Present: Tom Bolze (recording), Daniel Lovins (chair), Youn Noh, Britta Santamauro
Absent: Becky Slitt

Meeting began at 2:00 p.m. in Room 411.

Action items in green.

Discussion of Joan’s draft Vision Statement in conjunction with Karen Calhoun's “Changing Nature of the Catalog” and Thomas Mann's Critical Review

Committee members had the following suggestions and observations:

• Vision Statement seems to have a heavy metadata emphasis; perhaps it could place more emphasis on the continued importance of traditional cataloging. Many of the financial resources available for cataloging, however, particularly from grant agencies, are now given only for digital projects, creating financial pressures on catalog departments that Mann does not seem to recognize and that may be guiding some of Joan’s thinking. Still, the emphasis on metadata may make older catalogers feel excluded from the Department’s evolving role, and perhaps a sentence should be added to the vision statement indicating that print resources (and their associated metadata) will continue to be highly valued.

• Daniel suggested an additional bullet to include in the Statement:

  “Catalog librarians provide the pre-conditions for reconciliation and semantic interoperability among different disciplines' representations of knowledge. Accordingly, Yale catalog and metadata librarians serve the Yale community and the library profession as conceptual translators from one academic discipline to another: reconciling vocabulary, establishing thesaural relationships, and facilitating the exchange of knowledge across minds, languages, and disciplines. Good metadata, in turn, forms the connective tissue that makes such translation, reuse, mapping and transformation possible.”

  The group concurred that this bullet could be an inspiring addition and also highlight the role of catalogers in the process of scholarly communication. It might work well as the first bullet, although it was suggested that the language might need to be slightly modified to fit better with the overall tone of the Statement.

• Youn suggested that as the Department’s mission involves, the Statement should increasingly be crafted to meet the needs of our various constituencies (faculty, scholars, students, etc.). Once the usability librarian has been hired, we should try to get some more research on precisely how the catalog is used, specifically (and especially in light of Calhoun's report) addressing questions such as whether LCSH is valuable to our users, etc.

• Daniel noted that the Department's role in the Institutional Digital Repository and perhaps the use of Sakai instructional software should be mentioned (or at least strongly implied) in the Statement.

• Britta noted that it was not clear from the Statement how C&T staff fit into our departmental vision. Only professional catalog librarians seem to be included for the most part. Joan should be made aware of this situation so that she can address it as she sees appropriate, possibly with a separate paragraph on C&Ts or possibly by integrating the role of C&Ts into the overall repositioning also anticipated for Catalog Librarians.

• Some suggestions for specific changes in wording:
  • Delete “cataloging” in the first bullet and just use “metadata,” since cataloging is itself a form of metadata.

  • In the section on new roles for Catalog Librarians (p. 2), for the second sentence, change “(outward)” to “(inwardly and outwardly)” to suggest that our role will change in a way to make our resources more available (and better integrated) both inside as well as outside the Yale community.

• Discussion also included topics about the broader role that catalogers will play in light of the Statement’s implications. The question arose of how catalogers will assume new duties in digitization projects, especially as there is no anticipated decrease in the volume of material (i.e., either print or digital) coming into the library that will require cataloging. The presumption is that some of the more routine cataloging may be outsourced, e.g. to vendors. There was also discussion of the meaning of “digital assets” (second bullet) and questions regarding how labor-intensive the Department’s long-term role in such maintenance may become, particularly with regard to reformatting and data migration.

• Finally, the Statement seems implicitly to raise the question of whether the subject specialization now so important to catalogers will be necessary for digitization projects. If digitization projects are initiated by individuals outside the Catalog Dept., such as faculty, and catalogers are functioning primarily as facilitators in the development of these projects, then general technology and organization skills may be more important than any subject specialization. Also, catalogers don’t currently have a lot of metadata experience (beyond traditional cataloging), but hopefully that will change. A demonstration project could be a very useful exercise in suggesting how the Catalog Dept. could initiate and develop digitization projects; group should revisit Daniel’s Yiddish books/illustrations project at its next meeting.

• Daniel mentioned that he is working with the library’s International Associates Program, which brings librarians from other countries to Sterling to work with, learn from, and instruct Yale librarians for periods of 1-6 months. Library departments apply for grants to bring in associates, and to date the Catalog Dept. has never submitted an application, so Daniel wondered if there might be a project for which the Catalog Dept. would be appropriate. Britta and Tom mentioned that German and Austrian libraries have just recently adopted MARC, so a librarian from one of those nations might benefit significantly from working with Yale catalogers on MARC while possibly instructing us about digitization programs or digital archives (in which they have more experience). Daniel will see if there is any documentation (such as previous grant applications) available that could guide us in putting together a submission. After checking on documentation, the next step would be to set up an interview with Graziano Krätli, the International Program Support Librarian. Britta and Tom will work on this project if it proves feasible.

There was discussion of when to have the next VTF meeting due to some scheduling changes, but no final decision was made.

Meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.

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