What do you mean, you don't have metadata experience?

(This has been in my drafts for a while. I finally decided to publish it. Maybe one of these days I'll publish all the other drafts I have sitting around.)

A few weeks ago, a cataloger who thought she might soon be unemployed emailed one of the listservs I subscribe to. One of the things she wrote really caught my attention: “The few cataloging jobs that I saw required metadata experience, which I don’t have…”

I could say who wrote this and when it was written, and the post can be found in this particular listserv’s archives, but since I don’t know if this person would be ok with her name also being in a blog post, I’m not including it here. The important thing is simply that she wrote this, and that this is not the first time this has come up.

Offlist, I emailed her about this statement, saying that, actually, she does have metadata experience. MARC is a metadata standard. In fact, it’s a very complicated and unintuitive metadata standard – lots of fields and subfields. The average person, looking at a list of MARC fields, would probably not be able to immediately equate, say, “245” with “Title statement,” and yet for many catalogers who regularly use MARC it actually becomes more comfortable to see fields and subfields rather than plain English labels.

If you know MARC, you have metadata experience. You may not have experience with Dublin Core or EAD or ONIX or XML or whatever else, but you do have metadata experience, and you can apply what you have learned from MARC to learning another metadata standard. (This, of course, takes an employer who is willing to train you or give you the time to get trained - which is a valid worry, what with all the employers who seem to want new employees who can be put to work with little or no training.)

Not everyone writes or talks about MARC and metadata as if they are two completely separate things, but it has still somehow been embedded in some people’s brains that they are separate things. On listservs and in blogs, I have read complaints from people that catalogers aren’t very good at recognizing transferable skills. The mental separation of “metadata” and “MARC” is, I feel, one of the main reasons why this is so, and it cripples catalogers and makes them afraid. Skilled catalogers don’t think they are qualified to be metadata librarians (or whatever else they are called). They think that what they do is becoming obsolete.

I do believe that, one day, catalogers will probably be using something other than MARC. However, I don’t live in fear of my future and my career(*)…because I believe there will always be a place for someone who can create and edit metadata. I can learn a new metadata scheme if I need to. After all, I learned MARC.
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If you'd like to know more about MARC's place in the metadata world, check out "A Visualization of the Metadata Universe." Actually, this shows you the place of 105 metadata standards - it's awesome and kind of pretty.
 
 
* - I do worry that, one day, there won't be any jobs for people like me in libraries. I could work for a corporation if necessary, and almost ended up at one during the course of my post-grad school job search, but I'd prefer to work for a library. With all the outsourcing that's going on, however, that may not always be possible.

Something cool - Amazon to MARC and IMDb to MARC

The Amazon to MARC converter takes information from Amazon.com book records and turns it into MARC. I don't see myself using the MARC records this produces, because the records would take so much cleanup that it might actually be easier to start from scratch, but I still think it's pretty cool. Plus, some aspects could be useful for my work: I could copy and paste summary information from here and avoid (I'm pretty sure) having to hunt down quotation marks and apostrophes that Connexion doesn't like, and I could potentially use this as a starting place for call numbers and subject headings.

The IMDb to MARC converter (prototype) takes information from IMDb and turns it into MARC records. I think this converter's output is actually even more helpful than the Amazon to MARC converter's - video recording MARC records take a lot of work, because of all the name access points and various notes. This would take care of some of that work, although there'd still be a lot of fixing and fiddling to do. I love the "verify names" feature (also present in the Amazon to MARC converter). I could see this tool being especially popular with libraries that, in order to save time, have a policy of basing video recording cataloging on container information - this would probably help them save even more time. Again, as with the Amazon to MARC converter, I probably wouldn't use the MARC records produced by the IMDb to MARC converter, but there are still certain things I could copy and paste into the records I end up using in Connexion.

UPDATE: The Amazon to MARC converter doesn't just do book records - I just had it generate a record for a DVD, VHS, and CD. The "classify" information seems to be drawn from OCLC - too bad, I was hoping it could help Tracy and Trudy in those cases where they have trouble finding OCLC records that match the Contemporary World Music records they're assigning call numbers to.

"You say you want a revolution"

This is a bit of a rambling post, but the general topic is RDA. That seems to be all anyone ever talks about in the cataloging world anymore. Not surprising, really.

There are a lot of complaints about RDA being voiced on the OCLC-CAT listserv, of all places. Why OCLC-CAT? I'm pretty sure it started because of the way OCLC has been allowing RDA data (authority and bibliographic) to be added to the WorldCat database.

When I originally heard that RDA would be tested before the Library of Congress made any decisions about it, I assumed that that test would take place outside of the live cataloging environment. This has not been the case. The word "test" in OCLC Land sounds an awful lot like "the rules have officially changed, deal with it." OCLC has instructed catalogers to treat RDA bibliographic records vs. AACR2 bibliographic records the same as they treat AACR2 vs. AACR bibliographic records: if an RDA record already exists, an AACR2 record would be considered a duplicate and is therefore not supposed to be entered. Catalogers not using RDA may edit the record back to AACR2 locally.

How exactly does this make sense? I would understand if RDA were the official new rules, but they're not, at least not in the U.S. I know that there are countries that have decided to implement RDA already, and WorldCat is an international database. However, couldn't OCLC just instruct catalogers to treat RDA vs. AACR2 records as parallel records? For instance, if an RDA record already exists, catalogers still using AACR2 (which is most of the U.S.) could enter an AACR2 record, thereby giving other AACR2 users the ability to share the work rather than having every AACR2 user edit the RDA record locally. When/If RDA is implemented by the Library of Congress, OCLC could set their deduplication software to consider RDA and AACR2 records for the same title as duplicates, but it makes no sense to do so before the end of the supposed test.

The bigger uproar on OCLC-CAT right now seems to be focused on authority records. I will admit to not understanding everything everyone is saying - the complaints seem mainly focused on the way RDA information is being added to authority records (RDA name headings live in 700 fields right now, with the AACR2 name headings still in 100 fields - no information has been given on what will be done to these records if RDA is implemented). Having RDA name headings in 700 fields doesn't hurt DSL, but, from what I've heard, there are libraries whose authority control systems choke on this. What does worry me about all of this is that, like the bibliographic records, these changes are all happening to live records: this is not a separate authority file just for the use of those testing RDA, but rather the authority file used by everyone, regardless of whether or not they are test libraries. In effect, non-test libraries are being forced to take part in the test. How can this still be considered a test if everything is happening in a live environment?

The uproar about the way OCLC has been handling the RDA test resulted in Memorandum Against RDA Test, a petition that has so far been signed by 312 people. Although I agree with the petition, I don't always agree with the strong wording that Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, the person who I believe started the petition, has been using on the OCLC-CAT listserv when talking about RDA. Siemaszkiewicz has an unfortunate tendency (unfortunate because it immediately gets RDA supporters backs up and occasionally even alienates those who oppose RDA) to phrase complaints about RDA in ways that bring war protests and the rhetoric of revolution to mind.

Siemaszkiewicz isn't the only one stirring things up - Deborah Tomaras, on the OCLC-CAT listserv and others, has encouraged those who are against RDA to send their concerns to the personal emails of the members of the RDA Coordinating Committee. She even provided all the email addresses in case the website with those email addresses is taken down. While I can understand the frustration that resulted in this particular call to action, since it feels as though complaints and concerns about RDA and the RDA test have fallen on deaf ears, I'm also not comfortable with what Tomaras is asking catalogers to do. I don't really know what catalogers who are against RDA should be doing, since going through the proper channels has so far seemed ineffective, but spamming/harassing the individuals on the RDA Coordinating Committee isn't, to my mind, the way to go. Can we all just please remember that we're supposed to be professionals?

I may not be sure how I should be communicating my concerns about RDA, but I do have concerns, and one of them is whether or not a drastic reorganization of cataloging rules is even necessary. I recognize that there are problems with AACR2 - I rarely catalog any of the formats (such as databases and websites) that are difficult to catalog with AACR2, but, when I do, it's painfully clear that something needs to be done. At least, something needs to be done to the rules for electronic resources and other things with similar cataloging problems. As far as I'm concerned, the cataloging rules are fine for most physical materials.

Let's be clear about this: the cataloging rules are different from the encoding standards, which are different from ILSs. One of the things that consistently frustrates me about the RDA arguments is that there seems to be an assumption on the part of those who are most in favor of RDA that most of our cataloging problems reside in our cataloging rules. I would argue that this is not the case.

Maybe I need to keep a list of every catalog wish list item I am asked to implement that I can't, in addition to the reason why I can't. I'm pretty sure that, most of the time, when I can't implement something it's because of the way MARC is set up or the way our ILS works, not because of AACR2. If AACR2 is the reason why something can't be done with MARC or something in our ILS is not doing what our users (whether they're students, faculty, or librarians) want, and if that were plainly stated to the cataloging community, I would happily accept a change to the rules. However, I don't agree with change for change's sake, and that's what RDA feels like. On the one hand, RDA is supposed to make everything better. On the other hand, it's supposed to not change things so much that AACR2 records can't live side by side with RDA records. I don't see how both of those statements can be true.

So, that's it from me for now. I don't know if those who are most against RDA will ever be able to reconcile with those who are most for it - neither side really seems to understand the other, or maybe they're just not willing to listen to each other. Or even talk to each other (it seems like pro-RDA talk may be happening on Twitter a lot - I wouldn't know, since I don't use Twitter, but I may have to start just to see what's going on - while anti-RDA talk is concentrated on listservs). Another problem seems to be that not all ILSs are created equal and that not everyone understands this. But then, I may just think that because I'm in the camp that believes our largest problems lie in our ILSs and MARC 21.

It's DVD time

I changed my procedures for cataloging DVDs a little today. Although I now catalog almost everything in OCLC Connexion and then import it into WorkFlows, AV materials are some of the few things I still catalog directly in WorkFlows. Since my wrist still hurts a bit when I use a mouse, though, (it's getting better, but slowly) I wasn't looking forward to cataloging anything in WorkFlows - there are a lot of things that I need to do while cataloging (like adding a new field) that, as far as I know, have no shortcut keys in WorkFlows. With OCLC Connexion, I can use the keyboard or mouse as much as I want, just by mapping some things to certain keystrokes or setting up macros.

So, to save my wrist, I cataloged DVDs in Connexion today instead of in WorkFlows. The only thing I had to remember to do was change the title control numbers of the brief records in our system before I imported the records. It worked out very nicely, and I think I'll continue to do it this way in the future - not only did it reduce the amount of time I had to spend using a mouse, it also reduced the number of times I had go back and forth between different programs, because I could do both cataloging and authority work in one place.

Basically, good news for me, and maybe I'll get through all of these DVDs a little more quickly. Or not. I would've thought the Gone with the Wind record would have been wonderful, but that one ended up needing the most work out of all the ones I did today. After all, how can something be a "2-disc edition" and yet supposedly have 3-discs? Sloppy editing on someone's part, and everyone who's used the record (including me) is afraid to edit the master record. Or it really is a 3-disc "2-disc edition"...

RDA Update webinar

Today's Amigos "RDA Update" webinar was quite good, although a bit (more than a bit?) biased against RDA. It's the first RDA presentation I've attended that included a list of some of the primary changes RDA is making to bibliographic records (although, since RDA has not officially come out yet, even this is still technically preliminary).

Whether the general cataloging community will implement RDA is still up in the air. If it doesn't, I doubt we'll adopt it either. I'm still waiting to see how things will go with the Library of Congress, how SirsiDynix plans to adapt to it, and whether we can afford it (although recent changes to the pricing may help with that, as long as everyone at DSL is ok with only one RDA Toolkit user at a time - the paper version is a last resort, because it's monstrous and doesn't have an index).

Although RDA obviously directly affects me, because cataloging is a big part of my job, it will affect others at DSL as well if we implement it. Those who do some cataloging will need to know about it and how it differs from AACR2 - part of the reason why it's a little frustrating that I'm always the only one at RDA information sessions. I suppose I'll need to put together training sessions or something.

It's not just people who catalog who will be affected, however. RDA will very much affect how our records look and, if SirsiDynix gets its act together, it will very much affect how searching works. Yes, that means reference librarians will have to know what's going on, too, and even users (for whom most cataloging changes probably usually go unnoticed) will likely realize something has changed, even if all they consciously notice is the superficial changes.

Here's what we can look forward to so far (warning, cataloger jargon-heavy - I'll need to do a less jargon-y list for the staff blog at some point). I don't mention FRBR at all, although it's very important. I'd like to look at a FRBRized demo catalog that was mentioned in the webinar before I bring it up in relation to RDA and the future of catalog searching. So, record changes:

1. GMD (General Material Designations) in the 245 fields are going away. That means that something that was previously "Clinical microbiology [videorecording]." will become "Clinical microbiology." RDA assumes that you have an OPAC that graphically displays what an item is. If we implement RDA, unless we also implement item type graphics, I will have to edit every record that would previously have had a GMD so that it once again has a GMD, unless we can figure out some kind of workaround that can draw from the three new MARC field that will be taking the place of 245 subfield h.
2. The "rule of three" is gone. Now, either every author/contributor will be recorded, or, at the very least, the bit that formerly said "et al." will say something like "and 5 others." Each library will have to decide for itself how many names they wish to record and how many they will wish to trace, potentially resulting in the need for even more local editing than is currently necessary. There are both benefits and drawbacks to this change.
3. "Editor as author" is now ok. I'm assuming this means that an editor can be used as a main entry. Compiler can be used as main entry, too.
4. All abbreviations that are not actually used on the item itself are abolished. Everything will be spelled out. "Ed." will be "edition", "Dept." will be "Department". You get the idea.
5. Cryptic/Latin terms like s.l. and s.n. will no longer be used. Instead, "place not given" and "name not given" will be used (unless you're at a non-English speaking library, in which case you'll be cataloging in whatever language is spoken by your user base).
6. Authority records will be changing, although I'm not quite sure how. They'll have more information in them, at any rate, although I don't know that anyone but catalogers will notice.
7. There will no longer be any need to justify headings in records. That means that, if you think it's appropriate to add a name heading to a record, you can, even if that name is mentioned nowhere else in the record. It's a freeing idea for a cataloger, but it could also potentially cause problems in terms of record sharing and future record maintenance, since it would not be immediately apparent why the headings were used and what their usefulness, or not, is.

That's all I can think of for now. As far as the immediate use/understandability issues go, I'm most concerned about the lack of GMD, because of the way our OPAC is set up to display our records - true, I can choose to enter "hybrid RDA" records into our system, but I'd like to have to do less record editing, not more. As far as the rest of it goes, the thought of all that typing exhausts me. I can understand why some users might like some of the changes, but I, as the one responsible for doing all that cataloging, am not happy about the amount of time things will probably take. I'm not sure how many headings (for instance, authors) I'll prefer to have us trace - it wouldn't take too much time, if I did a sloppy job of it and didn't check each heading I added against available authority records, but it would take quite a bit of time if I did a good job of it.

I'm really interested to see what SirsiDynix will do after RDA is released. Of course, it may take a few years before anything happens. It's at least comforting to learn that SirsiDynix is one of the ILS vendors involved in the testing of RDA.

Cataloging April Fool's

A cataloging-related April Fool's joke that got me: Librarians Give Permanence to Twitter

DSL audiobook cataloging changes

I'm just about done cataloging all our new audiobooks. In order to speed up the cataloging of audiobooks and, I hope, improve the way they're displayed in our catalog, here's some things I've started doing. Note to any catalogers who may stumble upon this: these are local edits only, so don't freak out. I rarely edit audiobook master records.

• Statements such as "abridged" and "unabridged" are moved from the 500 field (a miscellaneous "note" field) to the 250 field (used for edition statements). Although these statements aren't technically edition statements, according to the way they're defined in OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards (I wasn't able to find anything this specific in AACR2, so AACR2 may be more flexible in its definition of "edition"), even if 500 notes for audiobooks displayed in our OPAC, and I don't believe they do, it would take a little work for our users to see what many audiobook listeners consider important information.
  What this means for catalog users: Whether an audiobook is abridged or unabridged will display right next to the title in our results lists.
• I'm no longer listening to even a portion of each audiobook. According to AACR2, the chief source of information for sound recordings is, for CDs, the disc and label and, for cassettes, the cassette and label. Listening to the discs wasn't really accomplishing anything other than making the cataloging process take quite a bit longer.
  What this means for catalog users: Probably not much, unless the discs are defective in some way. In theory, listening to the discs also allowed me to spot-check them for problems. I still visually examine the discs for scratches, but I could potentially miss problems that might only make themselves known by listening to the discs. However, by the time I catalog things, it's usually well past the period when we'd be able to send something back. If we were truly concerned about defective discs, we'd need to have our Acquisitions students check them as they received them.
• As I mentioned in my previous post, I now add the 306 field, which contains standardized playing time information, to each record that doesn't have it. Although this may add a little to the time it takes to edit an audiobook record, it doesn't add much - this takes less time to do than adding a 590.
  What this means for catalog users: Probably not much, unless they want to try my advanced search, with all its annoying limitations. However, without this field, any kind of limiting by playing time is next to impossible.
• I don't record producers, directors, etc. in audiobook records. In most cases, I'd have to at least listen to the first and last discs (or cassettes, although I've only had to deal with CDs so far) to get this information, skipping to the last track of the last disc and carefully fast forwarding until I got to the credits. I've done this before - this added significantly to the time it took to catalog an audiobook, and I kept asking myself, "What's the point?" I doubt our users are interested in the producer and director of, say, the audiobook version of Blink. Rest assured, I always record and add access points for audiobook readers.
  What this means for catalog users: In the event that they actually are interested in audiobook producers, directors, etc., they're out of luck.

Ok, I think that's all the main changes I've recently made to the way I catalog our audiobooks. While certain information is left out that wouldn't have been before, I don't think the information is important to our users - if I'm wrong and someone has come to the reference desk asking about something that I'm now leaving out of records, let me know. The primary benefit of several of these changes is that audiobooks are getting cataloged much faster. This not only benefits me - it benefits our users, who get to see audiobooks on the shelves sooner and who don't have to wait ages for me to get back to cataloging print books because the audiobooks are taking up all of my time.

Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto

I just realized that I finished this a while back, and I haven't really written about it much. Like any book of essays, some of the essays are better than others. I'm probably not "radical" enough for some of the writers who contributed to this book, but I appreciate that some of them care enough about certain issues (like queer subject access, or the classification of Native American materials) to force the cataloging world to change, however slowly.

I think, for me, the most enjoyable and potentially useful section of the book was part 3, which included essays on innovative cataloging practices. One essay (Michelle Emanuel and Susannah Benedetti's "Browsing Berman, finding Fellini, cataloging Kurosawa: alternative approaches to cataloging foreign language films in academic libraries") would be good for me to consult, if only to get myself in the proper mindset, if we ever decide we need to do a cleanup of our DVD/VHS call numbers and subject headings (or genre headings). I've started trying to formulate and follow a plan for how I construct call numbers for DVDs such as those based on plays or books, but that doesn't take care of previous inconsistencies in practice.

Another good essay I'm going to have to go over again sometime is Wendy Baia's "User-centered serials cataloging," which includes tips for serials cataloging damage control. I don't know that we'd necessarily want to follow all those tips, but I can understand why she thinks they're necessary, and it wouldn't hurt to look through them and at least consider them and figure out what their implications would be for both our users and future serials record maintenance. Or maybe I'll just recommend this essay to Janie - I'm sure she'd like some of the tips.

Although it was short, I enjoyed Robin Fay's "'Why isn't my book on the shelf?' and other mysteries of the library," which was about error reporting. The author's library's catalog has links to an error reporting form at the bottom right of the screen - sometimes users report actual errors in records, and sometimes the "errors" they report are actually indications that the library needs to be clearer about certain things (for instance, the meaning of the word "discharged," letting students know what they need to do if they can't find a book the catalog says is there, etc.).

Jennifer Erica Sweda ("Dr. Strangecataloger: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the tag") and Dana M. Caudle and Cecilia M. Schmitz ("Drawing reference librarians into the fold") also wrote essays I enjoyed, although, with me anyway, they were preaching to the choir. Personally, I love the idea of user applied tags (in conjuction with the continued application of LCSH by catalogers, which I'm a little worried about the future of, after reading Thomas Mann's "What is going on at the Library of Congress?"), and getting input from reference librarians on how to improve the catalog seems like a no-brainer to me.

I'm going to have to take a closer look at Dana M. Caudle and Cecilia M. Schmitz's "MARC: it's not just for cataloging anymore," although I think some of what they describe in their essay is stuff we accomplish with ItemCat1 and ItemCat2 in our item records. However, I love their description how their library maintains its lists of electronic databases - using information drawn from the MARC records in their catalog, Perl scripts generate updating A-Z and subject-specific lists. Database cataloging might seem a bit less like slogging through thigh-high mud if I knew that the information I was inputting might end up being used as more than just a bandaid for confused students. I keep putting my database cataloging off in favor of other things.

An essay I was particularly looking forward to reading was Carrie Preston's "High-speed cataloging without sacrificing subject access or authority control: a case study." I already do some of the things Preston mentions, like making use of macros (although I really need to figure out how to create a macro that strings together several macros, so I don't have to run each one separately). Some of what Preston writes is a little more painful, like choosing not to enter certain information that is considered optional. One thing I've incorporated into my current regular cataloging is the elimination of bibliography pagination - I still check it if it's already in the record, but I don't add it if it isn't, and probably no one will ever miss it. I consider table of contents notes or summary notes to be more worth my time than bibliography pagination, and, using a combination of copy and paste and several nifty macros, I can create summary and contents notes more quickly than I used to be able to. One thing I incorporated into my cataloging of our databases was sitting down and figuring out which fields absolutely need to be there, which fields need to be checked if present but don't need to be added if they aren't, and which fields don't even need to be checked. Having a set list of things I need to pay attention to has helped speed things up a bit (when I actually choose to work on the project, which I've been really bad about).

The thing about all "radical" cataloging decisions is that they need to be applied consistently. If a cataloger decides, for the good of his or her library's users, to do something differently from what the rules say and what other catalogers do, that's fine, but those decisions need to be documented for future catalogers.

One thing I think also needs to be taken into consideration is whether or not the benefits of any local changes to the rules outweigh the drawbacks. For instance, Brian R. Thompson's "Monographic collections structure and layout revisions: or, how to tweak LC call numbers for the good of your users" details how his library came up with an implemented a huge reclassification project that tweaked LC call numbers so that books were grouped together in a more user-friendly way. This sounds great (and exhausting to do), but it also means that this library may never again be able to use call numbers in records they import as they are - in order to keep their clean, user-friendly arrangement, they might need to tweak the call number of each book they have to catalog. That works fine if you've got enough catalogers, or at least enough people trained in assigning call numbers that follow local practices, or if catalogers don't need to catalog much, but otherwise it's potentially a nightmare. Currently, however problematic LC's assignment of call numbers sometimes happens to be, I accept almost all LC-assigned call numbers without question. I can't imagine having to at least look at, if not tweak, each call number I encounter. Cataloging takes long enough as it is.

Overall, this book was pretty interesting, and some of the essays would probably even be readable by noncatalogers (it should be noted that not all of the essay authors are catalogers). However, catalogers in particular should be able to get something useful out of this, even if only a different way of thinking.

The 590 field

(Warning, very long post ahead. However, it might contain useful information for those of you who've wondered about the apparent gobbledygook you may have spotted in a "Local note" in our records. By the way, I thought we'd set things up so that those no longer displayed in our book records, but apparently I'm wrong. Argh. Anyway, I've thought about writing a post like this in the past, because I've had people at the library - librarians and staff, not students or faculty - ask me what "that stuff" was in our records. Writing this post feels kind of like giving away library secrets or something. I'm not sure why.)

This is the field I love to hate (as it's used at DSL, since what 590 is used for can vary from library to library), even as I am occasionally able to admit its usefulness. I hate it (dislike it?) for four main reasons:

1. It contains item-specific information. Admittedly, I'm coming at this from the standpoint of a cataloger, but, to my mind, bibliographic records shouldn't contain this sort of information - if you want to record item-specific information, you should do so in a note in the item record. That way, if you withdraw the item, you delete the item record, and the note is gone. In a 590, the note is there forever, even if the item is long since gone, replaced by something that would now be copy 10, if copies 1 through 9 still existed. You wouldn't even necessarily see 10 590s in the record - there will probably only be one, the one created when the very first copy was cataloged.
2. The information recorded in the 590 is not necessarily recorded in a controlled manner, even though it may appear that it is. A simple example is "Biology," which is usually recorded as "Bio" in 590s, but I have also seen it as "Biol".
3. Certain aspects of the 590 may not always consistently mean the same thing from one 590 to the next.
4. From a "streamlining of the cataloging workflow" perspective, it kind of gets in the way. I won't go into detail on that, because this post would probably double in length, and no one really wants to read all of that anyway.

If you haven't stumbled upon a 590 in our records yet, here's what one looks like in our OPAC (in general - 590s for gifts tend to be missing certain bits of information, 590s for memorials have additional information, and certain things in 590s for gifts and memorials are defined differently than they are for everything else):

The first part, the 8-digit number, is the item's barcode. I'll admit that this can be useful to have in the bibliographic record, because it means that anyone can quickly and easily find the record for something, even if they don't have access to WorkFlows. Unless of course the record doesn't have a 590 for that particular item (see "reason I hate 590s" #1, plus all the other reasons there might not be a 590 for each item).

The second part, in this case "BT", is the vendor. I try to enter this in a consistent way, so Baker & Taylor is always BT, Amazon is always AMZ, Blackwell's is always BBS, etc. However, I don't think I was always this consistent when I first started, and I have no idea what people before me did.

The next part is tricky. You might think that this is the code for the particular fund that paid for the item, but this isn't always the case - that's why this particular 590 is such a good example. See, when I, the Cataloger, get a book from Acquisitions, sometimes the only clue I have as to where something is intended to be shelved is what's written in the book (or on the printout slipped in the book/DVD/CD/whatever). Sometimes it's obvious where something should be shelved - picture books are easy. Sometimes it's not so obvious - books for Limited (with the added complication of "where in Limited?") can be especially hard for me to identify. Sometimes something says "CurrJuv" in the 590 because that's the fund that paid for it, but sometimes it says CurrJuv because it's supposed to be shelved in the Curriculum Collection, even though the money for the book came out of another fund. I've been trying to encourage the use of color-coded flags to indicate what a book's location is supposed to be, but it hasn't been working out very well. So, in the meantime, my main source of location information is either what's written in the book (which ends up in the 590), instinct, and telepathy. My instinct is getting slightly sharper, my telepathy not so much. By the way, this is another portion of the 590 that may not be typed consistently from one record to the next. See "reason I hate 590s" #2.

I have no idea what the next part means. Seriously, I don't. For a while there, I thought it meant "Selector", since that's what the ancient notes left behind by previous catalogers that I unearthed in my office said. I think that sometimes it does mean "Selector." In the case of my sample 590, that's probably true. In other instances... Anyway, almost all of the 590s I've entered since I've started working here say either "Tennyson" or "Pape." Maybe it means, "this is who approved the use of money for this item?" But I don't think even that's true... I should probably have yet another talk with Jodee about this bit. I've talked with her about it before, but never in much depth.

The next bit is the date we received the item. It's pretty straightforward, I think. I don't know if previous catalogers entered the date in MM/DD/YY format, but I don't - February 2, 2010 is 2/2/10 for me, not 02/02/10. If you're trying to formulate a search of the dates in our 590s, how this date has been entered makes a difference. I only know how I've been entering it.

Last is the cost of the item. Also pretty straightforward. I never use a dollar sign, and I don't think any cataloger before me has, either.

I have so far thought up one useful search involving the 590, but it has serious limitations. However, if I don't forget, I'll post it soon. I have to hunt through my email to see if I can find that one where I put together the search with Biology in mind.

And now, to bed - I must get up at 3 AM to coddle my rat. He has me wrapped around his tiny pink fingers (yes, toes, I know, but they look like tiny lady fingers), but at least he repays me with cuteness. He curled up and fell asleep in my hand today for a full hour, and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

RDA Toolkit

I just finished the webinar, so, while I can still remember:

I got to see the beta version of the RDA Toolkit in action (The release date is sometime in June of this year. Or, considering how things have gone with RDA, maybe sometime in July. Or later.). The reason it's called the "toolkit" is because it contains not only RDA (the rules which catalogers have been poring over, in their PDF form, since they were first made available maybe a year ago - sorry, can't remember the exact date), but also AACR2, RDA: Element set view, and "more to come." The "collection of stuff" aspect makes me think of Cataloger's Desktop. The RDA Toolkit is not, at this time, planned to be included as part of any products like Cataloger's Desktop - you'd have to buy both separately. Apparently there are plans in the works for allowing connections between the RDA Toolkit and various ILSs, OCLC Connexion, and more.

Although libraries will pay for a limited number of concurrent users, this number is unrelated to the number of profiles - an unlimited number of profiles will be allowed. I'm guessing that, with different profiles, different people can create their own personal workflows, bookmarks, etc.

The browsing and searching features of RDA were shown. I didn't see any kind of index and asked about it - the question wasn't answered during the presentation, but I think I'm probably going to get an email response sometime. I hope there will be an index, because I'm not sure I can remember RDA's wordings for things, and I know it'd take me ages to find what I want via browsing. Another option would be to use AACR2's index, then use the AACR2 rule number search available in the Toolkit, and then hope that there's a link between the rule in AACR2 to the corresponding rule in RDA. Or I could write my own index (::shudder::). Or some industrious cataloger somewhere could write an index and share it, and then probably be shot down by ALA Publishing for copyright violation or something. Sorry, sorry, moving on...

There are currently no plans for a print version of RDA because it would "do a disservice to what was originally intended to be an electronic product." This, and/or the pricing for the Toolkit, still annoys me, and I'm not sure I did a good job of explaining why in my last post. It boils down to this: I catalog pretty much the same stuff over and over. I know the basic rules well enough that I don't need to consult them all the time. I only consult them when I come across some unusual situation or when I catalog something I haven't cataloged in a while or ever. What that all means is that I only actually look through my copy of AACR2 maybe once every few weeks or months. And ALA Publishing will expect us to pay $325 each year for this. I'm not sure if they've thought about how real, flesh-and-blood catalogers use the current rules - what they've laid out here seems to indicate that they haven't. Anyway, the other option would be to print out each chapter and keep them in what will probably need to be multiple binders. I'm not sure if updates to RDA will be announced, so it may not be possible to pinpoint sections that need to be reprinted.

Consortia will get special pricing, but it's not yet clear what that will be.

Short-term additional users will be granted for training purposes.

The "free trial for all" period will be from June 2010 to August 31, 2010. It will end August 31, 2010, regardless of when the actual release date is. By the way, the software is "in pretty good shape, but not perfect yet" - it seems likely that there will be a flurry of updating the first few months. October 1st to December 31st will be the period during which the test sites will create records using RDA. January to March 2011 will be the period of record evaluation.

The RDA Toolkit looks a bit daunting to use, particularly for those who have never cataloged before (Intro to Cataloging classes are about to get scarier). One nice thing for practitioners, though - libraries can create Workflows, which they can then choose to share with others in their library, or even make public. Hopefully the Library of Congress (and perhaps OCLC?) will make Workflows available to the public. Even if all they make public is a Basic Book Workflow, that's at least something that someone like me could look through and try to learn about RDA from. Because, quite frankly, the browse view of RDA looks no less daunting than the PDFs did. If I remember correctly, the printed-out table of contents was more than 70 pages.

Large print books

Cathy W. had a question for me yesterday (or maybe today, my memory is like Swiss cheese) that brought something to my attention - there's no way to find large print books using our OPAC, or even, as far as I know, a report in WorkFlows. You can limit a search in WorldCat just to large print books that we own, but it can't generate a list of every large print book we own. The best option right now: I can come up with what is probably an almost complete list of them using OCLC Connexion. Since this list is based on the master records available via Connexion, rather than our own local records, it doesn't include our call numbers. It relies heavily on the assumption that the previous catalogers who added our holdings to those records were paying attention to the little code in the fixed fields that can indicate whether something is large print - it's quite possible that these items we have that are supposedly large print really aren't, and I've already seen that we have a few books that are probably large print but that aren't coded as such in the master records. The biggest drawback, as far as DSL's users and people working at the reference desk are concerned, is that the only one who can generate this list is someone with access to Connexion.

There's a way to fix this, however. There's a subject heading, "Large type books," which I could add to every large print book record we've got (it'd probably be more correct to add it as a local genre heading, but, without a genre index, that would defeat the purpose of creating something that people can actually make use of). The "tidy" way to do this would be to take a look at everything in our holdings that Connexion told me was large print (34 items, as of this morning) and confirm that it really is large print. The faster way to do this would be to just add the subject heading to all 34 records, plus the few stragglers that seem to have miscoded master records - some of them might not actually be large print books, but the project would take up less of my time.

It's not really a "rush" project, so I'm thinking about it for now.

Darn - a half-day of doubt

Warning: somewhat long and whiny post.

The retreat today was fun and informative, probably the best part about my day today (not counting my dinner, which will be delicious :D). Unfortunately, aside from that I feel like one of those cartoons where there's a character being followed around by a dark, rainy cloud. Just one of those days, you know?

Aside from being generally confused about the status of the small cart of things I decided could be weeded yesterday (if only I had procrastinated just a bit longer!), my cataloging today was filled with doubt. It wasn't any particular thing that inspired my doubt - just general doubt. Things like:

• It's the Library of Congress's practice to only record "ill." and/or "map(s)" (for the most part), choosing not to specifically say when those illustrations are actually photographs or portraits or music or charts, etc. On AUTOCAT, not too long ago, a lot of catalogers complained about this lack of specificity and talked about how it could actually be helpful to users to be more specific. Those catalogers are more specific. I follow LC's practice, because I decided I have better things to do with my time than figure out what the various abbreviations and terms are for the different kinds of illustrations. Plus, when I flip through, all I need to pay attention to is whether there any pictures or maps at all, not what any of them actually look like. Sometimes I wonder if this is a mistake, and if it would actually matter to people whether an illustration is a drawing or a photograph, or whether a book has portraits. I have no idea what the catalogers before me did, or if they even thought about it at all.
  
• Why do I record/check information in records that people aren't going to see and/or that isn't searchable? The answer to this is that, if it's not recorded/checked now, then if, in the future, it does become searchable (even if only by librarians via reports) and/or visible to the public, the library, our users, our collection, and the Cataloger (me or whoever) will suffer the consequences. Every time I work on catalog maintenance, I see the results of information not being recorded or checked (for whatever reason) - that's part of why I'm such a perfectionist (some might say "anal") about various record details. I understand all of that, and yet there are days when it's a wee bit depressing to enter or check information when I know it has no immediate use.
• Also, leapfrogging on the whole perfectionism thing, should I care less? If "quantity cataloged" matters more than "quality of the records" (because "quantity," by its nature, is easier to quantify for statistics than "quality") are there things I should be considering no longer doing? The things that take the most time (for book cataloging, anyway) are things like adding new authority records (the things that make sure we have cross-references in our "browse" searches) and adding table of contents information or summaries. DVDs, videotapes, and any original cataloging are also automatically time-consuming. I don't want to "skimp" on things - I wouldn't be doing them if I didn't think they were important - but I think about this kind of thing when I hear about catalogers who've been laid off, or administrators who criticize catalogers for caring too much about the details (isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?). I also think about this kind of stuff when a new project gets added to my "to do" list. Thankfully, as far as the former stuff goes, our library has a pretty "cataloger-friendly" work environment. As far as the latter...ugh.
  
• I don't know if you read this blog, Janie, but you might be interested to know that I flip flop between thinking that multiple formats should be on one record and thinking they should each have their own, separate record. I hate that I can't be ok with one decision or the other.

And that's only a sampling of the things that sometimes make me doubt my cataloging. Even as I think these kinds of thoughts, I keep doing things the way I "should" be doing them, or the way I decided I should be doing them, and I think about possible workarounds for anything where the capabilities of the catalog seem to be failing the library (of course, it's always possible that they're not failings, but rather just things where our settings need to be modified...). Still, I prefer the days when these thoughts aren't so much downers as energizers.

Thoughts while pulling stuff for weeding consideration

I spent most of yesterday pulling stuff to potentially weed and then looking over the stuff I pulled. Aside from the depressing reminder that a lot of the stuff we have in some subjects is very old, the task gave me several thoughts (actually, what really got me thinking about some of this was a great ALCTS e-forum, but weeding reminded me).

Say something hasn't circulated much, and we've had it in our collection for a while - I'm wondering, is the real reason some of this stuff hasn't circulated our catalog records? When I catalog stuff, I now add table of contents notes and/or summary notes to almost everything that doesn't already have that information. You'd be amazed at the number of books that don't have this information - I'd say that books on education, computing, and sports seem to be the worst offenders. It can sometimes take a bit of time, but I think it's worth it to input this information for the added keyword access. However, we have tons of records that don't have this information. We even have lots of records that are basically brief records (I have no idea what the exact numbers are, or even if there's a way to find out) - they have title and author information, but not much else. Those materials are basically invisible, unless someone knows the exact title or author or happens to find them while browsing.

It's wishful thinking, I know, but I'd love to one day upgrade some of those crappy records. One way to start would be to identify sections that should be getting more use than they are, or maybe titles that are really hard to find unless you already know how to find them. When I chose to add to the title access points for the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, it was because I knew that it tended to be difficult to find unless you knew how to look for it. I don't know general areas that need that kind of attention, though.

I wonder if there's a good way to find all the brief records in our catalog? The only thing I know about those that separates them from the other records in our catalog is that they tend to be all in caps, but not all records that are all in caps are brief records. Plus, I can't tell our ILS to give me a list of all records like that - it's just not possible to search that way.

Hmm, something for me to think about... Of course, that doesn't mean I'd ever have time to work on all those records. But, if I ever get a student worker, one I could trust to work directly on our records, I could have that person add table of contents information as part of a project.

Picture books finished, I think

I'm pretty sure I've finished cataloging all the new children's literature, unless there are some stragglers I missed. Woohoo, happy dance! (And I bet I know someone else who'll like this news.) The batch I just finished had an awful lot of titles that fit the whole "LC doesn't do series tracing anymore" issue, so I had to do more record editing than usual. Even that didn't slow me down as much as it could have, though - I love my new procedures!

Known issues

In my office, taped to the TV stand, is a list of what could probably be called known issues or, I should say, issues known to me. I have no way of knowing if anyone else knows they exist or, more importantly, knows their implications for searching our catalog. I've debated whether and how to get the word out. On the one hand, it would be helpful for reference librarians to know that, say, the first series title in our MARC records is probably not the one they should be clicking on, regardless of the fact that it is clickable. On the other hand, some of these problems, like the series title link problem, don't necessarily look like problems. Maybe people are happier not knowing, so they don't have to put up with my attempts to explain what's going on and why it's a problem in a non-jargony way (which I'm not always successful at doing...)?

Explaining in person, one on one, as someone talks to me about a time they had problems with a search that was caused by a problem I know about, seems to work ok. I'm not so sure about group explanations. So, what I'm thinking of doing is turning the "Catalog Records" page in our wiki into a sort of "known issues" page. If the issue comes up, I can point to the page, which I will try to make sure includes "what to do about it" sections for each problem. That doesn't necessarily help much with the problems that don't look like problems, but one step at a time, I guess. I'll just have to make sure that I update the page as the problems get fixed.

Something that works!

I got to try out my "new" cataloging procedures on more than one or two books today. I started on a stack of picture books and decided that, since they were ordered after the cut-off point (I think Jodee changed things on her end sometime in August), I should be able to test things out on them. The test worked great, with the only issues being little things. Trust me, I'm thrilled. I can't wait until I get to the point where I can use these new procedures on nearly everything. The fewer windows I have to toggle between, and the fewer searches I have to duplicate, the better.

You say APA, I say Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

A while back, it occurred to me that it might be nice if it were possible to find the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association in our catalog by searching for "APA." I remembered that thought today while taking care of our little booklet of corrections to the 6th edition. I made a few changes (none of which I would ever dare do to the master records in WorldCat), and now the search that I thought would be nice is possible. And, because I can do nothing without creating more work for myself, I have to figure out if we really do still have a 1983 edition of this work, or if that record should have been deleted ages ago...

MARC --> OPAC = ?

One thing that never came up during the cataloging courses I took, but should have, was that the fields in MARC records may mean certain things to the cataloger who's entering and editing them, but that doesn't mean they're understood and put to use in the same way by the OPAC. I got a reminder of that today.

I had assumed that the language dropdown menu in our advanced search limited searches to the actual language of the items (in my cataloger's brain, I thought it limited searches to whatever language was listed in field 008 positions 35-37). That would still make multi-lingual materials problematic, but it's better than nothing, right? However, I didn't realize that the dropdown was just drawing from all languages associated with the items. That means that, if you selected German as the language, you'd not only get materials in German, you'd get materials in other languages that are translations of things originally in German. Not exactly ideal if what you want to find is a book in whatever language you're interested in. Not everybody wants translations.

Ideally, there should be a way to limit a search by the language of the actual item and, separately, by the language of the original work. (Which is a simplification, because MARC records also include things like "language of subtitles," "language of librettos", etc.) Instead, I think we've just got an either/or situation with our ILS. Right now, "language" in our advanced search is defined in a very broad way, and, if we narrowed that definition (if that's even possible) by changing our settings, we'd lose the ability to find, say, a book that was originally in German by choosing German from the dropdown.

I figured out a way around "too broad" problem by using a report in WorkFlows ("List entries from catalog", searching for the correct language code in 008, and limiting by call number, library, etc. if desired), but this workaround is clunky. Also as far as I know, there is no way for the average user (or staff members or librarians without WorkFlows access and knowledge of MARC) to find only materials in specific languages. I'll have to think it over and see if I can come up with anything. It'd be interesting to see what others assume the language dropdown is supposed to do - it's possible that our settings could use some tweaking, even if that means losing the ability to find "translations of works originally in X language."

OCLC article in Radical Cataloging

I'm reading a book called Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto. It's readable enough that I think even non-catalogers could get something out of it without necessarily having to consult dusty old notes from their Intro to Cataloging class.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Beall's contribution, "OCLC: A Review." It's a very critical look at OCLC, its products, its practices, etc. There are some things in the article that I agree with, and there are some criticisms of OCLC that have been made on AUTOCAT that I agree with that aren't mentioned in this article (OCLC's attempted and much-protested Record Use Policy came up, and died, after this book was published - it would have been perfect fodder for this article).

So, here's my brief critical paragraph. Criticisms of WorldCat's attempts at FRBRization are ignored or dismissed as being the complaints of too few for OCLC to take serious notice (see Lorcan Dempsey's blog post - I'm surprised there aren't more comments, particularly from people who have noticed serious problems in the way music materials are FRBRized). Like Beall, I, too, hate it when Connexion (OCLC cataloging software) goes down, although I'm not as crippled by that at DSL as I was at my previous library - at my previous library, pretty much all I could do during the downtime was clean my desk and twiddle my thumbs. I think OCLC pricing it outrageous, particularly when products like WorldCat depend upon catalogers at member libraries to edit and add records. True, OCLC has catalogers, too, (I interviewed for a job with them, and have even met some of those catalogers in person) but I doubt WorldCat would be worth anything if most of OCLC's customers decided they could no longer afford its services and left. I hate that OCLC has a monopoly as a bibliographic utility for cataloging (SkyRiver may change that, but I imagine it faces an uphill battle).

Beall's article bashes OCLC, and it's true that OCLC isn't all sunshine and flowers. However, it's not completely evil either.

1. They at least communicate with their customers more than some companies do (Janie would know which company I'm thinking of...).
   
2. Beall is extremely critical of Connexion, and one statement I found particularly interesting was "Libraries choose instead to download the records directly into their online catalog and fix up the records there, where the editing process is easier and generally quicker" (p. 88). This statement wasn't made in the Connexion section (it was in a section commenting about the horrible quality records with which WorldCat is riddled, aka the dreaded Level 3 records), but, lacking an explanation for what is meant by "easier and generally quicker," I can only assume that it's a criticism of Connexion. I'm unfamiliar with the bibliographic record editing capabilities of most ILSs, but the capabilities of our ILS are dismal. Say what you like about Connexion, I can edit a record far more quickly with it than with our ILS, and the results are generally less likely to have errors. Connexion gives me the ability to use macros (I don't have the skills to create a macro more complicated than the one that adds my 949 field at the end of my records, but several talented people have made their wonderful macros available to the OCLC cataloging community, for which I am very grateful), it has spell check, it has record validation, and I can use my keyboard to do most of my record editing. Our ILS has no macro capabilities, no spell check, no record validation (not entirely true, but what it does have is almost worthless for my purposes), and I'm forced to use my mouse to even add a new field to the record.
3. Connexion has batch processing options which save me lots of time. In the past few days, I've done work using Connexion's batch searching and processing that would have taken me years to do one at a time.

I could probably come up with more (and I'm only looking at this from a cataloger's perspective), but it's late and I'm tired. Basically, yes, there are lots of things one can criticize OCLC for, but I'd still be sad if we could no longer afford their services. If I had better alternative options for single-record editing (as opposed to batch record editing, which MarcEdit accomplishes nicely) and record-finding (the Library of Congress would probably be a great alternative source for most of our book records, but cataloging music, audiobooks, and DVDs would get a lot harder if I couldn't access OCLC's pool of records), I'd be a lot less sad.

Classification of video recordings

Every time I catalog DVDs/VHS tapes, I learn something new, since this isn't a format I normally work with. For instance, I've learned a lot about how other libraries handle classification of fiction DVDs and videos. One of these days, especially if there are signs that our DVD collection will be growing significantly, it'd be nice to go over our DVD collection and reclassify anything that needs it (I could include our VHS collection, but I'm betting our DVD collection will be around longer).

I'm currently trying to be good about recording any classification decisions I've made, in the hopes that future classification efforts can be more consistent that they have been. Some things have been classified very oddly over the years, or there have been misunderstandings about the correct way to apply LC's classification schedule (understandable, since LC classification works best for non-fiction).