Cataloging Futures

New metadata blog!

Diane Hillmann and Jon Phipps just started a new metadata blog: Metadata Matters.

Concerning metadata--To use a Kung Fu TV show analogy--Diane is "Master Po" and I am "Grasshopper." So, you know I'll be reading this blog and I recommend you do likewise!

Cataloging/Metadata Adjunct wins LJ Teaching Award 2008

Rick J. Block has just won Library Journal's LJ Teaching Award for 2008.

Block is famous among students and faculty for converting or convincing many of his students to seek careers in cataloging, metadata, and the broad areas of knowledge organization. “That is my pride,” he says. “I convert several students every semester.”

Library of Congress merges acquisitions and cataloging

This press release describes the merger of acquisitions and cataloging functions at the Library of Congress:

"The new organizational structure--the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA)--fully merges acquisitions and cataloging functions, streamlines workflows and deploys staff to take advantage of their unique language and subject skills," said ABA Director Beacher Wiggins. He noted that the new organization will be better designed and staffed to acquire new digital materials, which will be processed in the same work units as collections in printed and other formats.

The merger of acquisitions and cataloging functions ends an older industrial model of work, in which an incoming book moved slowly along an assembly line of stand-alone acquisitions and processing units. Twenty years ago, staff in Order, Exchange and Gift or Cataloging in Publication divisions acquired a title and then handed it off to highly specialized librarians in separate Descriptive Cataloging and Subject Cataloging divisions for description, subject analysis, classification and assignment to a particular place on a shelf. Whole-book cataloging, which merged descriptive- and subject-cataloging functions in the early 1990s, began the trend toward centralized processing to eliminate duplicative efforts and speed up "throughput"--the time it takes to make a new book findable by catalog users and to get it on the shelf to be served to readers.

RDA full draft available for public review

Update: Webform for US comments is available here. Deadline is December 15! If you work with an organization, like ATLA, MLA, etc. you may have more time.

The full draft of RDA: Resource and Access is available for public review and comment.

You can now print off, read, and weigh in on RDA. Now is definitely the time to play a role in our cataloging and metadata future! The deadline for comments is February 2, 2009.

Essential listening: Calhoun and Tennant on OCLC's policy

In this Talis podcast, Karen Calhoun and Roy Tennant discuss and explain the reasoning behind and goals of the newly revised Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records.

Both Calhoun and Tennant were part of the study group that developed the new policy. The earlier policy dates back to 1987--ancient history in Web years.

Richard Wallis does a great job in this interview. He pulls together questions from emails he received. Many of the questions posed in the library blogoshpere on this policy change are addressed.

If you work at an OCLC member library (or you're considering membership) you will want to listen to this podcast.

My take: Having asked for and gotten permission to use the new WorldCat Search API to extract and overlay WorldCat records for one of our digital library project at work, I am sympathetic to OCLC's goal of wanting to enable their members to use WorldCat in new and innovative ways.

Also, I do think that OCLC has certain rights over the database with all the transformation that goes on (at OCLC) with the records created and submitted by member libraries. OCLC doesn't just stockpile our records. However, the issues are complex. I'm also very sympathetic to an open data paradigm. I'm going to keep reading and thinking about the pros and cons. One thing for sure: this is a very significant issue for all OCLC member libraries to contemplate as we all move toward using the Web to communicate with our users.

RDA full draft delayed until November 17th

This just in:

Dear Colleagues,

Due to complications in software development, the Committee of Principals has determined that the full draft of RDA will be issued in PDF files. It will be available on November 17, 2008. We will provide the appropriate URL for accessing the full draft at this time. We will also provide an update on the software as soon as possible.

Nathalie Schulz, Secretary, JSC
for the
Committee of Principals

Spending time on Twitter

Hey, I just started micro-blogging on Twitter. If you want to follow my tweets, go here.

I've also added Twitter Updates on the left sidebar of Cataloging Futures, so you can follow my tweets there. I promise not to talk about what I ate for breakfast :)

Useful links on OCLC's new record use policy

I was going to pull together links to all the blog posts on OCLC's Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records. Then I discovered that Ryan Eby had already gathered everything you need to know over on the Code4Lib wiki.

Via Twitter

RDA development: what a long, strange trip it's been

I'm getting tired of waiting for the full draft of RDA, so I'm going to ramble...

If you count the first draft of AACR3 (and I do) the arrival of the full RDA draft is four years in the making. The first draft of AACR3 (the original title of the new cataloging code) was issued in December 2004.

I recently commented to an AUTOCAT list friend that I'm a little more positive about RDA than some: I see it as a work in progress--Imperfect out of the gate, but redeemable. I haven't hesitated to be critical of RDA development on this blog. (You can snoop around the blog for old posts on RDA, if you like.) But, right now doing metadata work, I feel like I'm in no man's land without a code. I'm sure for some metadata librarians AACR2 works okay, but metadata work is idiosyncratic and for our metadata workflow, I don't use AACR2 much, except as a foundation.

I think AACR2 is a great code, but it doesn't work for the XML data structures I'm working with now. At least parts of it don't work. For example, ISBD punctuation is superfluous and unnecessary for data presentation.

I need a new code. And I'm hoping that RDA will develop into the kind of code we all need for working with digital collections (and print collections also).

I know some of you think RDA is a turkey, but I'm still hopeful.