Cataloging Futures

Future of Library of Congress Subject Headings

I guess the days of the "red books" are over. Want to see what the future of LCSH might look like? Take a look at lcsh.info:

This is an experimental service that makes the Library of Congress Subject Headings available as linked-data using the SKOS vocabulary. The goal of lcsh.info is to encourage experimentation and use of LCSH on the web with the hopes of informing a similar effort at the Library of Congress to make a continually updated version available. More information about the Linked Data effort can be found on the W3C Wiki. [emphasis mine]

Nathan, thanks for reminding me about this a month ago :) Talk about slow blogging!

Reading Thomas Mann's response

In his response to the LC Working Group report, Thomas Mann insists that the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are still a useful, essential tool in the serious scholar's arsenal of information-seeking resources. I don't agree with Mann on every point. And I'm a lot more sanguine about LCSH as a discovery tool on the Web. But, we're in basic agreement that the LC subject headings can and will provide valuable subject-rich metadata in the future.

If the Library of Congress doesn't want to continue LCSH management, development, and maintenance (this is still not clear), they should open up this work to the library community. Just morph the subject authority records into XML (or some other Web-friendly format) and mount them on the Web as an open-source tool.

I think it's interest that there's no clamour to stop using other controlled vocabularies, like the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). So, is this a debate/conversation about the value of subject-rich metadata or about where the Library of Congress wants to allocate taxpayers' dollars, as Mann suggests?

Essential reading: LC subject headings report

A must read: Library of Congress Subject Headings: Pre- v. Post-Coordination and Related Issues [pdf]. Some snippets from the press release:

In 2006, the Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) at the Library of Congress (LC) requested the Cataloging Policy and Support Office to review of the pros and cons of pre- versus post-coordination of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The final report recommended, and the ABA Management accepted, that LC catalogers continue to apply pre-coordination of LCSH terms.

... Many of the pre- vs. post-coordination decisions documented in this report address recommendations recently made in the report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, especially section 4.3 “Optimize LCSH for Use and Re-Use.” LC will be responding to specific recommendations from that Working Group report later this year.

Google Using LC Subject Headings

One can't help see the irony here. Just a little over a year ago, the Calhoun Report [PDF] predicted that we would be doing away with Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) in favor of keyword searching a la Google and Amazon. Now it appears that Google is using LC subject headings to enhance the search capabilities of Google Book Search. Interesting. Jenn Riley takes a close look at this new feature over on her Inquiring Librarian blog.

LC Subject Cataloging and the Open Library

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there's a post on subject cataloging over on the Library of Congress Blog. It refers to an interview with Aaron Swartz about the Open Library. Again here's another example of the Web 2.0 crowd's interest in quality bibliographic data (I've mentioned this before.).

I'm encouraged by Web 2.0 projects like Library Thing and the Open Library. Read the interview and the LC blog post and let me know what you think.

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 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!

Problems with Tagging

I'm very pro tagging and think that library patrons  should be allowed to add tags to bibliographic records in library catalogs. That being said, I'm trying to keep an open mind to see how this social experience of tagging is developing both pro and con. Here's a link to a brief article, "Tagging: It’s no longer fun and easy". It raising some problems that are developing as tagging becomes more popular.

• "The first problem with tagging is semantic vagueness. For example, does the tag “china” apply to the country or crockery?"
• "A second problem is that the format of tags isn’t standardized."
• "The third and perhaps biggest problem is the overuse of tagging. How often have you seen a blog item with a list of tags almost as long as the item itself?"

The conclusion is that tagging will become more standardized and complex in the future.

"... in the near future you will either not be bothering with tagging or you’ll have moved on to the next generation of tagging which will be more complex (probably based on XML) and demand more effort to use. Tagging will no longer be fun and easy."

Of course, as catalogers and metadata librarians, we are use to such standardization and complexity using the Library of Congress Subject Headings.

Via International and Comparative Librarianship