Minutes for October 27, 2005
Note: Action items are in boldface green
Present: Tom Bolze, Youn Noh, Becky Slitt, and Daniel Lovins (chair and recorder)
PCC Assumptions about Future of CatalogingQuestion: Does this apply to pre-1800 publications? If so, the Rare Book Team at Yale is not likely to follow suit. They expect to continue creating intricate, highly pre-coordinate records for such materials. Youn (I think) suggested that by "specialized materials" the TG may have meant something other than rare books. Daniel said he'd try to get some background on this from Joan.
We also discussed assumption 7, namely, "Catalog librarians will focus more of their attention on subject analysis and authority control as opposed to description." How does this compare with Deanna Marcum's recent pronouncements? [In her 2005 Address to the EBSCO Leadership Seminar, she maintained: "If the task of descriptive cataloging could be assumed by technicians, then retooled catalogers could give more time to authority control, subject analysis, resource identification and evaluation, and collaboration with information technology units on automated applications and digitization projects," in which case it sounds like she more or less agrees. On the other hand, at the beginning of the same speech, she stated: "in the age of digital information, of Internet access, of electronic key-word searching, just how much do we need to continue to spend on carefully constructed catalogs?", which makes it sound like she questions the value of subject analysis as well.]
We still need to discuss Matthew's address to the PCC, and invite him to meet with our group.
Making Yale databases interoperable
Discussed problem of non-interoperable finding aids databases at Yale libraries and museums. Daniel said he believes this is one of the reasons behind Yale's recent licensing of VITAL (a customized version of FEDORA) digital repository architecture. Testing of VITAL is currently underway, but so far the testers have been limited to ITS and the Systems Office. Seems to us that it would be wise to let members of the catalog department get involved in early testing, since we would likely find useful applications and/or have suggestions for tweaking or further development of the open FEDORA standard. [We could also download and experiment with the original FEDORA package without having to request advance authorization.]
Pilot Projects and the Immediate Application of New Knowledge
Daniel suggested, and others seemed to agree, that it is important to encourage staff members to work on pilot projects or otherwise participate in testing and development work immediately upon receiving new skills training. He suggested that we might think about Davis Foundation, SCOPA, or other sources of seed money that support collection-based learning and/or innovative thinking in the library. Daniel volunteered to talk with Dan Chudnov about coming up with ideas for a collaborative pilot project involving non-MARC metadata, open source software (OSS) tools, Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAI MHP), Metadata Object Description Standard (MODS), etc.
Meeting with Team Leaders
Daniel mentioned that our group is invited to sit in on the November 9th team leaders meeting at 2pm (and said he'd send out a reminder notice ). This will give us a chance to see what they consider the most pressing issues facing the department. It will also be a chance for them to get a sense of what our group has been up to.
Ongoing Debate over Shelf-Listing (update)
Becky mentioned an article she'd come across that supports systematic shelf-listing for purposes of collection inventory and theft-detection. This brings up an interesting new angle on our shelf-listing debate (i.e., potential savings obtained through no or non-LC call number assignment). She will distribute the article or citation to other members of the task force.