“What They Don’t Teach in Library School” An ALA Preconference

Sponsored by ALCTS/ALISE/LC/Libraries Unlimited June 22, 2007Karen Calhoun

On Competition for Catalogers

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“What Changed in the US with Hurricane Katrina was the feeling that we have entered

a period of consequences…” – Al Gore

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How Much Stress is Too Much?

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My Report to the Library of Congress

• Calhoun, Karen. The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools– Washington, DC: Library of Congress, March

17 2006• http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf

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My Thesis: We Need to Rethink the Catalog in Light of a

Changed World• Users are not getting what they need

from online libraries and catalogs

• Content has changed

• Users have changed

• The library service model must change

• The catalog must change

• Catalogers must change

WHO?

WHAT?

HOW?

WHERE?

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Library Catalogs, Cataloging, and Catalogers

• MARC, AACR, and LC• Cooperative cataloging• Affordability and

scalability• More than descriptive

metadata • Metadata is a strategic

issue for libraries

“Save the time of the reader.”--S.R. Ranganathan, 1931

The Way We WorkedBooksJournalsNewspapersGov docsMapsScoresAVDissertations

Special collectionsManuscriptsPapersUniv records

Journal articlesConference proceedingsEtc.

Library catalogs

Archives

Abstracting &Indexing services

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Being a 21st Century Librarian

• Starting points:– Technology-driven research, teaching and learning– Disintermediation (decrease in guided access to

content)– Global “infosphere”– Accelerating shift in information seekers’ preferences

for Web-based information and multimedia formats

Librarianship: “There are few professions whichcontribute so much to the saving of time and tothe progress of science.” –Library Journal, 1890

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Geocentric/Aristotelian view:The local catalog is thesun

Heliocentric/Copernican view:The local catalogis a planet

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Full Text: Digital Repositories and Interactive Learning

http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

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Second Life

Second Life Library

and Info Island

http://secondlife.com/5,853,971 “residents” (April 21 2007)

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A New Kind of Cataloger

• Examine assumptions• Be involved with

information objects of all types

• Move to next generation systems and services

• Make information (including, but not limited to library collections) more visible and easier to use

• Metadata and beyond

http://vivo.library.cornell.edu/

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Crisis or Opportunity?

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Opportunities for “New Age” Catalogers

• Metadata recycling and reuse

•Workflow analysis and

quality improvement

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The Continuing Importance of Books

• Books and serials are not dead, and they are not yet digital

• ARL libraries spent the lion’s share of US$665 million on books and serials in 2004

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Digitization Projects

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A New Way to Work

“Instead of being a hoarder of containers, thelibrary must become the facilitator of retrievaland dissemination.”—William Wulf, 2003

Blakeley, Daniel H.

Cornell Center for Materials Research Facility Staff page

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Making Library Collections and Services Visible

• Library must be where the users’ eyes are– Interconnections, interoperability, and information

delivery

• Offsite storage and the challenge to browsing

• Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships• Much more robust and interconnected

discovery and content delivery systems

“2 ½ cheers for Google.”--Paul Duguid, May 5 2003, Cornell University

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Affordability and Scalability

Expense of cataloging

Rapid growth of Web resources and digital assets

Need more than descriptive metadata

Interoperability issues

Competition for Resources to Develop New Library Services

Shrinking tech services departments

Streamlining tech services workflows

Increasing use of external sources of data; automated cataloging methods

Changes in Information-Seeking Behavior

Preference for online information

Reliance on simple keyword search

Decline of subject searching

Expectation of seamless linking

Table 1: Challenges Facing Traditional Cataloging

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Availability of Catalog Librarians

LIS schools not teaching cataloging

LIS grads not choosing cataloging

Graying of the library profession (demographics)

Significance of the Catalog

Catalog is one part of a much larger infosphere

Many new types of scholarly information objects not covered by catalog

Future of Individual Library Catalogs

Less emphasis on one catalog per library

Shift toward multiple catalogs appearing as one catalog; shared catalogs; cataloging or indexing interwoven into the Web (e.g., Google Scholar, Open WorldCat, worldcat.org)

Table 1, Continued: Challenges Facing Traditional Cataloging

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Increasing investment in access systems

Help build new kinds of systems for IR and delivery; many new kinds of metadata; emphasis on re-use, interconnections, interoperability

Active participation in the university community

Blurring of lines between what has been public services and technical services; project and team-based workplaces; involvement in campus projects and digital asset management; consulting work; decreasing involvement in traditional cataloging duties

Technology-driven research, teaching and learning

Need for “IT fluency, esp. metadata specialists; increasing involvement in large-scale digital library research, development, and production projects

Table 2 : Forecasts and Implications for Metadata Specialists

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Disintermediation and user self-sufficiency

Catalog librarians have always served those who want to work autonomously; metadata specialists will also enhance ease of use through expertise in indexing, data organization and management, access vocabularies, taxonomies, ontologies, etc. Rising need for understanding of visualization and other techniques to support browsing Increasing use of metadata for linking of wide array of information objects

Global infosphere, Web-based information, and multimedia

Metadata specialists will develop/lobby for standards and best practices, but proliferation of systems and object types will continue; continued need for integrating frameworks and interoperability tools

Table 2 Continued: Forecasts and Implicationsfor Metadata Specialists

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Thank You!

• Being a Librarian: Metadata and Metadata Specialists in the Twenty-first Century

• Forthcoming in Library Hi Tech, v25 n2 (Summer 2007)• Preprint 17 December 2004

• http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2231