Another Reason Why Google Isn't God

Google has, to the best of my knowledge, never claimed to be omniscient. While their oft repeated motto, "Don't be evil", might be seen as a claim of omnibenevolence, Google usually is straightforward about their interests: Reconciliation and redemption are outside of their purview, but data and dollars are right up their alley.

Thus it should be no surprise to the watching world that the Google Books project falls short of divine infallibility. (In spite of Google invoking the cadences of Genesis 1:1 in the project history.) This especially has been no surprise to the watching academic world which still has many mixed feelings about the benefits to be derived from the digitized corpus of the bibliosphere. Geoffrey Nunberg has written an excellent exposé of the shortcomings of Google Books when it comes to meeting the needs of researchers.

Of most interest to me as a librarian, though, are Mr. Nunberg's words of advice to librarians everywhere. He exhorts us to hope that Google "may be responsive to pressure from its university library partners—who weren't particularly attentive to questions of quality when they signed on with Google—particularly if they are urged (or if necessary, prodded) to make noise about shoddy metadata by the scholars whose interests they represent."

This blog post is only a leaf in the tossing forest of the Internet, but it is my effort to heed Geoffrey's advice and put in my $0.02. Our first response as librarians to digital books may not be embracing them, but, as librarians, we do have something to contribute when it comes to organizing them. Our catalogs (if I can persist in using such a quaint term) are not about the arranging of material volumes on physical shelves; they are about the organization of knowledge. Or so my Cataloging 101 course told me many years ago. Librarians are not divine, either, but neatness is next to godliness. Google Books is one horrific mess that needs a good cataloging. We already cataloged it once. Like housecleaning, though, it may need to be done again.

Your Library On Steroids

This web site has been out there for awhile, but I thought it was good enough to pass on:

"Steroid" Scandal Rocks Major League Libraries

And a serious opinion offered to reward your efforts in checking out my blog posting:

Enhanced cataloging is not "enhanced" at all, but is merely doing what cataloging has always been meant to do: Provide the researcher with enough information to decide whether or not to pursue a work. Behind all the flashing ads for Web 2.0, libraries are still about the business of matching researchers with resources. (Alright, so that opinion exposes my academic library bias.)

Every book its reader. -- Ranganathan

Zero-Sum Game or Net Loss?

I'm pondering the following email that I just received from the Cataloging Distribution Service at the Library of Congress:

Beginning January 1, 2008, the Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress will reduce prices on all MARC Distribution Services (MDS) and for new subscriptions or renewals to Cataloger's Desktop and Classification Web ordered after January 1, 2008. Prices remain the same for all other products for 2008. After its annual review of product prices, CDS was able to reduce product prices because of operational cost savings. These cost savings were realized in part because of lower staffing levels during the previous year.

The email is not clear whether the cost savings are from lower staffing levels just within CDS, or from lower staffing levels at LOC overall. When we're suffering the effects of an erosion of descriptive cataloging services and authority control from LOC, saving money on ClassWeb or the Cataloger's Desktop still seems like a net loss to me.

ATLA Day 2 -- Learning to Love RDA

This morning's preconference workshop was Changes in RDA, presented by Judy Knop from ATLA. The following is a summary of what was presented. You can read my complete notes here.

While RDA (Resource Description and Access) was supposed to be completed by now, the development process has been slowed down with a goal of completing the new cataloging rules sometime in 2009.

In her presentation, Judy emphasized that the Joint Steering Committee has four objectives for RDA:

• Responsiveness to user needs
• Cost efficiency
• Flexibility
• Continuity with existing cataloging practices

During the presentation, I was interested to note, however, how many times cost efficiency is winning out over the other considerations.

Consider a title page like:

Christ
r
u
c
i
f
i
e
d

RDA requires one to transcribe this title as: 245 $a Christ rucified. There is only one "C" so it only gets transcribed once. In our discussion it was pointed out that, while less likely, it would also be correct under RDA to transcribe the title as: 245 $a hrist Crucified, or, 245 $a Crucified hrist.

This kind of literal presentation of title page text is an example of how RDA is paving the way for automated transcription of bibliographic data by scanning processes. But it seems unlikely to me that any automated scanning process could actually convert the above title into any one of the three examples above. A human cataloger, however, is required to perform this transcription process in a literal-minded way that a machine would be incapable of duplicating.

RDA is also designed to bridge cataloging practices from the text-based to the non-text-based world. Thus the introduction of bibliographic elements such as media type and carrier type to allow for the cataloging of materials in a wide variety of formats. A corollary of this new emphasis on variety is that text-based monographic materials are no longer assumed to be the default. So now the term "unmediated" is going to be introduced as cataloger-speak for books and other print materials. "245 $a Gone with the wind $h [unmediated]" will be the correct way to differentiate Gone With the Wind, the book, from Gone With the Wind, the film [projected], or Gone With the Wind the DVD [video]. In a similar way, carrier types will allow differentiation between such types as audiocassette, online resource, microfiche, videodisc, and -- the new default for monographs -- volume. A 300 field for a typical book will look like:

300 $a 1 $f volume (24 pages, 12 pages of plates) : $b coloured illustrations ; $c 21 cm

The great debate over how to handle uniform titles for Bible books has been resolved: "O.T." and "N.T." are being dropped altogether in favor of directly subdividing by Bible book: Bible. Genesis; Bible. John. Where one is working with the entire old or new testament, it will always be spelled out in full: Bible. Old Testament; Bible. New Testament. And Jewish catalogers have decided not to fight for any distinction between the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. Jewish and Christian canons will be different, but both will use the simple term "Bible" subdivided by Bible book.

We are still at least two years away from the completion of RDA. How soon it will be implemented will depend on how soon ILS vendors are willing/able to accommodate its changes. Judy commented that she was not aware of any ILS vendors who are currently participating signficantly in the development of RDA. Learning to love RDA is going to be a process, and for many of us, it may be a very long process indeed.

ATLA Day 1 -- Discussion With Tom Yee

My next several posts are all going to be coming from the American Theological Library Association's annual conference in Philadelphia. As a member of the Education Committee, I arrived in Philadelphia a day before the pre-conference workshops in order to participate in the final planning meeting before the conference starts. This evening I was also able to participate in a Technical Services Interest Group discussion with Tom Yee from Library of Congress. What follows is a summary of some of the items that we discussed with Tom. You can read my complete notes on the discussion here.

It is possible to view the overall tone of our discussion as depressing. MFC continues to be the prevalent pressure at LC: More, Faster, Cheaper. Retirements and early retirements (buyouts) have severely depleted the ranks of experienced catalogers -- much of the LC institutional memory has already been lost. The Cataloging and Acquisitions Department has lost over 50% of the total staff and cannot do any rehiring. At this point, over 50% of the call numbers and subject headings in LC records is coming from SACO participants.

LC is anticipating a significant restructuring in October 2007 or October 2008. Over 600 jobs will be affected as efforts are made to combine acquisitions and cataloging functions. Tom mentioned that one of the most hotly debated areas of the reorganization is who will end up with offices with windows.

On the positive side, though, Tom noted the continuing strong support of library organizations like ATLA for high standards of cataloging.

We also discussed trends in the future: The question was raised whether LC is going to abandon MARC 21 in favor of XML cataloging. LC is experimenting with XML, but it cannot make a large change like this until it is supported by ILS vendors. It is a bit of a chicken/egg scenario: Vendors are waiting to develop XML systems until they see more clear-cut rules for metadata/XML schemas; Librarians are waiting to develop more clear-cut rules until they see more evidence that they will be supported by ILS vendors.

Marketing and business models continue to set the agenda for changes at LC. In response to the question, "What can ATLA do to help improve the quality of religion cataloging?" Tom had several suggestions:

--Increase participation in funnel programs (NACO, SACO, etc.)
--Continue to create good local catalog records; they help everyone.
--Continue to raise consciousness about the importance of cataloging to the retrievability of data.