Let's mashup MARC metadata before moving to the Cloud!

You young, tech savvy librarians may not remember this article. But back in 1994 Nicholson Baker wrote an essay in The New Yorker titled "Discards." He argued that we were losing valuable data from our card catalogs as we pursued the "holy grail" of efficiency: the online catalog.

I thinks he was right. Well, now we have no excuse. It's not the card catalog this time. The local online catalog is now the dinosaur and we're being encouraged to pursue the next holy grail: the Web, that is, moving our integrated library systems (ILS) to the Cloud. Now we're being offered WorldCat Local.

This time there's no reason we need to lose valuable local cataloging data. We can merge our local records. As long as we put in the effort locally and there is a willingness from OCLC to do this. We will probably learn more from OCLC as time goes on. For now, check out the WorldCat Local FAQs [pdf].

So, before moving your ILS to the Web think about the added value that catalogers put into those local MARC records. You could be abandoning these records for the less-full master records in WorldCat. Think hard about this because if there's one thing we're learning about today's users: they want more information about resources, not less.

Comments

[arkham]

Considering what a mess our consortium's attempts to get WorldCat Local to work as we want it to has been...I don't really think of this as a particularly good thing.

I also notice the FAQs barely mention proxy access - no big surprise to me considering what a complete nightmare it's been trying to get WCL to work with EZProxy (which is now also an OCLC product). Figures they wouldn't push that too hard.

I hope anyone who considers WorldCat Local asks a LOT of questions, and demands solid answers.

At this point, there's no way we'd be willing to use an OCLC ILS, and as things stand right now, we also wouldn't pay to use WorldCat Local.

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I actually just browsed through that entire marketing brochure, and learned some things... but i didn't see anything in there about merging local records? What part did you think suggested that?

[Chris]

Hi arkham,

Thanks for sharing your experience with WorldCat Local. I suppose being in a consortium adds an extra layer of complexity in attempting to use WL.

There may be libraries where WL is a good solution for an ILS. But in my area, special, theological libraries, I think it's a bad idea.

Over the years the religion catalogers from LC encouraged us to add religious and theological subject headings, since LC's focus was more general, and ATLA catalogers had a special focus and expertise for certain religious denominations. It would be sad to lose that added subject access by moving to WL.

[Chris]

Hi Jonathan,

In the WorldCat Local FAQs on cataloging, it sounds like they will accommodate local data in local holdings records only. So, merging local bibliographic records is wishful thinking on my part.