LIS512 lecture 12 conclusions

1. Thomas Krichel 2010-04-21 LIS512 lecture 12conclusions

2. today • Self-assessment of course so far • Future of cataloguing in libraries

3. LIS512 • The contents of the course has been rife with debate for many years. • In the tradition (and naming) from Richard P. Smiraglia, it is was supposed to be a theory-only course. • But other professors and adjuncts in particular have made it

4. the books • The books are really surveys. They survey a lot of contents but in a superficial ways. • It is not important to know that in area foo, standard bar is applied.

5. the real basics • There are some real basics. • Most information organization task boil down to a few basic concepts. • These concepts are embedded in all information organization work.

6. the theory • I still have to see a coherent explanation of a body of work that makes up cataloging theory. • I have not seen a good book about it. • You probably have to work your way through individual writers' work, Bacon, Ranganathan, Lubetzkyetc.

7. basic element • I believe that there are basic elements in information organization. • records • mappings • formats, constraints • nesting • and when you understand them, you have a basic grasp of how to organize information.

8. learning by doing • It is best to learn by doing in depth. • This is different from the survey ideas of the books. • So you need to study a format. • It's like learning a computer language, you learn one of them you learned a lot about the others. • AARC2 + Marc appears the way to go, however controversial they are.

9. good points • start with databases and FRBR appears good, but swap both around. • Insistence on basic concepts is important. But there needs to be more bottom-up examples. • Contrasting MARC basic syntax with XML will highlight that different syntax can carry the same information.

10. improvements • bring koha in from the start. • Use koha database tables as a way to introduces tables at the start of the course, through a simple example. • register students, then proceed to look at some tables related to their branches.

11. problems • One would like to cover more on LCSH and LCC, but how for to go until this becomes a full-blown cataloging class? • There needs to be more bottom up discussion of the MARC format. • XML can be introduced as a way to write MARC. • Other XML stuff can be omitted.

12. more problem • We should have discussed copy-cataloging. • The assignment of cataloging items should be reduced to one item, for which copy-cataloging appears to be impossible. • Students should hand in essay with a full description of the item, including it's full MARC record.

13. future of cataloging • As long as libraries store physical items they have to keep an inventory of it. This is for internal purposes. • Whether the current rules to compose the inventory are adapted to patron's needs and are cost-effective is a matter of debate about the rules.

14. future of libraries • Libraries as they currently operate assume that there is a tight connection between contents and a physical item. • The advent of digital information disrupts this model. • Libraries are sitting an a pile of print material that is of shrinking importance to information needs.

15. lost cause • Things go lost when libraries, confronted with digital offerings of publishers, did not require storing these on a local server. • Publishers can cut off library customers at any time, and not back access may be available. • Referring a patron to a toll-gated resource that can be freely accessed by the patron is a daunting challenge. • Item-level cataloging is gone.

16. building digital holdings • It is possible to build digital holdings and make them available to the public at a charge, or at no charge. • However this require skills that are not taught in library schools. • Web site building is the starting point for such skills.

17. libraries without holdings • Without holdings libraries are cornered between two developments • The Google book project • The ebook readers. • The former is particularly troublesome, with the perspective of a monopoly on contents by one private company when libraries have thrown out their copies.

18. divergent perspectives • If libraries are freed from the unifying constraints of holding material that is physical, they may go different ways depending on their types. • School media center is already not a library. • Public library will be an adult education center. • Academic library will support digital research materials .

19. information organization? • Storing, organizing and preserving digital information is a huge challenge. • It involves extensive computing skills but computers are only tools. • It looks like graduates of LIS school are left out of this. • I am keeping up my struggle to get people up to speed with LIS650 and LIS651.

20. Thank you for your attention! Please switch off machines b4 leaving! http://openlib.org/home/krichel