I Know Where I Am Going, Do You?” Remarks at the ALCTS Serials Section, Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee, Update Forum “Continuing Resources Cataloging: Where in the World Are We Going?” ALA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, June 25, 2007. [pdf available at E-LIS]

You folks do have the E-LIS feed in your readers don’t you? Lots of good stuff, much of it in languages other than English, comes across this feed.

Of course, you probably ought to be subscribed to the dLIST feed, too. Or you can choose to sub by subject. See this page. Maybe you can sub to E-LIS by subject, too, but I have no idea. I prefer to see it all and thus not miss things in a subject I might not normally focus on.

Bates, Marcia J. “Information and knowledge: an evolutionary framework for information science.” Information Research 10 (4), July 2005.

This is one of the Bates’ articles that Hjørland was responding to in “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” [see below and previous post]

Wow!!

This is a doozy, in many ways. Bates is attempting to use the ideas of evolutionary psychology to gain a better foothold on the concept of information.

Sunday – Monday, 2 – 3 Sep

Bates, Marcia J. “Fundamental Forms of Information.” JASIST 57 (8): 1033-1045, 2006. doi: 10.1002/asi.20369

This is one of the Bates’ articles that Hjørland was responding to in “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” [see below and previous post]

I think I am going to have to write a separate post on the ideas in these two articles by Bates.

Monday, 3 Sep

Hjørland, Birger. “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” JASIST 58 (10): 1448-1456, 2007. doi: 10.1002/asi.20620

Originally read 11 August 2007. If you care why I re-read it, look at the comments on the post it was included in.

Furner, Jonathan. “Information Studies Without Information.” Library Trends 52 (3), Winter 2004: 427-446. [Available in the usual places or in UIUC's institutional repository IDEALS]

Cite by Hjørland (above) as arguing “that all the problems we need to consider in information studies can be dealt with without any need for a concept of information. He suggests that to understand information as relevance is currently the most productive for theoretical information studies” (fn7, p. 1454).

Fairly thought-provoking, but I felt that explication of ideas became a little terse near the end of the paper. There were a few places where I wrote, “Huh? How/when did we realize this?”

To the extent that he accepts the concept of information, he seems fairly conflicted whether or not potential informativeness counts or not. The discussion seems to waver back and forth, and then we get a decently explicatory paragraph on 441 that outlines why we need to include potentially informative/relevant messages into our conceptual definition. But then the paragraph ends with this thought (to which I fully subscribe): “In any case, it would appear that determining the extent to which a message is relevant to hearer a at time t is what is more important.” So. Which is it?

In the discussion of The utterance as information we get the following:

In effect, this view commits one not only to the proposition that information is anything that is interpretable—i.e., anything that is capable of being interpreted—but also that the interpretability of an entity does not depend on its historically having been interpreted. Entities can thus be classified as information on the basis of their potential to inform (439, emphasis mine).

OK. I agree that the view espoused in this section commits one to everything in the first sentence. But where did that thus in the second sentence come from? It does not seem to me to follow logically. It is simply a stipulation; perhaps a stipulation based on something along these lines:

If we undertake an inventory of all entities in the world that are potentially capable of being interpreted and decide which are, in fact, interpretable—and moreover, we state that all entities are capable of interpretation—then by the very act of our inventory—and our stipulative definition—we have thus interpreted (and defined) every entity as being interpretable and thus all entities can be classed as information. In fact, there is no need for the inventory or the subsequent classification based on potential interpretability. All entities just are information.

So, perhaps it does follow logically, but in a fully circular way.

In fact, this is highly similar to what Bates has said in the above articles. “Information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy.” The only thing not information for Bates is pure entropy, as it has no organization.

A highly philosophical and thought-provoking article, as I said.

I am grateful for a short discussion on pp. 440-441 which touches on information as uncertainty reducing, amongst other things. This may be helpful in formulating my response to Hjørland.

Monday – Tuesday, 3 – 4 Sep

Cornelius, Ian. “Theorizing Information for Information Science.” ARIST 36 (2002). Medford, NJ: Information Today. 393-425.

This is a pretty good lit review that ends with the following wonderful comment:

However, as we make further attempts to tether the ass of information to the tree of knowledge, we should reflect that, until we know what it is that we cannot do without a theory of information, we will be unlikely to get one (421).

Tuesday – Wednesday, 4 – 5 Sep

Harris, Roy, and Christopher Hutton. Definition in theory and practice: Language, lexicography and the law. London: Continuum, 2007.

Began Part III. Definition and the Law. Read ch. 8 “The Definition of Law and Legal Definition” and ch. 9 “Strategies of Construction.”

Thursday, 6 Sep

Harris and Hutton. See above.

Ch. 10 “Linguistics, Science and Meaning.”

Friday, 7 Sep

Harris and Hutton. See above.

Ch. 11 (Conclusion) “Definition, Indeterminancy and Reference.”

This was a good book; one which bears re-reading. I only wish it wasn’t so God-awful expensive!

Rowley, Jennifer. “The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy.” Journal of Information Science 33 (2), 2007: 163-180. doi: 10.1177/0165551506070706

Suggested by my advisor Wed. when discussing my newest venture into the concept of information.

This article looks at “the data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy by examining the articulation of the hierarchy in a number of widely read textbooks [in information systems and in knowledge management], and analysing their statements about the nature of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom” (abstract).

Overall, this is a reasonable article. It just isn’t very good for my purposes. While it has a fair few sources, a third of them are textbooks in either information systems or knowledge management. Notice that does not say “information science.” They are also, of course, by definition heavily business-oriented.

I know that I get myself into pickles with what I say sometimes and as much as “knowledge management” bugs me silly I realize that I have yet to settle on definitions of these concepts that work for me in the work I want to do in this field, but “wisdom management”? The article doesn’t quite go that far, but it sure seems to be pointing to it.

It does ask some useful questions about the relationships between these concepts, and suggests that inverting the DIKW hierarchy (pyramid) might be “more evocative” (176). More of a “wisdom funnel” (176). I’m still undecided on the DIKW hierarchy since I have yet to fully suss out these concepts for myself, but if I accept it at all my guess is that I would prefer the inverted form.

One other small concern is that the few textbooks that even address wisdom situate “in the context of leadership. Wisdom is seen as a desirable and even essential characteristic of executive business leaders” (177). While on one hand this is probably somewhat true, I think these few textbook writers are out of touch with the reality of much business leadership. Also, the dearth of authors of these texts even addressing the topic is in my favor.

Wisdom has been spun as having a highly ethical component, as it probably should be. So from the corporate viewpoint, leaders should be wise in regards to how they conduct their personal lives as representatives of their companies, but I have a hard time believing that many large corporations want their executives to lead with a focus on wisdom in its ethical mode. I, on the other, wish they would. [See Jackall, Robert. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. for more information on "how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness" (blurb from back of paperback).]

Perhaps that is why the focus on “wisdom management.” Wisdom and its ethics re-interpreted from a corporate standpoint is what they want, but certainly not wisdom in a Socratic vein.

Saturday, 8 Sep

Weiss, Paul J. and Steve Shadle. “FRBR in the Real World.” The Serials Librarian 52 1/2, 2007: 93-104.

Found via The FRBR Blog 6 Sep 2007.

Hjørland, Birger. “Theory and Metatheory of Information Science: A New Interpretation.” Journal of Documentation 54 (5), December 1998: 606-621.

Cited by Bates (2005) “Information and knowledge: an evolutionary framework for information science.” See above.

This is an excellent article that discusses the role of epistemological theories in IS. I know that many folks avoid philosophical discussions like the plague, but this article is quite understandable by all. Another reason many folks avoid these sorts of discussions is that they want answers. But as Hjørland writes:

Epistemology has no final answer, the is no consensus about the scientific method. Insight in epistemology can, however, provide you with knowledge about the merits and weaknesses of the different solutions, and progress in the scientific method as well as classification must be based on the historical evidence gained in epistemology and science studies (613).

For anyone interested in Dr. Hjørland’s forthcoming visit to UIUC I highly suggest this article.

For everyone else, I also recommend it highly as a good, balanced and easily understood overview of how and why epistemology is central to our discipline.

Sunday – Monday, 15 – 16 Jul

Allgood, Julian Everett. “Serials and Multiple Versions, or the Inexorable Trend towards Work-Level Displays.” Library Resources & Technical Services 51 (3), July 2007: 160-178.

Monday, 16 Jul

Crawford, Walt. First Have Something to Say: Writing for the Library Profession. Chicago: American Library Association, 2003.

Read chaps. 1-6

Nhat Hanh, Thich. Peace is every step : the path of mindfulness in everyday life. New York N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1991.

Finished the 1st third, “Breathe! You Are Alive.”

Tuesday, 17 Jul

Crawford, Walt. First Have Something to Say.

Read chaps. 7-11

Nilsson, Mikael, Pete Johnston, Ambjörn Naeve and Andy Powell. “Towards an Interoperability Framework for Metadata Standards.” Preprint of paper presented at DC-2006 Conference, Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, 3-6 October 2006.

Read for Metadata Roundtable 18 July 2007 and a discussion of the DC Abstract Model.

Hagedorn, Kat, Suzanne Chapman and David Newman. “Enhancing Search and Browse Using Automated Clustering of Subject Metadata.” D-Lib Magazine 13 (7/8), July/August 2007.

Crawford, Walt. First Have Something to Say.

Read chaps. 12-15

Thursday, 19 Jul

Crawford, Walt. First Have Something to Say.

Read chaps. 16-19 & Appendix. Finished.

Friday – Saturday, 20 – 21 Jul

Read more of Peace is Every Step.

If you’ve read any Walt then you ought to realize that his voice is perfect for a topic like this. If you haven’t read any Walt, then get busy.

Conference photos here. More touristy photos here [includes some conference attendees]. Everyone’s photos here [which means jennimi and me.]

Rebecca Green has a much better synopsis than I will produce at 025.431: The Dewy Blog.

• James Turner, Professor, University of Montreal.
• Clare Beghtol, Professor, University of Toronto.
• Jens-Erik Mai, Professor and Vice Dean, University of Toronto.

comments from panel and audience will be in Day 2, part 2 post.

Contributed Papers Session 3:

An Irrational Truth, Or the Marginalization of People Through Classification in Natural Disaster Settings. [Note: Paper title is different from presentation title.] Randall Kemp, University of Washington.

This was quite an interesting paper. The big issue here, though, is that there are so many classifications going on in a natural disaster situation. There is the immediate triage of various [multiple kinds of] caregivers and emergency responders. There is the preplanning classification[s] built into the disaster plans of the incident commanders. There are the classifications needed to communicate with the media. There are the classifications needed by policy makers. Some of these are immediate, some are long-term, some are flexible and changeable, some are fixed. And this only begins to scratch the surface. The question quickly becomes, “How do we find the people in all of these classifications?” Despite all the complicated issues, this is important work.

The Economic and Aesthetic Axis of Information Organization Frameworks [extended abstract]. Joseph T. Tennis, University of British Columbia.

Information Organization Frameworks (IOFs) “are made up of a distinct structure, work practice, and arise from a discourse.”

I think Joe is on to something here, but this economic axis is an oversimplification.

Tagging for Health Information Organisation and Retrieval. Margaret Kipp, University of Western Ontario.

For those interested in tagging, and in particular the intersection of tagging and traditional classification, Margaret Kipp’s work is worth watching. Go find her earlier stuff and keep an eye out for her future work. I believe Louise Spiteri is one of the few others working in this space.

Lunch

Contributed Papers Session 4:

Faceted Navigation and Browsing Features in New OPACs: A More Robust Solution to Problems of Information Seekers? [extended abstract] Kathryn La Barre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I’m really hoping that Kathryn’s research agenda can be funded. We really need to know whether these types of systems are actually effective or whether they just appeal to our beliefs.

Study on the Influence of Vocabularies used for Image Indexing in a Multilingual Retrieval Environment. Elaine Ménard, Université de Montréal.

While image retrieval is not my area, I found this fascinating [even though still in its early stages] based on my readings in the area of multilingual thesauri.

Coffee break

Contributed Papers Session 5:

In the Margins: Reflections on Scribbles, Knowledge Organization, and Access [extended abstract]. June Abbas, SUNY Buffalo.

June rocks! She has a tablet PC so was able to scribble on her own presentation.

She cites Wilson (1968) reminding us that “What a text says is not necessarily what it reveals or what it allows us to conclude … but what is not said may interest us more than what is said” (p. 18). Alert readers of this blog ought to have learned this lesson by now.

She asks whether “reasons and uses of annotation in the print environment [can] also be extended to the digital tagging practice as well?”

“Where do we go from here?” “What we need to consider now is how we can use these sources to adapt, augment, revitalize our knowledge organization structures.”

Motivations? Personal findability or organization; communal or familial sharing; meaning making; performative act?

Did I mention that June rocks?

Performance Works: Continuing to Comprehend Instantiation. Richard P. Smiraglia, Long Island University.

Anticipating New Media: A Faceted Classification of Material Types. Rebecca Green, OCLC Dewey Decimal Classification (and Nancy Fallgren, University of Maryland).

While perhaps not the sexiest of topics, it is extremely important and far more complex than our general, in practice, orientation of a simple dichotomy of content vs. carrier, which itself is often highly confused. This is productive clarification of many of the involved issues, and I am really glad to see it for many reasons. Not the least of which is Hjørland’s comment regarding the need to record and qualitatively discuss our disagreements in the literature so that we may truly learn.

Content vs. carrier, or content and carrier, or perhaps content and carrier and what else? Content, infixion, and carrier per T. Delsey (see Delsey cites in her paper). When and in what ways does one facet limit or impose constraints on the other? They are interdependent (see L. Howarth 1997 cite in her paper).

The FRBR Expression entity: “Another development of the content vs. carrier issue questions whether there may be the need for intermediate bibliographic categories between pure intellectual or artistic content and pure physicality” (88). The FRBR Expression entity bothers her because it is being used to mean lots of different things: two editions of a work, two translations of a work (in the same or different languages), different interpretations of an artistic performance, printed text vs. audio recording of text being read (or performed) (88).

I fully agree with her here. IFLA FRBR folks did some wonderful work in their documentation. They also blew a few things, some of which are because they wanted to keep it simple, some perhaps because they were too close to the issues and document, while others may have been due to a compromise … or a mixture. The Expression entity is one such failure. Manifestation and that unfortunate line drawn between Manifestation and Expression level which supposedly shows the line between the intellectual and the physical. That diagram in, and of, itself is a disaster, imnsho. I think the committee knew what they meant, kept the documentation simple (which I agree can be a benefit usually) and thus blew it.

Both Manifestation and Expression are complex creatures. Neither is (only) what they purport to be; they are both so much more than that. And this is not a good thing. Manifestation is a purely conceptual entity that is composed of one or more physical items. Its component parts (if more than a singular instance) may never be all together in one physical space-time grouping.

Another reason the “line of demarcation” was unfortunate on that diagram that has now been replicated ad nauseum with a subsequent loss of the little nuance in the text is that the physicality of a Manifestation is a vastly different kind of physicality of an Item. But it is not a difference than can easily be explicated in a sentence or two.

Another issue with the physicality line and much along the lines of Dr. Green’s issue here is that, although non-physically instantiated Expressions are logically possible, they are generally not the sort of entity that libraries are in the habit of worrying about. Libraries do the recorded information and knowledge of humankind. Thus, almost every Expression has some form of physicality. And generally this physicality is of the sort in which we now have a conceptual and physical Manifestation and an Item. Electronic-based media is adding some twists to the mix, to be sure, but they can be accommodated if Dr. Green’s initial attempt at explicating these issues is furthered.

By the way, all of that from “I fully agree with her. …” was all me.

Dr. Green showed 4 ways in which DDC attempts to show content and carrier distinctions. She said that perhaps we’ll see some payoff from her work soon in the schedules. I am unsure of how I feel about the DDC, specifically, and classification structures like it, for many and complex reasons, but I am glad that Dr. Green is working on it.

I want to recant my opening line a bit to, “While I know some of you won’t find this a sexy topic, it should be considered far sexier than it is.” This is a complex and old topic, with plenty of hard practical and philosophical problems. I have the feeling that this is a prime bit of description that would be well served by faceting. But we need to do a good job conceptually, experiment, refine, implement, test and provide feedback in the literature.

Closing Session: Knowledge Organization in North America, Kathryn La Barre (synopsis of the symposium). The “charge.”

I will try to add some notes on this on the Day 2, part 2 post. Or not. See Rebecca Green for a good summary.

I apologize to all those authors/presenters whose papers I did not get to comment on. This is way “behind schedule” and I’ve just decided to start a 3rd post to finish this out. Unfortunately, I now have more pressing things than conference reporting. Of course, I think of this as far more than conference reporting. Which is why I didn’t say I have things of more importance; that would be so far from the truth.

Thanks again to all who made this symposium possible! It was an amazing time and experience.

Possibly another light week due to all-day on campus class (Topic Maps begins) and travel to Toronto for NASKO.

Sunday, 10 Jun

Van de Sompel, Herbert and Oren Beit-Arie. “Generalizing the OpenURL Framework beyond References to Scholarly Works.” D-Lib Magazine 7 (7/8) July/August 2001.

Pepper, Steve. The TAO of Topic Maps: Finding the Way in the Age of Infoglut.

Originally read 17 Feb 2007 for 590RO Spring 2007. Re-read for 590TML Topic Maps which starts Tuesday.

If you want some non-technical insight into what Topic Maps are this is the article to read.

Campbell, D. G., Brudin, M., MacLean, G., and Baird, C. (2007). Everything old is new again: Finding a place for knowledge structures in a satisficing world. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1896

For NASKO 2007.

Smiraglia, R. P. (2007). Performance works: Continuing to comprehend instantiation. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1910

For NASKO 2007.

Kemp, R. B. (2007). Classifying marginalized people, focusing on natural disaster survivors. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1908

For NASKO 2007.

La Barre, K. (2007). Faceted navigation and browsing features in new OPACS: A more robust solution to problems of information seekers? (extended abstract) Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1912

For NASKO 2007.

Zhang, J. (2007). Ontology and the Semantic Web. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1897

For NASKO 2007.

Monday – Tuesday, 11 – 12 Jun

Dahlberg, Ingetraut. “Knowledge Organization: A New Science?.” Knowledge Organization 33 (1), 2006: 11-19.

Cited by Smiraglia, see above.

McIlwaine, I. C. “Trends in Knowledge Organization Research.” Knowledge Organization 30 (2), 2003: 75-86.

Stumbled over while copying a different article.

Discusses the trends in research in knowledge organization for the preceding 5 years.

Wednesday – Thursday, 13 – 14 Jun

Tennis, Joesph T. “Experientialist Epistemology and Classification Theory: Embodied and Dimensional Classification.” Knowledge Organization 32 (2): 2005: 79-92.

Stumbled over while copying some of this other stuff.

It is interesting but, at least from what I keep finding, it is more conceptual work from Joe Tennis. Where are the follow on empirical studies that he lays out? Are they just left for someone else, perhaps for a grad student? I like a lot about his conceptual work over the last couple years, which includes some ideas about how to extend thesauri, this piece which actually makes use of Lakoff instead of just citing him, and so on. But all of it needs to be validated, and in several cases actually built so that it can be validated. Tennis admits that. But then seems to move on to something else. Maybe I’ll ask him about it while here in Toronto.

I did not get a chance to ask Joe about this. I could have made it perhaps, but seeing as I was having a hard time figuring out how to phrase it without sounding snarky (which is not my intent!) I just let it go.

This past weekend I attended my first North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) conference (their 22nd) in Louisville, KY.

It was fun, interesting, and casual. I rode down and stayed with Steve Oberg, who I found out (from someone else) once we got there is a Past President of NASIG. Actually, over the course of 3 days I found it out from many people. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with Steve and get to know each other better.

I finally got to meet Anna Creech, although we never found more than a few minutes to hang out. I never did manage to catch up with Greg Schwartz. He actually lives a goodly ways outside of town so my only chance was during the day on Friday and it didn’t work out.

I did get to talk with Karen for a minutes on late Friday afternoon for 10 minutes or so. Twas nice.

Thursday

The first event I attended was the reception on Thursday evening at the Frazier International History Museum. It was nice. I wandered up to the Late Night Social later in the evening but I didn’t remember anyone’s names although I recognized some faces. I sat around for a few minutes, but not wanting to drink (??) I didn’t “impose” myself on anyone and wandered up to the room.

Friday

Vision Session I: Bob Stein, Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book. “The Evolution of Reading and Writing in the Networked Era.”

Strategy Session: “From Tech Services to Leadership.” Panel relating skills learned in TS to demonstrating library leadership.

• Joyce Ogburn, Director of Marriott Library at the University of Utah
  Karen Calhoun, Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services (formerly Asst. University Librarian for Technical Services at Cornell University)
  Carol Pitts Diedrichs, Dean of Libraries at the University of Kentucky

Tactics Session: “Successive Entry, Latest Entry or None of the Above? How the MARC21 Format, FRBR and the concept of a Work Could Revitalize Serials Management.” Katherine C. Adams, Britta Santamauro, both of Yale University.

Strategy Session: “Tumbling Dice: Publishers, Aggregators, and ERM.” Sandy Hurd, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.; Kathy Klemperer, Library and Information Systems Consulting; and Linda Miller, Library of Congress.

Dine Around at Jarfi’s. Good food and conversation.

Saturday

Vision Session II: Karen Schneider. “State of Emergency.” Alternate title: “The Paranoia Presentation.”

Strategy Session: “Hitting the Trifecta: Alternative Career Paths for Those with an M.L.S.” Ann McKee (consortia), Bob Schatz (book vendors), Christine Stamison (subscription agents), Steve Oberg (corporate), Beverley Geer (publisher), and Michael Markwith (subscription agent)

Tactics Session: “A Needle in the Haystack — Finding that First Academic Serials Job and Advancing to the Next Level.” Kay G. Johnson, Radford University and Gayle Baker, University of Tennessee.

Lunch & Informal Discussion Groups — I was interested in 3 of these and not sure exactly why I went to the one I did, but it was interesting. Perhaps it was my interest in continuing education, and that I hadn’t been to the 3rd floor in that wing of the hotel yet.

I attended SCCTP (Serials Cooperative Training Program) instead of Web 2.0 Tools for Libraries or RDA and Serials. Web 2.0 was easy enough to skip, but RDA ….

Tactics Session: “Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: New and Not-So-New Serialists Share Experiences.” Susan Davis, University of Buffalo, SUNY and Sarah Morris, Illinois College of Optometry.

I skipped the Endeavor User Group Meeting. I kind of wanted to go but I had been fighting a headache all day and it was at its worst. If my institution had been paying I would have made myself go but it was my dime ($375) and I took a break.

Brainstorming Session: This was on why and how to remedy the situation of very few wanting to run for leadership offices in the organization.

Dine Around at Saffron’s I wish I knew the name of the restaurant (thanks Steve & Greg), but I just kind of lucked into the group as they were heading over and they had room for an additional person. It was a lovely Persian place. Cost me a bundle, but it was worth every penny. Of course, going with this group caused me to miss hanging out with Anna Creech and her posse for barbecue. But seeing as I was already seated at the restaurant when I got her call…. Great food and conversation.

Open Mic Late Night Social: Some talented and funny people in NASIG. If I go next year (and I’d love to) I’ll have to practice some of my stories.

Sunday

Vision Session III: Daniel Chudnov, Library of Congress. “A New Approach to Service Discovery and Resource Delivery.”

Strategy Session: “It Takes a Community; The CLOCKSS Initiative.” Victoria Reich, CLOCKSS Initiative, Stanford University Libraries

I got to this one late as I stuck around to ask Dan Chudnov a question and then spoke with Britta Santamauro of Yale about her presentation on Friday re FRBR. I was much more impressed after speaking with her. I only stuck around a while. It was standing room only, and despite the lively presentation I could learn all of this from a decent article so I took a break.

Tactics Session: “Education Trifecta: Win attention, Palce knowledge, Show understanding.” Virginia Taffurelli, New York Public Library; Betsy J. Redman, Arizona State University; and Steve Black, College of Saint Rose.

This was about how to do serials continuing education, particularly online, and on Steve’s on campus MLS course in serials at SUNY-Albany.

Conference Closing.

Comments

[Side note: I was reminded once again that quite a few married librarians do not wear wedding rings. (1) Life is hard enough people. (2) I thought we were the "info people." Hmmm. Thought I wrote about this phenomenon before but I can't find it; perhaps they were only f2f conversation which I know I had.]

I will write up some of these presentations although probably not much about any of them. Several reasons for this: (1) My notes are generally pretty skimpy, (2) some of them were less informative than they could have been, (3) I have other things to do, (4) and there aren’t all that many serialists out there.

If you would like some more info on something I have not yet written about or do not write about feel free to contact me and I will shoot you what I can or try to put you in touch with the presenters. I will probably say something about the Vision Sessions. Otherwise it may just be a comment or two here and there.

I haven’t had a chance to check this out yet but it sounds wonderfully intriguing. Steve Black (The College of Saint Rose) has a program where he interviews all sorts of journal editors about all sorts of topics.

Periodical Radio’s mission is to record dialogues with the interesting, creative, dedicated people who edit and produce journals and magazines.

Listen online or download programs.

And a very big “Thanks for everything!” to Steve Oberg. You were more than wonderful!

I was quite disappointed with the amount [not the quality] of public testimony. I did not work up anything to say as I figured that there would be many people far more “qualified” than me jostling for room at the microphone. Sadly, that was not the case. The 3 hours set aside for public testimony lasted about 30 minutes with only 3 people signed up.

I will be providing written testimony to the Working Group and I highly encourage anyone and everyone to do so! All written testimony (such a fancy word, eh? Input, comments, concerns,…) must be sent to Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. Contact info on this page.

Please do so! Particularly those of you in the public, special and school libraries. As you will see (shortly), it was noted that there was little representation from, of, or by, these communities. Do not let your voices and concerns go unheard.

Public Testimony

Sara Shatford Layne -Principal Cataloger – UCLA and professor in SJSU distance program

(1) Don’t forget the needs of research faculty members. There is a danger in trying to do the best for the largest number. Who will do this if not the academic libraries. An example. One researcher creates the cure for cancer vs. 4000 undergraduate papers on Hamlet.
(2) Seem to need more, not less structure and people are asking for the structure
(3) Systems we use are a kind of structure; we need to influence system creation
(4) Authority data has been underutilized
(5) What can be automated?
(6) Cataloging as a public good, we need to lobby for this over the business model – the business model does not apply here. [An economist told her at a meeting she attended that "Cataloging is a public good."]

Kevin Randall – Northwestern University, Head of Serials Cataloging

Interested to hear about the conflict between Bade/Hillman. I saw none; one is talking about WHAT, the other HOW. There is a loss of balance, too much emphasis on improving the container at the expense of content. My concern with the container is that it not leak!

Relating to CONSER standard level record:
We are focusing too much on Access, not Identify. This is being rushed to implementation. We need a graduated level of standards; the present ones are like an opaque un-marked measuring cup. It is difficult for cataloging managers to give guidance. Here it would seem that a cooperative program is being pushed by one member at the inconvenience of all other library/cooperative members. We must ask, what is the essence of cooperation? The standard level record is touted as “a floor, not a ceiling,” but with Encoding Level marked as blank it inference is full-level cataloging.

Don’t manage mortgage the future of FRBR user tasks in catalogs, we need to build up user services, but not at the expense of bibliographic control which connects our users to resources. [Updated 15 May via feedback from Kevin Randall, and in his own words: "I would suggest a correction to the last paragraph, though: instead of "manage", I said "mortgage". The point being, with the direction currently being taken in stripping things out of catalog records, we're mortgaging our future in terms of being able to meet FRBR user tasks. Without proper bibliographic control, we won't be able to connect
users to resources."]

Michael Norman – UIUC, Head of Content Access Management

Discussed U of I digitizing efforts. In our current project we have opportunities to augment/enhance records but find that current structures do not accord places for this. We are working to convert MARC records to MARC XML with a METS wrapper. We are looking to integrate MARC with other standards. (out on the web) there are examples of books with the table of contents displayed as tag clouds, we need standards for this.

The U of I digitizing effort will double the size of our catalog, and the records will go into OCLC. We need more discussion about single vs multiple records, this is a different world. How do we build these structures?

How can we use OAI/PMH to make records better and refresh them as changes occur?

We need to be where the user is and we are working on this at the U of I: by creating widgets to assist with library searches across assorted databases and the OPAC as well as digital collections.

As to looking to automate records – they are imperfect, especially with regard to subject analysis, but there are parts that can be automated. One publisher, for example, Springer-Verlag generates metadata for e-book packages at the title and chapter level and these records are not too bad, though they may need tuning.

Clifford Lynch – Director of the Coalition for Networked Information; Working Group member

Summation

Speaking for the task force:

This is a process and I urge you to submit comments.
The next meeting will be about Organization (Systems) and Economics and I will build/ frame questions for the third meeting.

An extract from the comments today:

There have been important reminders about quality control starting with Bade’s questions about the scope of bibliographic resources we are trying to manage. Is the scope national? International? Quality control relates to this question intimately. Perfect quality is easy to talk about and advocate for – is a moral position, and few human systems can provide this. [To which Bade replied later].

Discussions of quality control operationally must consider:

• How will we measure it? With what metrics?
• We are constrained by economics (funding is not infinite)
• What are the trade-offs? We must think deeply about these.
• What do user communities have to do with quality? Is it collaborative? Should it result only from internal efforts?

Many insightful comments today about legacy vocabularies and related tools. I agree, especially with the issue of the economic models for opening these up. If these can become components of infrastructure their values will increase. Presently the economic models are impediments and need to be revisited. There has been surprisingly little discussion about rethinking the content of these vocabularies. How should something like the Name Authority File change in a networked environment? What is the role of the author ID that is being discussed in different communities? We need to think in a much broader context. Discussions about the author ID are vigorous elsewhere.

There has been much about the interplay of traditional bibliographic practices and “new bibliographic practices” such as user tagging, etc. More central questions come with the implications of fully digital objects. The argument is not between user tags and LCSH, but about text retrieval computations or representation and retrieval but little has been said about this.

As to a new term for bibliographic control: It is easy to become intoxicated by visions of the digital future. Physical artifacts won’t go away. We need to help people find them. Surrogates will become the order of the day.

What is a bibliographic record? Is it a structure to populate with the digitized text of a book and an bibliographic record? Do we want to go further? What about computational derivatives – forming a concordance of the most common words. What about fully digital items? Do we need to think about the whole spectrum or draw some line in the sand? This is no longer a theoretical question posed in order to come up with best practices.

There were also valuable comments about interactions between tools, systems and standards. We need to be mindful that the systems themselves can affect our viewpoint.

Regarding better tools for cataloging: What is our goal? What are the priorities? I want more correct records, speed for copy cataloging and deeper records.

[Yes; we should do more than just say we need better tools for cataloging. But anyone who has spent more than a day or two using our current tools can easily start down this road! Nonetheless, I agree with him. Hmmm.

What would be the best context for starting and recording this discussion? Another wiki? Perhaps the NGC4LIB list? LITA and/or ALCTS? Catalogers and metadata specialists, what do you say? How should we go about documenting what we need to do our jobs—perhaps even faster, better and with less expense?]

Let us return to the point about making it easier to contribute to or improve collective metadata. There is a group called the proof-readers collective [Distributed Proofreaders] in which individuals sign up to do as many pages of proofreading a day as possible for Project Gutenberg. Can we think of ways to do this?

Comments regarding systems and economics; i.e. questions for the 3rd meeting:

(1) We need to move from “absolute perfection” to resource allocation.
(2) We need to open up our vocabularies to achieve maximum value
(3) We need notification of changes and propagation of system improvements.
(4) The locus of responsibility for maintaining, notifying and improving standards is too diffuse now. There are many different players with many different ideas. The process is complex, to the extent that we want wide use, we need coherent explanations for outside communities.
(5) We need to think about public accessibility of standards. These products should be easily worldwide accessible like NISO standards. This is urgently necessary. “Our descriptive standards are dead in the water if not widely and readily accessible, in electronic form.”

[And I do not believe Cliff meant the current RDA product model, but more directly like NISO. If I want a copy of the Z39.19-2005 monolingual controlled vocabulary standard I just download a FREE copy. But he also means available in a "Webified" version, not just as a pdf.]

Public comments on Cliff Lynch’s Summation

Richard Stewart – Indian Trails Public Library District

Seems to be a serious lack of representation of much of the library community here today, especially with the invited speakers. Public, special and school libraries have needs that all need to be addressed; I hope they’re being considered in the overall process.

Lynch asked that these communities please provide feedback via the written testimony process.

James Nye – Asian bibliographer, UIC

What about the international and multilingual communities? The area of the world that he covers is composed of approximately 2 Billion people; think of the extensive opportunities for collaboration and learning from each other.

Scripts and character sets are still major issues.

Joan ?? Schuitema - Head of Cataloging at UIC [Sorry; I tried to find out who this might be, but UIC servers seem hosed this morning.] [Updated 15 May thanks to Kevin Randall.]

Wants to confront the “all or nothing” thinking that seems prevalent

Is also a therapist. When people are under stress, black and white thinkers (catalogers, by training) will shift even more to black and white. We need to move back to the center to address the gray areas.

Marc Gartler – Director of Library Services, Harrington College of Design

In our description fields, ‘ill.” is not sufficient. Access even to just titles [of images in resources] would be of immense value to the study of visual design. More granularity.

Deanna Marcum – Summation

Thanks to the speakers and for the commentary.

Bowen referred to gray areas in this discussion of the bibliographic future: LoC is in the middle of a large gray area. It may be helpful for you to hear the considerations that LoC is making as we discuss the future:

Are there roles and responsibilities of LoC that we want to continue or to embrace?

As part of this strategic planning process in library services I read all of the annual reports of the Librarians of Congress back to the beginning. In the early years these were philosophical documents, that contained views of what LoC could or should be.

For decades LoC has been the leader in bibliographic control:

(1)Because of volume
(2) Because it assumes professional and moral responsibility for creating records to be used by the library community. This is a valuable contribution.
(3) Because of a belief that LoC should be an innovator. My article: “Too much consensus” (2000) discusses our standards and structures. They provide quality and support but such a stance may not also allow for innovation. How much should we allocate to support and maintenance of our bibliographic structures?

We know that libraries depend on us. We will continue to innovate where we can in concert with the library community.

As to the future structure of LoC: It would be helpful to know for which community we are working. LoC serves all libraries, all citizens of the US, all citizens abroad and national libraries internationally. In policy discussions we serve all communities, but at a time when funds are declining, this decline will not reverse in the foreseeable future. We must decide where to invest.

Only 30 million of 130 million items at the LoC are under bibliographic control. The tradeoffs are this: do we digitize for direct availability or do we invest in bibliographic control?

As to work in other communities – should LoC do work ‘as good as’ theirs, or in collaboration with them. If it is a piecework approach, we all become part of the information network and this makes a lasting contribution to society.

LoC works in approximately 470 languages. These are almost all very underrepresented; should they (or who) fund script/character set development?

When I met with the ALA board 2 summers ago the first question was: How much money is allocated in support of LoC services to other libraries? The answer is zero. Congress has generously funded LoC and LoC has supported other libraries in turn, but Congress has never directly funded this work. It is our tradition. We want to do what is beneficial for the library community

[A few comments and questions followed, including Bade’s assurance that he was never talking about the perfect record, for he knows this is impossible, rather bibliographic control at the level suitable for the users at a given library].

May 9 2007 Chicago, IL ALA Headquarters
Meeting of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.

Many thanks to Kathryn La Barre for providing me her copious notes in electronic format and for allowing me to use them as I saw fit. I hope someone finds this material of value.

If anyone has any corrections to anything I may have gotten wrong from the beginning or perhaps mistyped, or any of the speakers who might have an issue with my transcription, please feel free to comment or contact me via my Contact Page.

Comments from any and all others are also certainly welcome!

I may try to add another post with my overall impressions and thoughts on this meeting and the Working Group process, but I need to step back for a bit. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, flowers are blooming, it’s Mother’s Day, and I have friends graduating who I need to support and help celebrate. And since Kathryn ordered me to get offline and enjoy myself I thought I might listen for once.

BTW, Kathryn, I did read something non-LIS related yesterday; 3 poems and Paglia’s commentary on them.

Jennifer Bowen – Head of Cataloging, University of Rochester, and of one the co-principal investigators on the eXtensbile Catalog (XC) project

Recently stepped down as the American Library Association representative to the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules; i.e., RDA.

[Arrived back from lunch a few minutes late and thus missed Jennifer's introduction, but as she was introducing her own self and her approaches to her topic we must not have missed much.]

Discussed the current issues of structures and standards vis a vis RDA development and the future of controlled data, and new requirements for bibliographic data.

What is needed for future standards and development?/What can RDA accomplish? [Kathryn's and my notes diverge on this one so I'm combining them.]

• The current standards and structures must operate in a broad web environment, need more flexibility and must remain up-to-date.
• RDA is operating under a mandate to be useful (for catalogers) make it easier to train them and to facilitate cataloging.
• RDA will be a digital resource for library environments.
• Facilitate cataloging of digital resources in a library environment.
• Must be amenable to promotion external to the current AACR2 community in order to enhance international adoption and become broadly useful.

What has hampered the process of RDA development?

• “Lots of controversy”
• Hype and grandiose goals
• The need for “backwards compatibility” with MARC
• Does system neutrality constrain development? [Unsure if this is Kathryn's ? or of Jennifer said it.]
• Tight timeline with little funding
• Success of the standard is tied to the success of the commercial product [and this is a travesty! I am aware of the funding process, but this needs to change. This standard is dead in the water as to its effect on the wider community if it is not freely open.]
• Consultation process needs improvement

JSC docs are public but this is not enough we need to reach those with similar missions, those with whom we already share metadata, and those who we can assist with our standards and structures.

Need to consult with other communities; but which? What do we gain? How do we make the consultation successful?

Which?

• Those with similar missions: archives, …
• Those with who we could share metadata: publishers, metadata communities
• Communities that can assist us with the standards process

Gain?

• Metadata interoperability
• Assistance in envisioning technical/technological trends and opportunities by including system developers, software engineers and businesses in the discussions.
• We begin to talk with other standards communities and improve the standards development process
• We can learn from other user research communities (UX/HCI/Anthropology)

Ensuring successful consultation?

• Must be at the appropriate level
• May (often) need to be ongoing, not one time events
• Need organizational structures & funding to maintain relationships
• Allow for serendipity (needs funding too!)

Recommendations for RDA

• Move forward with the 1st release in 2009
• Aggressively pursue development of RDA DC Application Profile
• Restructure JSC work to focus on consultation, not document editing (JSC= 6 volunteers)

Future of Controlled Data – What’s Needed?

• Need identifiers! (For all entities)
• Evaluate potential based (only) on well-designed systems; not on our current systems [Yes!]
• Provide better tools for catalogers [Hear! Hear!]
• Facilitate faceted browsing

New Requirements for Bibliographic Data

• Richer interfaces
• Web services to enrichment data
• Metadata to better support faceted browsing
• FRBR-informed navigation; e.g., relator info, controlled access points

Research Directions / Testing Environments

• We need a testing environment (sandbox) to encourage or experience research on data structures/display – This must be external to OCLC or our proprietary ILS.
• Opportunities to develop new system functionalities
• We need to conduct user research, usability testing, provide support within this for the open source community and feed the lessons we learn through research back into the standards development process [and other processes].

Sharing Metadata

• Sharing metadata is needed between repositories and similar research environments. We need to find ways to share locally augmented results, with other libraries and other “discovery” environments.
• Distinguish standard metadata from local metadata, but share both
• What are the components we need to allow sharing? (eXtensible Catalog)

What’s Needed for Future Standards Development?

What is the vision of LoC/ of the library and information science community?
Should we be constrained by fear / or view this as an opportunity?

Our vision?:

• Provide positive user experience
• Our structures and standards should assist in leading users to library resources wherever the user is online
• Library solutions should be useful to the broader world, and hopefully seen that way
• Conscious of the move from cataloging to metadata; need to encourage people

A Positive Vision for Bibliographic Control

Cataloging and metadata professionals need to have:

• Effective tools, so that they can focus on the intellectual work [Hear! Hear!]
• The ability to participate in designing how systems use metadata [Yes! Take back control of our systems.]
• Contribute widely to improving shared metadata (lower the bars to contributing; e.g., NACO, SACO)
• Confidence that systems will use their work (metadata) effectively

What’s Needed Right Now?

• Take positive decisive action
• Clearly redefine goals and responsibilities; especially of the LoC
• Explain and justify trade-offs
• Articulate a positive vision for the future of bibliographic control AND how catalogers can contribute to it

Questions

[Schottlaender] You rooted comments on new approaches to consultative process (as did Greenberg) what are your thoughts on the needed organizational structure for standards development?
[Bowen] Other communities had something to gain from working together (like Hillmann’s comments about DCMI and RDA).

[Swan Hill] What I remember from AACR2 implementations is that they were delayed by the horror of changes to cataloging practice and catalogs. With all of the time taken for RDA what can be done to assure this won’t happen? We can’t afford much more delay.
[Bowen] Early on we discussed this to prevent this excuse from hampering the process and to prevent the expense and trauma and reassured the cataloging community of this, that changes would not be extensive and that records that now exist would not need to be redone. So the feedback is that the changes won’t be enough, other feed back that the world of metadata is changing rapidly and leaving us behind, or that the proposed changes are minimal in comparison. The original fears of expense seem not to be so explicit. It is hard to know how to pitch the message.
[Schottlander] One big change between the two situations is the use of MARC in a native state (cards) to deal with the changes to NAF. In a digital environment, such changes will not be so disruptive or difficult to implement.

[Bob ?] Drawing on your experiences with the eXtensible Catalog at Rochester, is there a potential vision of library services to be useful in a broader world? Is there a potential to further deconstruct library standards so they are useful outside the library community so they can be applied on a practical level?
[Bowen] Yes – we need an AP for the eXtensible Catalog work. WE need to think of bibliographic structures in smaller units/ in bits and pieces so that we can offer them out as needed to external communities.
[Schottlaender] “granularized interoperability”
[Marcum] Concern is not on RDA per se but on library investment generally at a time of needs for interactive user services. I hope RDA moves forward – can you address or think of it in terms of the services it will offer to users instead?

[Swan Hill] Roles and responsibility require redefinition. WE often do not talk about Responsibility or ethics – what it is that libraries have responsibility for – in terms of what responsibilities can be given to or shared with others, or with the community as a whole. WE need to communicate the ethics benefits and issues of responsibility at an individual level, an institutional level, and at an association or organizational level.
[Bowen] Some want to contribute (like Rochester) to shared programs more than they are allowed to contribute, due to review processes/bars at a time when others are shedding staff and responsibilities. Willing participants are out there. We need to facilitate that.

Up next: Public testimony