Cataloging Futures

Technical Services Meetings at ATLA Annual Conference: An LC Perspective

I recently attending the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Annual Conference. We have an active, well-organized Technical Services Interest Group made up of mostly catalogers. This year we were fortunate to have a speaker from the Library of Congress, Tom Yee, the Assistant Chief from the Cataloging Policy and Support Office. He spoke twice: at an informal question and answer discussion and at our annual interest group meeting. Tom use to be on the Religion, Philosophy, Psychology Team at LC and has had a long standing relationship with the catalogers at ATLA. Here are some highlights from Tom's presentation:

• LC is evaluating the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 
• They are looking at the application and structure of the subject headings, in particular, considering pre-coordination vs. post-coordination. A report on this issue should be available soon. 
• In a move toward ecomony, commonly used subject strings will be added to the LC authority file 
• Developing Class Web and machine manipulation of subjects headings are being worked on also 
• Because of budgetary constraints at LC, they are under pressure to work better, cheaper, faster
• There is a renewed interest and work being done on genre/form headings by the moving images, cartographic, and music cataloging communities 
• There will be a physical reorganization of the staff at LC combining acquisitions and cataloging (their website already reflects this change)
• Lots of strategic planning is going on at LC
• LC management is asking the question: What do we need to provide some access to a book and get it out? One approach is to do some materials as minimal level cataloging: MARC encoding levels "3" or "7" 
• Some of these minimal level books will not be classified if they are going to off-site storage 
• Because of the budget, as catalogers retire they are not being replaced. So, the workflow is being changed with technicians doing bibliographic description and the professional catalogers doing classification and subject analysis 
• Because of these changes at LC, Tom suggested that catalogers should try to add good quality cataloging into OCLC WorldCat. (It definitely seems, to me, that we can no longer rely so heavily on the Library of Congress as the standard bearer for cataloging print materials.)

One of the main points I'm taking away from these presentations is: All of us are responsible for contributing good cataloging to OCLC WorldCat!

New and Revised RDA Documents

In order to keep up with the development of RDA: Resource Description and Access, you'll want to take a look at one revised document and two new documents just issued this month by the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC).

• RDA Scope and Structure (revised) [PDF]
• RDA Element Analysis [PDF]
• RDA to FRBR Mapping [PDF]

Via The Bibliographic Blogosphere

Thoughts on ALA's RDA Update Forum + New RDA Draft Available

I enjoyed reading Karen Coyle's blogging of the RDA Update Forum held yesterday at the ALA Annual Conference. Most interesting quotes:

"John Attig is the new ALA representative to the JSC. John gave the clearest vision of RDA that I've ever heard, linking RDA chapters directly to FRBR user tasks and stating clearly that RDA is intended to be a set of data elements plus a community application profile. He also talked about traditional cataloging details, like uniform titles and headings for the Bible, that are being discussed by the RDA members. His talk showed that the issues that come up in library cataloging are essentially unchanged, although the structure that records those decisions may be significantly different. One will still ponder access points, primary and not, and struggle with all of the nitty gritty details. [emphasis mine] John does an excellent job of marrying metadata and cataloging -- the data and the activity of making decisions about the data."

"However, after all of this positive reporting, the few questions that we had time for showed that there is still an undercurrent (or maybe a good-sized wave) of discontent within the cataloging community. Some of this might be seen as obsessing on the part of catalogers (the obligatory complaining about ISBD punctuation), but not all. An attendee sitting near me stood up and stated that RDA, as currently in draft, is not usable as cataloging instructions. [emphasis mine] After we broke up, others came up to him to thank him for voicing what they, too, feel. Even members of the RDA process have said similar things off record."

Here's what I take from this:

• While the structure/framework of RDA will be different from AACR2, the fundamental cataloging issues will remain. This makes sense. Certain aspects of bibliographic description and authority control are present whether or not the resources you're cataloging are digital or print.
• The current drafts of RDA aren't usable as a new content standard/cataloging code.
• The process of RDA development is moving forward nonetheless.
• So, since RDA is still in draft (and new drafts are scheduled to come out) there's still opportunity for the cataloging community to have a voice in the process. If we don't like the product let's say so!
• By the way, a new RDA draft was just released. It's for Part A, Chapters 6-7 (revised) [PDF]. The deadline for comments is September 17, 2007.

RDA/DC/MARC: "It's All About the Structure"

I ended up not going to ALA, because I was committed to another conference in June. So, this weekend was spent focused on RDA updates at home. I listened to an excellent Talis podcast interview with Diane Hillmann and read Karen Schneider's lengthy post "Out of the Secret Garden: The RDA/DC Initiative". Two very different voices: Karen Schneider's tone is sarcastic until you get about half way into her post. Diane Hillmann is calm and knowledgeable. Their subject matter is the same: the future of library cataloging and metadata standards.

I'll put the gist of some of this in my own words. Library cataloging standards, MARC and AACR2, have served us well in the past, but will not in the future. Computer technology has changed dramatically since MARC was developed 40 years ago. AACR2 was based on a model of libraries when we had card catalogs. In order for library metadata to be useable by communities outside the library (and on the Web) things have to change. Our standards have to be machine-manipulable. This is true of our metadata framework (MARC or whatever replaces it) as well as our content standard (soon to be RDA) and vocabularies. This is the task that must be addressed now for libraries to move forward. It can't wait for future revisions of RDA.

Karen Schneider obscures these issues by criticizing the library community for not having our cataloging standards, e.g., AACR2, in machine readable form, but instead in a text based form. But let's put this into some kind of sane context: the last editon of AACR2 was published in 2002 while in May 2001 the W3C had only just published the XML Schema. Maybe in 2007, If we don't move forward now, then we're to blame. But up until now it's all been too new.

I took 7 1/2 pages of notes listening to the Diane Hillmann interview, so I'm not going to try to cover all the issues discussed. If you're a cataloger suffering through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief about the anticipated changes in cataloging, you'll want to spend some quality time listening to this interview. It's good to know what the Dublin Core community is working on.

Here's what I struggle with: the question that never gets addressed in all these cataloging articles, etc. is the future of MARC. I ask this question at workshops and presentations and no one seems to know. So my question for the library blogosphere is: What's the future of the MARC format? You know it's not just our bibliographic records that are stored in MARC, it's also the Library of Congress name and subject authority files and most libraries' holdings are in the MARC Format for Holdings Data. So, we've made this huge investment to a metadata framework that is, according to some, hopelessly out of date.

Or is it? I've recently found two slide presentations via the Dewey blog "MARC Futures" and "MARC 21 Support System" by Sally McCallum of the Library of Congress. Being slides, they're a bit sketchy. But they seem to hold some promise that MARC will be developed rather than discarded. If MARC 21 is gradually going to move to an XML framework, the changes ahead may not be as radical as some suggest. Any thoughts?

(By the way, the title quote is from Diane Hillmann's interview.)

Additions to the LC Working Group Website

When you get a chance, check out the new resources at the Library of Congress Working Group for the Future of Bibliographic Control website. The agenda page for the May 9th meeting now has links to all the papers and PowerPoint presentations that were given. Also, there are now links to Webcasts of that same meeting.

Pre-registration is now open for the third and last public meeting of this group. There's an online form for the registration. This meeting will be held on July 9th at the Library of Congress. A live Webcast of the meeting is being planned.    

New RDA Print Survey Available

"The co-publishers of Resource Description and Access (RDA) have created a short survey on user preferences for a print version of RDA.

You can take the survey by visiting www.rdaonline.org and selecting the survey link in the left-hand navigation bar.

A separate RDA survey for educators planning to utilize RDA has also been posted in the same location.

Both surveys will be available through July 15, 2007. [emphasis mine]

For further questions relating to either of these surveys, please contact Catherine English, ALA Editions marketing manager, at cenglish@ala.org"

Via BCReview

New Essay by Thomas Mann

I discovered via Rory Litwin at Library Juice that Thomas Mann has a new essay out. Whether you agree with him or not, Mann is essential reading for the future of cataloging debate. I don't have time to read it now (I'm just winding down from the American Theological Library Association Annual Conference) but I'll try to weigh in soon!

Roy Tennant on Professional Development of Librarians

In light of our conversation about upgrading the cataloger's skill set, you'll want to read this post article by Roy Tennant on professional development. His three main points:

• Take time to learn
• Try something new
• Stop doing something

It's a great read!

"On the Quality of Metadata"

I discovered this post via Jennifer Lang's del.icio.us bookmarks. It's about the quality of metadata from a non-librarian computer scientist that's definitely worth reading. As we move in a direction of using different sources and various types of metadata, the issue of quality will be an important one.

What I take from this is that expensive controlled vocabularies may not be the answer to keeping order in the future. Rather human interaction with the results of data (that's been merged) will be key. 

"What's missing is the feedback loop: a way for people to inject information back into the system that keeps the system stable. Mixing high quality metadata results in lower quality metadata, but the individual qualities are not lost, are just diluted. There needs to be additional information/energy injected in the system for the quality to return to its previous level (or higher!). This energy can be the one already condensed in the efforts made to create controlled vocabularies and mapping services, or can be distributed on a bunch of people united by common goals/interests and social practices that keep the system stable, trustful and socio-economically feasible.

Both the open source development model and the wikipedia development model are examples of such socio-economically feasible systems, althought they might not scale to the size we need/want for an entire semantic web.

The semantic web has a lot of people working on the technological guts, but very few on the social practices that might make it happen. I suspect this is going to change soon and solutions might come from unexpected places."

I realize more and more that the social, interactive role of the library patrons/users may be crucial not only for library catalog design (front end), but also for library metadata (back end). This post describes the importance of the role of human interaction with metadata.

More Resources on Upgrading Catalogers' Skills

Last week we had a good conversation about what catalogers need to do to upgrade their skills for the future. I mentioned that I'm working on gathering resources on this issue.

A couple of days ago I featured some resources from Karen Calhoun, perhaps best known for the Library of Congress "Calhoun Report" [PDF]. Here's a second in the series on resources, It's a summary of comments from that earlier conversation:

• Learning systems analysis/theory 
• Learn new technologies 
• Learning to read code: XML, SQL, and CQL
• Openness to play and experimentation with new technologies
• Learn about what makes the web work
• Talk to people who are making the Semantic Web work
• Find a way to get your data onto the Semantic Web
• Understanding more about how computers work, what they can do, what they can't do
• Develop a fundamental understanding of computer systems and modern technology 
• A willingness to learn new technologies/standards and to experiment/play with them

I put this together as a to-do list for myself, but thought that others would find it helpful. I left out attribution to keep it simple. So, check out the original post for the authors of these excellent comments!