Minutes for June 1, 2006
Present: Kathy Adams, Tom Bolze, Daniel Lovins (chair), Youn Noh, Britta Santomauro, Becky Slitt (recording)
1. The Task Force has a new member: Kathy Adams. Welcome!
2. Discussion about LC's decision to cease production of series authority records
Daniel suggested that LC is going through the same process that Yale's catalog department is: trying to figure out which elements of the workflow should be retained and which eliminated.
Kathy noted that as a publicly funded organization, LC should not necessarily be held to the same business model standards as private companies like RLG and OCLC
Daniel noted the irony in LC's decision to reduce its services just at the point when it is becoming the international standard for cataloging
Becky asked, what does ARL's endorsement of the decision mean? Daniel responded that it probably reflects a divide between management and practitioners in the cataloging field
Daniel added that the strongest opponents of the decision, at least at Yale, are actually reference librarians, not catalog librarians: they're the ones who are going to have to assist patrons in finding books, and having fewer series authority records will make their job harder.
Despite managers' desire to save money and speed up catalogers' workflow, the decision to drop series authority records will actually cost money in the long run – instead of establishing a series once and referring to the authority record thereafter, catalogers will have to repeat their work over and over.
Daniel suggested that we draft a letter to LC opposing the decision, and proposing alternative ways to save time and money with regard to the creation of series authority records. He also offered to send out a draft of a letter that he wrote on behalf of AJL on the same subject, suggesting that we could use it as a model for our own letter.
3. Discussion about the RLG/OCLC Merger
Daniel reiterated the helpfulness of being able to search for the initials of specific catalogers, and worried that this functionality will disappear after the merger
Tom agreed, adding that in the rare books field, where so much of cataloging depends on the characteristics of individual copies, it is essential to be able to compare multiple records
4. Discussion of the International Associates Program
There is funding for 2-4 interns per year to come to Yale from other countries for 1-6 months to work with Yale librarians for mutual benefit – we learn from them, and they learn from us.
Nobody from Technical Services has submitted a proposal, and we think that we should make one.
Therefore, what could an intern do? (Specifically, an intern from Germany, where Britta and Tom have contacts). Britta notes that in Germany, most professional librarians have PhDs in addition to library degrees, so what could we offer them?
Daniel: Professional contacts with librarians at Yale
Britta: Maybe we could try to recruit a young librarian – someone just starting out in the field, or someone still in school – to maximize his/her ability to learn from Yale librarians
Britta: Maybe we could make the first internship a short one – 6 weeks or so – in order to see how it works, and then if it's successful, make the next internship longer.
Daniel suggests that it might be easier if we identified a specific and finite need that an intern could meet
5. Discussion of Yale Catalog Department's new time statistics. What are they for?
Tom: If someone outside the Catalog Department asks us to do a particular task, we'll know how much time and money it will take.
Britta adds that in the case of the Babylonian Collection cataloging project, the time estimates were fairly accurate. This will help other special collections (and other departments) produce similarly accurate estimates.
Kathy is uncomfortable with the tone set by time statistics – most cataloging activities can't be broken down into “widgets”; it's a more organic process. Creative problem-solving and thinking about how to organize information don't break down easily into time units.
Britta worries that different teams might have different practices in filling out their statistics, thus resulting in misleading results.
Becky wonders if this could be applied to the continuing goal of revamping the catalog department's workflow, whether or not that was the original intention? Keeping track of how much time is spent on each type of task might help determine which tasks are less valuable but time-consuming, etc.
Meeting adjourned 3 PM