PCC Talk: Reading the alphabet soup June 26, 2005
[minor typographical editing, including underscores, dsl 10/26/05]
Slide 1
Good evening. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today about the relationship between the ongoing changes to our cataloging rules and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, between RDA and PCC.
First, I’ll tell you what I’ll not be talking about tonight. I will not repeat or summarize what was said in the AACR3 ------ RDA program this morning by Barbara Tillett, Jennifer Bowen, and John Attig. Their presentations are on the Web, if you did not get a chance to hear them today. I will talk about RDA (and the JSC) and its relationship to the PCC.
The original sub-title of my talk, “AACR3 and the PCC,” has been overtaken by events and was too simple, too general. (I had to think of something to call it before I wrote it.) Now that I have written it, I have thought of a better sub-title. Since “reading tea leaves” was in my mind when I thought of ‘reading alphabet soup” the new sub-title helps to complete that thought.
I’ve added the phrase “and the future of cataloging” because I want to talk about both RDA and the PCC in that context. Before I talk about that context—the future of cataloging, I’ll remind you of a few things regarding AACR and PCC.
Slide 2
This is obvious to you all, but it may be helpful to point out these differences. I think it is especially important to remember that AACR is part of a larger activity—cataloging library materials, and that PCC is a group concerned with the whole of that larger activity. I want to avoid falling into the trap of oversimplifying what we do. We are all familiar with the pitfalls of saying “MARC cataloging” whether we are blaming it or praising it. What we do as catalogers is complex. The result of our actions—whether record or catalog--is a complex object.
AACR is not subordinate to PCC. PCC is not responsible for AACR. (And neither is the JSC. That would be too easy. The JSC is just one visible tip of a much larger organization—a network of many communities.)
One more point. PCC is not responsible for the rules, standards, protocols, etc. that shape cataloging work. AACR, MARC21, OPACS, etc. are givens for PCC. Is isn’t entirely without influence, of course. And feedback from PCC does affect these “givens.” PCC is focused on putting those givens into operation most effectively.
Next, I’ll speak a little bit about how RDA differs from AACR2 and how PCC influences the work being done on RDA.
Slide 3
[Read from the slide.]
Before I can speak about the roles of AACR and PCC in cataloging’s future, I’ll need to tell you something about that future. Since I don’t know anything about the future myself, I’ll borrow some words from some people who may. They do, at least, know a great deal about our present.
Slide 4
These four persons—Dale Flecker, Lorcan Dempsey, Deanna Marcum, and Roy Tennant--have spoken and written about the emerging information environment of which libraries and their catalogs are a part. I want to highlight one or two points from each of them. What they have to say about that environment will set up what I want to say about the relations between RDA and the PCC. The environment they describe or comment on is the domain of RDA and the PCC.
Dale Flecker in his paper to the PCC Participants meeting last January, described the expanding information universe we live in and discussed the its impact on OPACs as they become one tool among many. Dale noted that OPACs must become adaptive and integrative tools to survive in the larger information environment. Being locked into the library ghetto means marginalization and decline for libraries, librarians, and their catalogs.
Lorcan Dempsey in his blog on June 20 makes a simple point that he has made elsewhere, too. “We need to find better ways of putting the library in the user environment, and not expect the user always to find his or her way to the library environment.”
Deanna Marcum in her paper to the Ebsco Leadership Seminar last January in Boston, addressed this question: “What should we think [and do] about cataloging in the Age of Google?” Deanna asked this specific question, “Should we proceed with AACR3 in light of a much-changed environment?” That is an important question, and one I’ll speak to directly today. Her argument also asks why catalog if full text is available online to search engines and their customers? This argument could be extended (Marcum does not make this extension) to ask why collect resources in the first place, if they are available, findable, and useable online.
Roy Tennant in his Library Journal article last year, discussed his metadata woes after harvesting 100,000 records using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). When he looked at those harvested records, he found “a complete mess.” The mess was caused—in part--by not applying common guidelines and practices when creating the content of the harvested metadata. Tennant’s comment on his experience with one part of the larger information environment shows us a level of chaos that counterpoints the promise (or illusion) of an “Age of Google.”
Slide 5
Flecker and Marcum refer to the “larger information environment” or the “Age of Google.” Another way to name this environment in which RDA and PCC exist is “the information multiverse.” Multiverse is a horrible non-word to use, but I want to make as clearly as I can the contrast between the “bibliographic universe” that has been the focus of our profession’s attention for a century and a half and the present larger information environment. “Bibliographic” gets stretched beyond books, but it doesn’t stretch far enough to include everything meant by cultural objects or information objects. And it isn’t about one universe anymore. There are many. And the overlap and interconnect. We have to exist and thrive within multiple universes. That is the environment that challenges libraries and catalogs. I think we can do that, just as many businesses do.
Tennant’s article doesn’t strongly address the metadata content standards, like AACR - RDA, but readers like me can make that connection, and speak of the value of particular tools, specific collections, and metadata content standards. OPACs, libraries, and RDA (etc.) have potential to make that value real for users. The trick is twofold.
First, the services libraries create for users have to be flexible enough—adaptive and integrative—to blend with other information services. (This is what Lorcan Dempsey might mean when he talks about m-portals versus p-portals in his paper “Recombinant Libraries.”)
Second, the services have to be built on some bedrock of knowledge or know how. The knowledge catalogers have belongs within that bedrock. Our knowledge of content standards—AACR, for example, and our knowledge of sharing effort—cooperative cataloging, for example, are firm ground on which we can build.
Dempsey’s point is simply that we must project the library—not just the catalog--into the workflows and behaviors of information users. The idea, long cherished, of the catalog as an ideal tool for research is moot in the fluid information multiverse. The metadata we have about the objects in our collections—tangible or digital, FRBR Work or FRBR item—must be organized in ways that support the use and reuse of that metadata in a huge variety of tools and services. In the information multiverse, improved catalogs are just one tool for finding and using resources. One that libraries and their host institutions will desperately need to manage their resources. Google is insufficient.
Slide 6
The critical difference between past and future that we can see in our present is the expansion of domain from access to library materials through library catalogs to the creation of services in the information multiverse. These service need to be built on good quality metadata for the resources within our collections. Library materials, collections, are part of those information services.
Slide 7
[repeat?]
Slide 8
RDA presents opportunity for the PCC to rethink its policies, practices, and plans to recast PCC to be more engaged with the challenges of multiple information universes. As the JSC communities change from AACR to RDA, PCC can make a similar transformation.
As RDA simplifies cataloging rules to make them more principle-based and support cataloger’s judgment, all the PCC programs can follow through with changes to its documentation practices. Remember that the emphasis on “cataloger’s judgment” came out BIBCO and PCC. The processes of standards development and shared implementation interact dynamically.
PCC has a large educational role now. How can PCC work to retrain catalogers through its programs to prepare them to function effectively in a diverse information environment?
PCC and ALCTS are collaborating now on training and materials. What more can be done to meet the need for metadata in the information multiverse?