Discussion Questions
1. What impact will the Department's new vision, directions, and goals, have on the library and university's educational and research mission? How will they affect other institutions with which we share bibliographic records and co-develop technical standards?
The field of librarianship is changing rapidly and profoundly, and in order to continue to make the greatest possible contribution to the education and research mission of the university, we are compelled to analyze and improve our core services.
At the same time, while cataloging tools and resources are changing considerably, the profession's primary goal remains the same, namely, to provide the most reliable, most comprehensive, most efficient access to our institution's holdings, with precision and recall optimized such that all of selected resources, whether they be print or electronic, owned or licensed, are always ready at hand.
Catalogers often stress the importance of "bibliographic control". But bibliographic control is not an end in itself . It is a means to an end, namely, efficient and comprehensive access to knowledge resources, such that research and education can flourish. While it is sometimes suggested that such control is less necessary in an era of full-text keyword searching, the opposite is in fact the case. The signal-to-noise ratio in the flow of information has never been lower. Non-peer-reviewed Web sites and dynamic (i..e, unstable) information sources proliferate, and the ability to Find, Identify, Select, Obtain (i.e., the so-called "FRBR User tasks") seem easier on the surface but in fact are more challenging than ever.
In addition to all its merits, the World Wide Web also serves as free-for-all vanity press. Anyone with a networked computer can broadcast and receive even the most misinformed, malignant, or plagiarized sources. Publishers, book-sellers, teachers, and librarians, no longer function as the gate-keepers to trusted information. This is not all bad, of course, since traditional publishing often promotes commercial or ideological interests, whereas the Web supports a far greater range of unfiltered voices and opinions. The challenge, in any event, is to position ourselves to continue to serve as trusted mediators (if not gate-keepers), and focus on our most valuable service, namely, providing the structured metadata to collocate similar concepts and disambiguate dissimilar one, and to lay the foundation for semantic interoperability.
As the library takes on greater responsibility for managing and integrating heterogeneous formats and schemas, the role of catalog and metadata librarians are more important than ever. It is vital that Catalog and Metadata Services be involved from the ealiest stages of "product development". Their expertise in reconciling diverse vocabularies and schemas, and their creatign catalogs that organize huge amounts of diverse information from all academic disciplines, is more important then ever.
The selection of metadata schemas and element sets, the development of application profiles will require sound cataloging judgement. We need to make the right choices when it comes to data modeling and selecting the appropriate level of refinement and granularity to support the research and information needs of our patrons .
For example, catalogers will be called upon to interpret and apply the forthcoming RDA, namely, the only descriptive cataloging standard sufficiently robust to cover the various knowledge domains in all their various formats. Domains covering all the arts, sciences, and humanities, and formats including printed books, serials, web pages, museum artifacts, mansucripts, visual resources, and so-on, all within a single semantically-integrated system (or namespace). At the same time, however, catalogers will be needed to assess, and where appropriate, apply the more specialized descriptive standards, such as VRA Core, DACS, CCO and Dublin Core.
Catalogers must also be prepared to advise our colleagues on appropriate encoding formats. MARC has been instrumental to the networked catalog environment used throughout the world today. It is no longer enough, however. Today we need to be able to absorb MODS and MARC-XML from peer libraries, ONIX from publishers, EAD and OAI from mansuscript and archival collections, TEI from those in the field of computational linguistics, and Dublin Core from virtually all quarters. The underlying language in each case is XML, and thus it is imperative that our staff develop as much XML expertise as possible.
The top recommendations emerging from the Provost's Cyberinfrastructure Survey Report (10/3/06) will also require the help of metadata experts. Three of the four highest-rated enhancements involve the library and catalog department implicity, namely: (1) "Easier electronic access to scholarly materials," (2) "Providing students with digital access to research and instructional materials," and perhaps most poignantly, (4) "Providing better search tools to locate materials across all of Yale's holdings and collections."
The challenge facing us is one that catalog librarians are well-suited to meet, namely, figuring out how to make these diverse information schemas interoperable and seemlessly intergrated to our users. Moreover, catalogers have expertise in thesaurus construction and building crosswalks between and among diverse metadata schemas, a state of affairs that will be conspicuous in the new online repository.
Training
As we envision a transformation of the department, the essential background and expertise is already present, but
Efficiency Recommendations
This may be the most controversial part of the vision document. In order to allow new initiatives, given that staff size and budget are unliikely to increase, we need to perform our current work more efficiently. The proposals are: (1) Make non-PCC Core default cataloging level; (2) Revisit Criteria for LSF transfers; (3) Reconsider shelflisting (collocation) practices; (4) Expand range of duties for E-level staff; and (6) Reconsider treatment of certain titles acquired both in Print and electronic form. Perhaps another could be added to this list, namely: (7) Yale catalogers need to overhaul their specific skills and knowledge of emerging metadata standards. RDA is necessary , but not in itself sufficient. MARC is becominng obsolete, and we need to improve our understanding and application of MARC-XML, MODS, and other XML based storage and retrieval formats. In order to free up time for new training and new assignment, we must find ways to expedite our current workflows. increased reliance on shelf-ready books. But this presupposes successful realization of no. (3), since otherwise, the source copy available for shelf-ready processing is limited to the Library of Congress. High-quality vendor-supplied original cataloging is, however, an attractive long-term goal.
These changes would be applied selectively so that, for example, unique holdings would receive the most exhaustive description and/or subject analysis. Currently, many of our most valuable holdings remain in backlogs, while much time is spent re-cataloging items that are held and have already been cataloged by hundreds of other libraries.
We realize that there are serious risks involved with these proposals. For example, reduction or discontinuation of shelflisting in certain cases will make it more dificult to browse the stacks; authors, titles, and subjects will be increasingly scattered across the collection. Moreover, when high priority items are cataloged originally, it becomes harder to assign call numbers, because a single logical niche no longer exists.
The only way to justify the change in shelf-listing practice is to concede that browsable stacks are no longer a viable or warranted option for our readers. Indeed, given the division of Yale versus LC classification, increasing availability of full-text searching and the fact that millions of items are distributed over 22 separate facilities, or kept in closed-stacks offsite shelving, this may not be a hard case to make. A re-affirmed commitment to precise intuitive arrangements of names, titles, and subjects should ameliorate the distress caused by a more disorganized shelf-list.
Also, any change in our authority control policies runs the risk of antagonizing our colleagues at Yale and elsewhere. Changing our default cataloging level to "non-PCC core" risks damaging our relationship to the cooperative cataloging community (in the same way LC was chastised for discontinuing authority control for series titles). Also, by relying on copy cataloging as source data for shelf-ready books, a vicious cycle is created whereby each library waits for the other to provide cataloging, which never arrives because all sides are waiting. Moreover, a reduction in authority control could cause a gradual atrophy of skills, thereby making it more time-consuming (and therefore less-efficient) each time a genuine need for authority control arises.
However, our recommendation is not to lessen the amount or frequency of authority control. Rather, we suggest a change of emphasis. Authority control should be expanded in the sense that we need to apply it beyond the scope of the traditional catalog. MetaLib will need more bibliograpic control as it growsin size, for example, as will the Institutional Repository.
2. How do we move forward on policies procedures, and best practices?
The Task Force recommends a kind of "Expert User model", whereby desginated staff could liaison with the IAC and manage XML applications and non-MARC metadata schemas across cataloging units, at least during a transitional period until the overall proficiency level has been raised. This group could form the nucleus of the Virtual Metadata Services Group proposed in the of the DPIP Production and Content Integration Working Group's Final Report
(p. 21)
We also recommend project-based training, so that new skills can be applied immediately and in a realistic context. We also recommend that department members be encouraged to attend a wider range of metadata conferences and workshops, and that learning plan funds be targeted toward departmental priorities, and that metadata-related SCOPA forums and grant applications be encouraged. We also recommend taking over catalog-related database responsibilities from ILTS (e.g., generating CatStat reports). This will require some training in SQL and other database languages.
3. Why is Yale taking a different path?
Yale will continue to collect unique artifacts and print materials in large quantities. It would be unwise to move language and subject experts away from the current assignments in order to support digital initiatives. A better approach is to integrate digital metadata into our current workflows and work assignments. This is analagous to the way we already manage non-print formats such as microfilm (i.e., according to language and subject expertise). As stated in the Strategic Directions: "To segregate this intellectual work based on format would require the Library to build costly redundant systems and limit our agility in dealing with shifting priorities."
Quotations
"Human intervention in cataloging will shift to a focus on unpublished, often uncataloged material—material that fills the shelves of special collections, archives and institutional storage facilities" PCC Mission Statement Task Force assumption 8 (2005)
"In allocating cataloging resources, invest fewer resources in describing easily
discoverable materials (common titles on Amazon, eg) and more resources in
describing unique specialized materials (special collections, abstruse languages,
etc)" . ( University of California Task Force. (Dec. 2005)"Much hope is placed on the ability of an institutional repository to rescue scholarly communication, yet in no way can it become part of this conceptual global system unless there is a strong backbone of cataloging and metadata" (p. 5). Indiana University White Paper (Jan. 2006)
"... in the age of digital information … how much do we need to continue to spend on carefully constructed catalogs?" Deanna Marcum's 2005 The Future of Cataloging "
"To be successful in the long run, technical services must play a central role in digital library design and development and in e-resource management .” (Karen Calhoun, LRTS, 2003)
"Catalogers must learn several metadata schemes and organizational structures beyond AACR and the MARC record. They must free themselves from thinking in terms of flat files and linear access and begin to think in terms of multi-scheme data registries, new record constructs, and relational data models… They must envision a new spectrum of authority control that includes many types of identifiers along with the more familiar names, titles, and subjects. And most critically, catalogers must actively participate in the development of system architectures and data registries. Only this level of activity will ensure that catalogers play a key role in the development of authority control systems for electronic resources.” (Sherry Vellucci, UCSD presentation, March 2006 Jan. 2000 LRTS article (44:1; 33-43) on the 2nd slide)
"DPIP can encourage staff working on specific projects to ensure that their metadata is reusable by higher-level systems such as harvesters and compatible with external projects such as the DLF
Aquifer initiative." (DPIP Report p. 24)"Strategic planning groups in the library advocated a 'federated approach' to Yale's integrated library and argued that a separate digital library unit would create a digital elite and discourage mainstreaming of digital activities." (DPIP Report p. 11)
"Easier electronic access to scholarly materials" ... "Providing students with digital access to research and instructional materials," ... "Providing better search tools to locate materials across all of Yale's holdings and collections." Yale Provost's C yberinfrastructure Survey Report (10/3/06)
"Even if all other aspects of the system worked perfectly, poor quality metadata would degrade the quality of the resulting library." (p. 3) ... Minimally descriptive metadata, like Dublin Core, is still minimally descriptive even after multiple quality repairs. We suggest that the time spent on such format-specific transforms might be better spent on analysis of the resource itself--the source of all manner of rich information" [which sounds like a plea for more expert cataloging] (p. 7). -- -- Lagoze, Carl, et al. (2006). "Metadata Aggregation and 'Automated Digital Libraries' : a Retrospective on the NSDL Experience." Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0601125 on 7/12/06.
"Form partnerships on and off campus ... expand staff expertise in non-MARC metadata, with understanding that "the best training is by doing" (p. 17) ... study and prepare for evolution of OPAC, including decisions about whether tiered levels of cataloging are being applied appropriately." Indiana University White Paper (Jan. 2006)