Category Archives: Work

3rd blogging anniversary and welcome to new readers

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Welcome new readers

On the 14th of Jan, Blake posted a story at LISNews, The LINews 10 Blogs To Read in 2008. My lowly little blog was included in that list. I have at least 29 new readers in Bloglines, which means, perhaps, 80-120 total new readers since then. Of course, the fact that the list was reproduced all over the blogosphere didn’t hurt either. ;)

Now Blake’s recommendation is wonderful to me, but I wonder what people expect based on that description. It is accurate but such a small part of me, even the part shown here. Also note the methodology; I come recommended based on a sample of probably one, perhaps two if I flatter myself. :) [There's a tie-in in that previous link to the name of my first (public) blog, ...the thoughts are broken....]

So, welcome to everyone who has come this way via the list. Please check out the other folks, too.

Please feel free to comment, correct, say your piece, etc. I do not worry about whether or not you agree with me or how long your comments are. Sometimes substance requires several paragraphs.

I do moderate all first time comments, though, to cut down on spam. Links are allowed but at some number shortly after 1 your comment will get flagged as spam, which I’ll hopefully catch. I do try to address all comments, and try to do so in a fairly timely manner. But I do sometimes fail.

And you can always use the Contact Form to send me non-public comments, too [Scroll back up and use the Contact tab at center top].

Who am I?

I am finishing a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) in LIS at GSLIS, UIUC. I also did my Masters here just prior to this degree. Organization and access of information has been my area with a focus on classificatory structures. Some of my post-MLS classes include thesaurus construction, classification systems seminar, information modeling, humanities ontologies, Topic Maps, bibliography, and Python programming. [Full list of my 80 or so grad LIS hours is here.]

I have worked as a computer technician for the department, broadcast distance ed classes and assisted with classroom technology, both on campus and virtual, been a thesaurus maintainer, and most recently work as both the serials cataloging GA and as one of the monographic cataloging GAs.

As I hope to be done this May (my 3rd Mother’s Day graduation, hopefully) I am now on the job market. I am primarily looking for an academic job doing something related to cataloging, metadata, vocabulary work, etc. If you know of any feel free to send me a link.

I am also a “habitually probing generalist” as my tagline claims, but that may be causally based more on brain chemistry at an early age than by culturally-trained bent [Although I have assimilated much of the cultural quite well. I'm one hell of a manual citation tracking machine, for instance]. I get intensely interested in highly specific things on occasion. And in the process of diving in deep one finds so many things one did not know about. Some of that stuff is going to be highly interesting and itself lead off in other directions. What a deliciously dangerous vicious circle this is.

3rd blogging anniversary

Three years ago today …the thoughts are broken… debuted with “So, what is this about, and for?” I once had a “best posts” which I began to update quite a while back. Not a job I actually relish although I would like people to see the stuff I prefer for whatever reason I label it “best.”

Oh. Crap. That page is much older than I thought and all of the links are broken since it moved from the first blog to this one. Oh well, perhaps you can search titles if you are interested in some of my early stuff (1 Feb – 25 Oct 2005). Some day I may get that list updated but since I’m nearing 1000 posts [and taking into account other time constraints] it won’t be any time soon.

My first blog was hosted at TypePad. On 20 July 2006 Off the Mark debuted [It does include all of my previous posts at ...the thoughts are broken... but all internal links are broken]. This means I’ve been on LISHost and WordPress for more than half my online existence; that is, blogging existence and paying for hosting.

The name of my 1st blog came from a line in a Grateful Dead tune while this one was named by Richard Urban and Walt Crawford.

Since May 2006 I’ve been taking a fairly narrow path for a generalist; that is actively taking. Much of my time is taken up by this. [See this post and comments for some comments on the curse of being a generalist; and also of having an "actively wired" brain.] I am looking at what the Integrational theory of communication and language might mean for LIS if taken seriously. Thanks go to David Bade for starting me down this road.

So not an anniversary for this specific blog (although my friend, Iris, said last night that it’s the same blog with a new title. Perhaps.) but a blogging anniversary. Just to be clear.

Zotero, COinS, WorldCat, linking …

My blog has a plug-in that generates COinsS data so that OpenURL and COinS aware tools will recognize this data and do something contextual with it. For instance, Zotero (which I recommend highly) can import that data from the web page. If I click the icon [contextually variable] that shows up in my browser’s address bar the post metadata is imported: Post title, author, blog title, date of post, URL, and access date. And, no, I don’t have many of my own posts in Zotero. There are a few posts, though, that are being used in my bibliography and CAS paper so they are there.

But I also use Zotero to output COinS data to put in my posts when I cite a source, like in my weekly reading posts. And I do far more of it for print resources as it is easier and more reliable to get information in automatically. And if I can provide a resolvable URL for a web resource anyway then how important is the COinS data for them. Again, I do not have that many web-based resources in Zotero; comparatively.

I also try to link to WorldCat for stuff they have records for. By the way, they are providing data for the taking by Zotero also. A couple days ago I linked to a work record in LibraryThing that I had brought in from Oxford University being the only one in LibraryThing to have it (or claiming to have it). I got that data into Zotero from the LibraryThing work page which also gave me some data. I think, in this case anyway, that WorldCat would have been better.

So, as Blake said, I write about print stuff. I read a fair few books (mostly non-fiction) and lots of articles, to include photocopying a boatload of stuff not online. Most of it is LIS literature or related to issues in LIS.

Extraneous

Well now. I think it’s all been a bit extraneous and somehow self-indulgent so far. ;)

My blog is both personal and professional. This state has been written about and commented on many times here and elsewhere. Consider the name of my first blog, …the thoughts are broken….

Here’s a few more lines for a bit of context:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Grateful Dead. “Ripple.” American Beauty.

This is the positive view of making best use of one’s broken thoughts. I’ve been listening to American Beauty since it came out and “Ripple” has always been one of my favorites and always deeply personally meaningful. That meaning has shifted and changed and grown over the years but it has always been positive.

The other side of broken thoughts though is know as fragmentation, depersonalization and moral minimalism. [See these posts perhaps. Actually, I do have an overview post of these issues less than a year old.]

Thus, the title of my 1st blog was both a warning to myself and a positive statement of how to make things better. Changing the name for my new blog had nothing to do with considering my thoughts to no longer be broken. That is a lifetime struggle based on the way our society is structured.

In the meantime, I try to keep my chin up and gently coax a few of those thoughts into being coherent and whole. As Robert Hunter wrote 38 years ago:

Let there be songs to fill the air.

Uncontrolled Vocabulary, the Carnival, and the LC Working Group; or, the recognition of frustration

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Back in December, a few days before the deadline passed for comments on the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, I wrote a post called just that.

In it I expressed much frustration; with both the big picture issues facing bibliographic control and those of my daily frustration in trying to use the tools my profession supplies me to do so.

I was popping off in that post. Clearly. Heck, I even tossed out an f-bomb. I was (am) mad.

Well, thanks to Anna Creech (or so I believe. By the way, thanks, Anna!) that post showed up both on Uncontrolled Vocabulary #24 [revisited momentarily in #25] and in the Carnival of the Infosciences (#86) about a month after I wrote it.

My first reaction to learning it had been discussed on Uncontrolled Vocabulary was mild shock. Oh my! Which idea in it had they latched onto? Hopefully not my (temporary) defeatist attitude regarding my personal feedback on the report. Thankfully, not.

Greg’s initial “almost motivated me to advocacy” line really struck me. A fair few of my colleagues—I’m guessing a significant percentage—have no real idea of the issues catalogers and metadata folks go through with their tools, or the lack of them.

Everyone picks on the OPAC because it’s easy to do so, and most stripes of librarian have to use one. My gripes are much broader. Yes, the OPAC sucks. But so do the various modules in the ILS. I have almost 7 years experience with Voyager’s circulation and cataloging clients due to working in Circulation; (minimal) Cataloging (E-Reserves); and now Cataloging. I have no doubt the Acquisitions folks have complaints about aspects of that module, and so on.

In cataloging, besides needing our ILS module, we need our classification schedules—either in print or online, or both—DDC in our case, AACR2, subject headings list (LCSH), Classification Web, Cataloger’s Desktop, “foreign” language encyclopedias, Connexion (WorldCat), Cutter tables, ….

Then there are the assorted policies emanating from the many organizations involved. Let’s just leave that at many. And some number of these policies actually constrain the work we can do in most libraries.

While OCLC policies do allow qualified libraries to enrich WorldCat records centrally, some consider these policies to be overly restrictive (On the Record : Report of The Library of …, 13, emphasis mine)

These not very well expressed reasons are why I and many others are frustrated. And most of our colleagues cannot even feel our pains. Folks working with other forms of metadata face similar and related issues with their assorted tools, or lack thereof.

Cooperative cataloging. That’s existed for a long time. Right? People use the phrase all the time so it must be an “entity” of some sort one would assume. I would beg to differ.

I do appreciate the Working Group’s calls for increased cooperation and “distribution of responsibility for bibliographic record production and maintenance” (16). I particularly like:

1.2.4.1 LC, PCC, and OCLC: Explore ways to increase incentives and tools for contributions of new bibliographic records, as well as upgrades or corrections to existing records … (18).

While I realize that some may need incentives, could you please just get out of my way and let me do my (basic) job? Yes, there is a bigger context to this such that this item makes wonderful sense. But I still find it more than mildly ironic.

As slight side excursion based on the first quote from the LC report above:

While OCLC policies do allow qualified libraries to enrich WorldCat records centrally, some consider these policies to be overly restrictive (On the Record : Report of The Library of …, 13, emphasis mine)

When will we stop talking like this? Could someone please explain to someone intelligent involved in writing this report that there is not a single library that has ever produced any kind of surrogate, much less added any records to WorldCat. Nor will there ever be.

This poor use of language (rife in our field and made fun of here before) leads to issues with policies which must be defined within the context of this poor use. Libraries, qualified or not, do not really do anything. People of the cataloging persuasion (or assignment) catalog and add or correct records in WorldCat.

But it is libraries that are “qualified” by our various cooperative agreements. This is part of the problem.

I am not through reading the final report yet, about half-way (read this past Mon. at the diner for dinner. Now 2 past.).

This realization that:

A fair few of my colleagues—I’m guessing a significant percentage—have no real idea of the issues catalogers and metadata folks go through with their tools, or the lack of them.

… I had due to my post being featured in these 2 collective stalwarts of the bibliogosphere around the same time. I was aware of the UV appearance first and there is really something odd about hearing your post discussed on the web.

Like Greg, my realization almost led me to advocacy. But this is a delicate situation for a multitude of reasons. I try to be very careful on the few times I bring my actual experiences at work here. Almost every one of my complaints is with something other than my institution and I do not want to give the impression otherwise. But there is so much that does not get talked about in our field (not only in cataloging, of course). Even critique towards a positive end state is rarely publicly welcomed and/or welcomed in public.

Thus, as much as I would love to spend more time talking about these issues here and perhaps shedding a little light on them for a handful or two of people, I simply cannot do any more than the rare instance when I do. Which lines can or cannot be crossed, and which of the first are wise to do so seem like questions best answered by avoiding them (like everyone else).

There was a bit of discussion in the comments at Uncontrolled Vocabulary #24 about what I was saying. I came a tad late to the party but was able to add a comment clarifying what I was trying to say.

As I wrote there, I am feeling a bit better as I am learning to try and modify in increments. I just wish when you weren’t allowed to change some specific field it would tell you versus making you look in some crazy long document, especially if you forgot the 1st sentence about increments. Other validation errors tell you what the problem is.

But. Yes. I remain frustrated when I cannot do something like change a title that is wrong in a pre-pub record.

I also got a decent amount of long-term headaches taken care of and off of my desk the last couple days. :) I don’t do resolutions anymore but I did swear I was going to move some of that stuff. About half is gone (mostly in the last 2 days) and I’m waiting on an answer on 2 things.

I do feel bad about some of that stuff sitting there for a couple months sometimes. But let’s be realistic here. They give me these things (or wait for someone like me to come along) because they are nightmares and they don’t want to do them. I get a lot of found stuff. Some of it has been sitting somewhere from 2 years to several decades. Literally. So, honestly I can’t really sweat the couple months it’s been on my desk. And as I said it is moving on.

Hope is hard when you are continuously frustrated from doing your job.

Interests and the pursuit thereof

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One of my co-workers is upset with me due to their perceiving a lack of interest on my part in their little corner of the world. This person’s little corner of the LIS world is even something which ought to be of interest to me since it is beginning to show up on more and more job descriptions.

The problem is that this is of interest to me. But the larger problem is someone else inferring my interest or not based on their perception of my overt actions. Please do not do this. Anyone. Do any of you readers assume that I’m not interested in anything I don’t write about here? [purely rhetorical]

As my “subtitle” says, I am a habitually probing generalist. There isn’t all that much that I am not interested in, at some point. I have never had, nor will I ever have, enough time to pursue everything of interest to me. I imagine many people are like this. But some of us are worse than others.

So, the way I say it, getting petulant with me because your feelings are hurt due to your perception on whether or not I am interested in your stuff is, at best, egotistical, and at worst, seriously disdainful of the amount of things I also do in the world and of the breadth of my interests. Even those in my own field and area/focus of interest are enough to fill my time while there is ever more to be actively interested in.

If you want to claim that I am currently actively interested in some thing over another, or even just observe that this is so (that inference still isn’t fully de-clawed), then fine. I am happy to justify my current business and why there is no overt time for our overlapping areas; I also feel no real need to do so either.

I have no time for petulancy. That is not one of my interests, active or otherwise.

Harris and Hjorland administrivia

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Harris

At the start of break I found a treasure when I was down in the Basement West stacks looking for another “Harris book”: Harris. Roy. 1990. The Foundations of Linguistic Theory: Selected Writings of Roy Harris. Ed. Nigel Love. London: Routledge.

Actually, I found 2 treasures. The edited volume I had so far overlooked; I have yet to undertake a completist approach to Harris’ writings as he has written so many books, much less articles. I have been predominantly lusciously wallowing in his books. Anyway, the little volume edited by Love is quite good and I was able to purchase myself a good used copy for cheap.

The unlooked for treasure was: Harris, Roy. 1977. On the Possibility of Linguistic Change. Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press.

A tad more accurately, it is: On the Possibility of Linguistic Change : An Inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 18 November 1976 / by Roy Harris, Professor of the Romance Languages.

This is a lecture given by Harris when he was installed as the Chair of the Romance Languages at Oxford.

This 23 p. document was pam-bound on 1 May 1984. It has a call no. label attached and the call no. is written in it in the right place, but it had no barcode and had never made it into the electronic catalog. I had a monographics stacks pass with me so Circ gave it to me to catalog. Today I did just that on my 1st day back in a while. There was a record I just brought in and made sure it was OK and attached a holdings and item record.

Yes, I read it over lunch. It is typical Harris at his scathing best. I imagine one should feel free to speak rather bluntly about one’s discipline and department when being given the chair of a department at Oxford. ;) )

Hjørland

Thought I’d mention that a lot of Hjørland stuff has been showing up in my dLIST feed the last couple days. [You are subscribed to dLIST and E-LIS aren't you? Or at least those of you looking for things of interest to read.] Seven things with Hjørland as the primary or co-author have shown up in the last 2 days according to the Latest Additions listing.

A search on “hjorland, b” or “hjorland” returns 8 items.

There are some good things here, including his recent information research article [dLIST], some conference presentations (ISKO, ASIST, …), and this article (recommended) from KO.

I am assuming that more will be showing up.

Many Hjørland documents are (or were) available from his site at the Royal School of Library and Information Science. In my collecting of his corpus I have primarily gone to the original publication source. That way I precluded any issues with something being a pre- or post-print or whatever. Some I got electronically, e.g., all JASIS & JASIST articles, many I photocopied. Also be aware, the list linked to at the start of this paragraph probably includes a large percentage of his publications but there are a couple missing.

LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

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I read it. I made plenty of notes. I fully intended to write up my comments and submit them and to also post them here. I began writing them up.

I stopped.

And that is where I’m staying. Stopped.

It truly isn’t that I don’t care. I do. All the way down to the marrow care.

There is just too much going on right now in this arena. Far too many people talking so far past each other they must be in other solar systems. Almost all at some kind of cross purpose.

I’ve read a few blog posts, literally several hundred listserv postings and other assorted “comments” on the report or related to it. Now I’m just despairing of any sort of reasoned community-level discussion on the issues involved.

Add to that the frustrations I face daily as I go about my job cataloging monographs and serials (based on our tools, not my workplace) and I have just become despondent about it all.

I think the Working Group got some things right. I was far more impressed than I expected to be. But. It is very vague and hand-wavish about major topics. E.g., intellectual property rights. And several others.

But one of the main points in the report is that the community must broaden. I agree. Maybe I differ on the details, but then I am pretty sure that the committee members disagree amongst themselves, too.

But here’s the deal (actually one piece only) with why I am so despondent about it all any more.

At my institution I do I-level cataloging. [OCLC Input Standards] That is, Full-level input by OCLC participants. For serials I even do original cataloging inputting on average 1.5-2 original records per week. I have probably input somewhere around 100-200 original serials records. I have also been able to derive a couple original monographic records thanks to my serials work, but I mostly do copy cataloging of monographs.

Cooperative cataloging it is supposed to be. That’s what I learned in classes. That’s what the Working Group says. And I’m all for that. I will gladly fix any record I want to use if it needs it. But most often I cannot do so. Not allowed to.

Today. Well, let’s just say that today took the fucking cake. Can’t find a record I need by title so try ISBN. Oh, 2 records exist. One touched at some point by LC and the other by the British Library. Both pure crap. In fact, both are Level 8 records. Goddamn prepublication level records and I am not allowed to fix them!

Both records have the title wrong. Both have errors in the publication area. Both have “p. cm.” in the physical characteristics area. Both have the wrong no. in the 490. Both only mention the index when it has extensive bibliographical references. …

Now I realize full well that these records are based on prepub data (probably CIP) and that the book was only published last month. But I was one of the first to need the record and could have fixed it. In fact, I tried. Maybe the 6 others who hold it and got to it before me tried, too. I don’t know. But now there’s 7 of us with it in our OPACs who have fixed our copy while the piss poor record still exists in WorldCat.

But if I cannot even upgrade a goddamn Level 8 prepub record then what good is cooperative cataloging? Can anyone answer that?

What am I supposed to be able to contribute to any discussion on the future of bibliographic control when I am not able to contribute to the daily work that is needed now?

Yes. There truly are many other issues also fueling my current bout of despondency. So please do not respond and tell me that I’m just overreacting to some pitiful Level 8 record.

This discussion may well be the most important of my young career. Only time and a couple decades will tell. But I am going to withdraw from it. For now, at least.

Judge me if you choose. Or if you must. Just don’t misunderstand. I am not abandoning it. I am only choosing to sit on the side, listening and observing. I may well jump in at any point.

Due to the many other things going on in my life at the moment I seem unable to focus on these long-term, big picture issues and discussions when I daily work with horrible tools and misguided policies (none of which are issues with my institution, but are above it) such that at least 50% of the time they get square in the way of my (and my co-workers) ability to do good work.

That’s the best I can do right now. Sorry. Truly.

“It’s a metaphor, if you know what I mean”: DDC’s fundamental flaw

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you could always hear the rub squeaking
of those two tree limbs
’til one day one of them came down
taken down by the wind
but on the one that’s still there
you can still see where the bark was
rubbed bare
it’s a metaphor
if you know what i mean

Ani DiFranco ¤ “how have you been” ¤ out of range

Today I discovered a, perhaps the, fundamental flaw in DDC. There is (practically) no concept of metaphor.

I was cataloging a German book on Metapher which had no Dewey number in the record so I turn to the Relative Index and flip to m…e…t…a…p…h…o. Uh. Huh? Wait. “m” “e” “t” “a” “p” “h” “o”. Blink. Turn away and look back. Try again. Question my sanity and/or my spelling. And slowly realize that metaphor just ain’t to be found in the Relative Index (print DDC22). Knowing full well that this concept has been around for a day or two, I fire up WebDewey to see if there is something more up-to-date. In the Relative Index I find zip, nada, zilch. Try in the Schedules. I think I got 3 possibilities, all of which are possibilities but not necessarily good ones.

Head over to ClassWeb and put the LCSH “Metaphor” into the LCSH–DDC mapper and get 10 possible numbers. Much better, although many of those were only slight variants. Looking at these actual numbers in the Schedules, in most cases, still left one with no idea they were looking for the concept metaphor.

Now, I am well aware that metaphor would (should) show up in many places in the DDC Schedules based on the way DDC is constructed. But there is practically no explicit mention of it anywhere.

While it may be possible that we could have natural language without metaphor, it would certainly not resemble anything humans know as language for the last 2 millennia or more. Nor is classification even possible without metaphor.

Yes, my claim as to the, or even a, fundamental flaw may be a tad strong, but I still find this immensely disturbing.

Another disturbing thing I noticed today was the wholehearted amoral stance DDC takes on occasion. For instance, see this sequence:

304.6 Population
304.66 Demographic effects of population control efforts
304.663 Genocide (Class here ethnic cleansing)

On what level exactly is genocide a population control effort? (except in a very euphemistic sense)

Of course, there are 1000s more of these sorts of things that are amiss, along many dimensions.

Some days and for some items DDC and LCSH work just fine. But on other occasions the utter failure of being able to adequately express a topic in one or the other (or both) is incomprehensible and frustrating.

I do love cataloging and classification. I just wish we had some better tools, much better rules, and systems that took advantage of the work we do and did amazing things to present our resources to our users after they had (reasonably) easily found them.

Amusing book titles

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Long ago in another library far, far away . . .

OK, only several years ago and an hour away . . . I swore I was going to compile a list of all the humorous, insane, non-PC, and otherwise entertaining book titles that I came across handling hundreds of books every day in Circulation and Reserves. Unfortunately, I never did so which means some real doozies have escaped from the steel jaws of my sieve-like mind. :(

But today when I was checking a call no. for uniqueness before assigning it to the book in hand I found this lovely gem, complete with exquisitely humorous LCSHs, too:

Ethics of spying: a reader for the intelligence professional.

  • Spies–Professional ethics
  • Espionage–Moral and ethical aspects

These are not the order of the headings in the record, nor is it all of them. It is just the order in which I find them the most humorous. The others are just derivative or simply not funny:

  • Espionage, American–Moral and ethical aspects
  • Intelligence service–blah, blah (x2)
  • Political ethics–United States
  • Military interrogation–United States–Moral and ethical aspects

See what I mean? Those last two not so funny.

Nonetheless, thanks to recent additions, such as Dildos and Strap-on sex (both of which may be subdivided Geographically) [see Jessamyn and Thingology], and now stumbling across Spies–Professional ethics, LC is certainly making life far more interesting.

Hehehe. Jessamyn makes a funny about “authorities” and strap-on sex in her post title. I think one could do the same with Dildos and Strap-on sex and Thingology. You blew it, Tim. Oops, wrong metaphor perhaps. ;)

Personally, I can’t wait to be able to use this new one from the same list:

Period (Punctuation) [May Subd Geog]

Story, or not story

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[Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend anyone's personal views. My only aim here is to share a love of word play with others who may also appreciate it.]

Earlier this week I did the copy cataloging to enter this book into our library. I found the juxtaposition of the the title and the subject heading quite humorous.

Murphy, Francesca Aran. God is Not a Story: Realism Revisited.
LCSH: Narrative theology.

Truth be told, the book looks highly interesting to a heretic such as me, and the subject clearly matches the title because the book is (based on my reading a fair amount of the intro) a reaction to a “side-effect” of narrative theology, which argues that

the Church’s use of the Bible should focus on a narrative presentation of the faith, rather than on the exclusive development of a systematic theology.

The intro to the book explains it better than the Wikipedia article, but it seems that (and it makes sense that) a side-effect of focusing on story is that the view, intentional or otherwise, that ‘God is story’ arises. That’s is in the existential sense. Does seem to be a distinct possibility.

Anyway, based on my reading of Auerbach’s Mimesis I imagine that if I was a theologian I would be highly drawn to narrative theology. It is the story of the Bible that is important. But Murphy’s objection is easy enough to see as a definite issue within narrative theology.

Nonetheless, heathen word play lover that I am, God is Not a Story == Narrative theology cracks me up.

Fall schedule

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Classes

I am taking 2+ classes this semester:

Foundations of Information Processing in LIS with Dave Dubin (one of the most brilliant and generous men I have ever met)

Covers the common data and document processing constructs and programming concepts used in library and information science. The history, strengths and weaknesses of the techniques are evaluated in the context of our discipline. These constructs and techniques form the basis of applications in areas such as bibliographic records management, full text management and multimedia. No prior programming background is assumed.

Python programming.

Bibliography with Don Krummel, Professor Emeritus (one of the very few currently teaching emeritus faculty whom I have not taken a course with and a grand and erudite gentleman)

Covers enumerative bibliography, the practices of compiling lists; analytical bibliography, the design, production, and handling of books as physical objects; and historical bibliography, the history of books and other library materials, from the invention of printing to the present.

I would be a complete fool not to take this course with Dr. Krummel. I’ve been wanting to for a long time and now is my best, or only, chance.

By the way, this description has nothing to do with my distributed conversation across the biblioblogosphere the last 2 days. Seriously. But, yes, this will be based on the physical book. The historian in me will enjoy it.

But, more importantly to me, the product of the bibliography is applicable in a far greater context; it can cover many more containers than bound & printed books, and it itself can be contained in a variety of containers. E.g., see this bibliography.

The + is my independent study….

Work

As of yesterday, I am now a monographic cataloging graduate assistant along with being the serials cataloging graduate assistant. I’ll be working 60% on top of my classes.

I began monographs this summer but it was as an hourly. Now I get a steady wage and have to work a prescribed number of hours, but I get vacation and sick days. Yay for vacation! [If I could only learn what this concept is supposed to mean. :) ]

This is the schedule for now. I need to fit Metadata Roundtable in there. ASIS&T 2007 in October. LEEP Weekend since Dave’s class is a distance class. Applying for jobs; perhaps interviewing….

LC Working Group – Structures and Standards, part 2 – David Bade

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Update 16 May: Welcome American Libraries Direct readers. David Bade has made clear that I misunderstood his words and I fully agree that this is the case. I ask that you please do not propagate my misunderstanding as his intended meaning. Read his comments here and see further comments in AUTOCAT over the last few days. And by the way, there are 8 parts to this series on the Working Group meeting: A teaser, 6 numbered parts, and a 2nd stab at the Bade paper/presentation. I want to make it very clear that I greatly appreciate and agree 99% with what David Bade said/wrote for his presentation! My comments here are minor quibbles.

David Bade, Monographic Cataloger, University of Chicago, Regenstein Library

“Structures, standards, and the people who make them meaningful” – paper

[Initial commentary by Kathryn La Barre. I had read a previous draft on the way up, and copies were handed out at the meeting so I mostly read along, but will interject some commentary.]

He started out by stating that his commentary was made in the “spirit of unrestrained criticism.” I missed recording the reference [Mark].

<comment> – brief summary – I hope he puts this online</comment>

Library work is communication based, the use in the discussions so far is couched in an inappropriate, misleading transportation metaphor, and bibliographic control is instead based on a process of communication. The principle of co-operation and an understanding of common principles should inform communicative activity. The dichotomy of consumer, manager as the chief users of bibliographic control structures should be widened to include the creators of this data. The addition of the creator into this equation underlines the necessity of human evaluation and correction. We must determine the purpose of any created metadata and be certain that if we decide to reuse this metadata for another application — that it is not contrary to the new application.

These are answers to some of his questions:

  1. The best way to handle this imperative is that the level of metadata creation should be that of the most demanding users.
  2. The importance of trust and common social practices and standards must be balanced with the existence of error. In cases of error, management must pay attention to errors in order to improve systems.
  3. Currently in bibliographic control the pressures of production mean that errors in bibliographic records are rampant and are allowed to remain. Errors in metadata supplied from other sources, particularly that which is automatically generated must be carefully evaluated by humans and not blindly drawn into the bibliographic universe. It is the obligation of library managers to provide appropriate levels of metadata generation for their own users.
  4. One direction to take might be co-opting users to generate this information with appropriate refereeing. There is worry about the long tail – for if there is no metadata or inadequate metadata, there will be no use of the material.
  5. Automatically generated metadata is not higher quality metadata. Good metadata, especially high levels of subject analysis is not without cost. Today there is much copy cataloging, many shared bibliographic databases, and there are fewer catalogers. The kinds of formats, and the complexity of tasks has increased. Many errors are due to unfamiliarity with these formats, tasks and many catalogers lack knowledge sufficient to provide access to materials from a given subject.

[Me, from here on out.] While there may possibly be a kind of “romantic truth” to Diane Hillmann’s depiction of David Bade in her reporting of the day, I can sympathize and empathize a lot with his position. In fact, I’d love to sit with the guy for a few hours over a couple pints of Guinness and pick his brain. He seems a most interesting person, and if he’s “from a different planet” then it is one I want to be on.

I think he has many valuable points and perhaps he misjudged his task as Diane Hillmann suggests in the comments on her first post, but that seems to imply that that was his only opportunity to provide input to the Working Group. They have a copy of his paper and I would hope they would read it, repeatedly if need be, as I hope they will read and consider all written input.

As for her comment [same comment] about the issue of his paper [nor any of the other presentations] being available, yes, that is a problem! But it is a larger problem than David’s. He can release his paper, but are all of the presentations, from all meetings, collected in one central location? I am glad to see that Diane Hillmann has archived hers, but the Library of Congress should be doing this for all of them in a centralized manner!

At this point I will add some comments on David’s paper. Please do not misconstrue these thoughts. I have no doubt that if he and I were able to sit down over a few pints we would agree that we are both saying the same thing. I also humbly offer this critique as the things I am about to complain about are the same issues I struggle with the most—voice, nuance, and “selling” your message to your audience. These comments are offered as a request for some of that nuance and not as a deconstruction of his points.

At one point (at least) he states that “The most demanding uses of the most demanding users should determine the kind of structures and standards required” (5). During questions the moderator asked how he would balance this with the fact that these users are generally in the smallest minority. His answer that the Provost at UC has publicly stated that the researchers are the ones the library is to support is of little comfort to the vast majority of libraries—even academic libraries—around the country and the world.

I fully agree that our structures must be capable of providing for this use, and that our standards must be capable of supporting it, also. He did rephrase it a little during the questioning, as he did again later in the day, that it must be for the “most demanding level to support users of your mission.” OK; perfectly true. But perhaps that kind of nuance in the paper would be useful.

I will cite something from the paper that he wanted to be the prime take-away. It comes via Hélène Denis:

[It is] cooperation between professionals that defines the technologies and their reliability; these being not any preexisting reality but a provisional achievement [citation not specified].

One of his rules for practice states:

Quality assessment requires an assessment of the individual records and all machine-generated information must be evaluated by a human being capable of evaluating the results and correcting them if necessary (6, emphasis mine).

The philosopher in me wants to first ask what David means by “machine-generated information” so that I know we are discussing the same thing, but it’ll have to stand for now. As much as I agree with him, this can only be a desiderata. It is simply not achievable. What we all should be discussing is where the line is for this kind of quality assessment. Where for each kind of resource, each kind of machine-generated data, each project, etc. There is and can not be one answer to these questions. Does this put metadata resource sharing on a shaky ground? Yes; as do many other things. But this is the real world.

He also states that “Trusting external sources of metadata assumes that the ends for which those sources create information are compatible with the particular institution’s intended uses of that metadata” (7). Fully agreed. Tis a dangerous thing to just accept random metadata. We are only in the very beginning stages of this form of metadata sharing [yes, I am well aware of MARC, Z39-50, etc. but this is far more diverse, amongst other things]. I don’t have an answer, and this is a problem; but it is not a show-stopper.

On to my biggest issue with his paper. This paragraph was not in the draft I had but found its way in before the meeting [only a snippet of the paragraph]:

In our libraries today there is almost always a split between those actively involved in a particular field (e.g. bibliographers) and those creating the metadata. For the most part—music, map and law often being the exceptions—catalogers are hired to catalog whatever comes in the library and no subject knowledge or activity in any field of endeavor is required, expected, or encouraged. Catalogers are hired to be metadata specialists without knowing anything in particular about anything at all. Therefore, when they catalog any particular item they have no stake in the result, no users in mind, no knowledge of how or why anyone might be looking for that item (10-11).

I’d love to give David Bade a hug at this point; after I punch him in his highly offensive typing fingers! I mean “WTF, David?”

I feel your pain; I really do. If the world was structured as in the “old days” and libraries required, or even hired, subject specialist bibliographers you can bet I’d be off getting myself even more education to do that which I love. But that world—in the rare cases in which it ever existed—simply does not exist.

So I understand the spirit of your concern here; I truly do and in fact agree with the spirit of it. But I found those comments extremely offensive and I have no doubt that many other hard-working, committed catalogers/metadata specialists will, too.

I grapple daily with my concerns as to my ability to do the best that is required of me in my job, be it serials cataloging, wrangling with and structuring a highly specialized subject thesaurus, and soon to be a monographic copy cataloger. I often feel completely unprepared to do what must be done. These and many other concerns about my abilities, capabilities, and level of preparedness weigh heavily on me daily. But I am trying to learn to do my best, and my institution has much work that needs to be done. There is little choice, all around.

This is the real reason that I’d love to have a couple drinks with David and, no, I really wouldn’t punch him. But these comments are offensive to me and many others. In my case, I am fast approaching 80 hours of graduate LIS credit with most of it focused on the organization, description and representation of knowledge/information resources, not even counting any other degrees, education, or life experience.

When I think about some of the “kids” who sit with me as fellow graduate assistant catalogers I have no doubt that they, too, are fully committed to doing the best job they can. One needs only hear some of the conversations we have amongst ourselves as to how to catalog a specific item. We share knowledge, resources and language abilities, and we know exactly where to find someone close by who is far more experienced than us.

To say that we “know nothing in particular about anything at all,” that we “have no stake in the result, no users in mind,” or “no knowledge of how or why anyone might be looking for that item” is beyond elitist and derogatory.

Nonetheless, I understand his point (in spirit) and there is much value in it. But this is another trade-off of the world in which we find ourselves. This is another of those areas where we need more discussion of where and when the line gets drawn for who is qualified to describe what.

I, too, hope this paper becomes publicly available. I would even love for it to be “cleaned up” a bit and officially published. There is much of value in David Bade’s paper, but the world is not as black and white as the paper currently makes it sound. Perhaps a few pints and some friendly dialogue would help him realize that.

Again, my commentary is given in the spirit of another who sins in much the same way. I hope he takes it that way.

Next up, “clearly from another planet” [her own words] is Diane Hillmann.

But that can wait until tomorrow. This is taking hours! Don’t worry; I’ll do it all and even gladly. I feel a duty to do so for those unable to attend. But it’s still quite a bit of work and my semester just ended. Aren’t I supposed to get a weekend off? <sigh>

Also, most of the rest will have far less of my own commentary; I promise. But if you look around this blog and see what I do with the things I read perhaps you’ll understand why this paper got the treatment it did.