Essential listening: The genius of cataloging

This lecture blew my little cataloger mind! I discovered it last week among Mark Lindner's prodigious reading list.

Francis Miksa's audio lecture, The Genius of Library Cataloging and its Possible Future is truly essential listening if you think there's more to cataloging that mindlessly accepting copy and "marking and parking." While the whole lecture is well worth the full 1 1/2 hours, the last 40 minutes or so deal with Dr. Miksa's vision for a cataloging future.

Update: Here's the link to the UIUC GSLiS lecture page. This lecture is from the 2006 archive.

Comments

[Shawne Miksa]

Thank you for posting a link to this recording. Didn't know it was available and now having listened to it I think that is should not be missed by anyone in our field, especially catalogers. (I am biased, of course.)

[Bujar Kocana]

I would like to take more information"What will be future Ontology"

[Bryan Campbell]

You might also want to read his "The Case for Creating a Systematic Indexing System for the National SME&T Digital Library" (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309059771&page=101), which echoes some of the ideas that you heard in "The Genius of Library Cataloging and its Possible Future."

[Chris Schwartz]

Shawne, Bujar, and Bryan, Thanks for these comments. When I posted this last week, I thought if just one LIS professor noticed it that would be great. So, I was thrilled to see this first comment from Shawne.

Francis Miksa's lecture has taken off and been linked to throughout the library blogosphere. I have to say it's more inspiring than the LC WGFBC draft final report. The report is very important, but the overwhelming concern for economics prevents it from addressing some of the philosophical questions. Such things as the future role of libraries (which is not fleshed out enough in the report). Miksa's lecture looks at those kind of questions (which is why I'm going to listen to it again when I get a chance).

I'm also reading some history of bibliographic control using Ronald Hagler's "The Bibliographic Record and Information Technology." It's a great book and it's helping me get some perspective on the LC working group report.