Present: Tom Bolze, Daniel Lovins (chair), Youn Noh, Britta Santamauro (recording), Rebecca Slit.

Meeting began at 2.00 p.m. in Room 411.

Discussion of Karen Calhoun's report: "The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools"

General observations
Tom noted that the survey on which Calhoun's report is based seems not to have included any catalogers. Instead, she seems to have consulted, almost exclusively, systems developers, computer scientists, and library administrators. This isn't to say that it isn't an excellent report with important insights; only that it may not capture the whole picture, and might have come out differently had catalogers been consulted as well.

Some of Calhoun's assumptions are questionable, e.g.:

a) that serials and monographs be treated in the same way (even though workflows and expertise required to handle them are often quite different); and

b) that e-books will be widely available and highly popular in the near future

LCSH
Tom and Daniel both noted Calhoun's unfriendly stance toward LCSH (e.g.: "Abandon the attempt to do comprehensive subject analysis manually with LCSH in favor of subject keywords; urge LC to dismantle LCSH", p. 18). It appears this is where she thinks the most money can be saved in cataloging budgets. Does she cite any usability studies, though, that demonstrate the real costs and benefits of LCSH browsing? How much of this sort of research has been published (i.e., aside from the Gross & Taylor study)? We assume that Yale's new usability librarian (whoever that turns out to be) will help design and conduct such studies locally. It may be that fully articulated LCSH is more important than recent opinion pieces suggest. Daniel pointed out that, with the exception of Thomas Mann and a few others, proponents of rigorous subject analysis are not getting their message out. Administrators are mostly made aware of the great expense and the difficulties in scaling full-blown LCSH up to the federated search level, but they may be less familiar with the way in which Endeca, for example, exploits LCSH vocabulary and syntax for its highly-regarded "faceted navigation" tool.

Collaboration among Libraries
Calhoun envisions more robust collaboration among libraries. Instead of maintaining separate catalogs that are in fact very similar, peer institutions should try to collaborate more and (at least in the case of smaller, more homogeneous libraries) create unified OPACs and databases (with local interfaces customized, e.g., with localized holdings). This would entail less customization of source records (exploiting cooperative cataloging more effectively), fewer special practices (making vendor contracts less expensive), and even adjustments to collection development and approval plans (conserving acquisitions budgets). However it also means giving up some control over policies, funding, and other politically sensitive issues.

Conclusions
We need to do a better job understanding what and how our patrons use and value our catalogs. This, in turn, would help us prioritize development of new tools and services. Tom suggested that it is likely that print-based cataloging will diminish, partly due to the fact that vendors will provide more and more of our metadata. Youn added that the nature of publishing changes and therefore it's only natural that our jobs as catalogers change as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we need to map out precisely in what ways cataloging activities will evolve in the new environment. At the same time, there is likely to be continuing demand for specialized catalogers, e.g., of non-print formats, visual materials, as-of-yet-OCR-unrecognizable scripts (such as Fraktur and many non-Roman character sets), and realia.

Daniel suggested that as vendor-supplied metadata, batch-loading of records, shelf-ready books, and database management activities increase, the different workflows within Technical Services may begin to converge. Moreover, as Joan has suggested, catalogers may turn out to be ideally suited to administer institutional digital repositories: they have the necessary language and technical expertise to manage large and diverse record sets, and are generally considered trustworthy stewards of the academy's collective knowledge.

Meeting adjourned at 3.15 p.m.

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