Rethinking What We Do

The Library’s Diminishing Market Share

William E. Moen<wemoen@unt.edu>

Texas Center for Digital KnowledgeSchool of Library and Information Sciences

University of North Texas

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To begin…

It’s not as if we just landed in Oz … It’s not as if folks hadn’t been identifying the

challenges and opportunities … It’s not as if we haven’t been

Thinking Conducting research Discussing Experimenting …

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The library catalog and cataloging

We used to know what the catalog described “We can catalog the Internet via traditional

AACR and MARC practices” A little revision to the MARC record … And changing the very nature of the catalog

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Not

Library Catalog

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The Web

LicensedDatabases

LibraryCatalog

Local Databases

Amazon

Google

DigitalResourcesDigital

ResourcesDigitalResources

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Taylor’s categories of added value

Ease of use Noise reduction Quality Adaptability Time-saving Cost-saving

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Taylor’s ease of use (examples)

Interface Browsing Formatting Interfacing – Mediation Interfacing –

Orientation Ordering Physical accessibility

System Alphabetizing Highlighting important

terms

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Quesenbery’s 5 E's of Use

Effective Efficient Engaging Error Tolerant Easy to Learn

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Access to library resources

Your Library Information System

CitationDatabases

BibliographicRecords

OtherInformation

Different:

InterfacesCommandsPresentation Gateway to the

Internet

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Integrating access

Single User Interface to Multiple Resources

Citation Databases

BibliographicRecords

DigitalCollections

Local or Remote User

Your Information Systemwith Multiple Resources

Local or Remote User

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OAIster.org

A union catalog of digital resources Contains nearly 11,000,000 records

describing freely-available and restricted-access digital resources

Uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

Harvests the descriptive metadata (records) and makes those searchable

Currently harvesting from over 700 digital repositories

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Index Data Master Key (prototype)

Enables efficient metasearching of hundreds of databases at the same time

Uses Z39.50, SRU/W, or proprietary protocols Open-source-based alternative to proprietary, closed-source

metasearch alternatives. Supports:

on-the-fly merging relevance-ranking sorting by arbitrary data elements facets for limiting result sets by subject, author, etc.

Current demo searches open web resources OAIster Open Directory Wikipedia Open Content Alliance

Can be used for metasearching of catalogs, commercial dbs, etc.

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Distributed and integrated access

RemoteRemoteInformation SystemInformation System

(e.g., museum system)(e.g., museum system)

Remote Remote Information SystemInformation System

(e.g., archives)(e.g., archives)

YourYourInformationInformation

SystemSystem(e.g., library resources)

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The MCDU Project

Provide empirical evidence of catalogers’ use of MARC content designation

Identify commonly used elements of bibliographic records

Contribute to community discussion about core elements in MARC bibliographic records

Explore the evolution of MARC content designation

Develop research approach to understand the factors influencing levels of MARC content designation use

MARC Content Designation Utilization

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Richness of MARC

MARC 21 Field Groups

Currently Defined

(MARC 21 or OCLC MARC Bib.)

MARC 1972

00x 6 3

0xx 311 28

1xx 76 40

2xx 176 15

3xx 155 4

4xx 45 37

5xx 344 8

6xx 235 66

7xx 477 41

8xx 249 36

9xx 16

TOTAL 2074 278

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Number % Number % Total

MCDU Project Dataset 56,177,383 100

LC-Created Records Non-LC-Created Records

MCDU Project Dataset by LC/nonLC 8,713,665 15.5 47,463,718 84.5 56,177,383

Books Records 7,595,887 13.5 34,546,200 61.5 42,142,087

Cartographic Materials 242,132 0.4 596,642 1.1 838,774

Electronic Resources 39,879 0.1 871,881 1.6 911,760

Continuing Resources 388,332 0.7 2,193,009 3.9 2,581,341

Manuscripts 11,471 0.02 4,390,970 7.8 4,402,441

Music 109,249 0.2 1,167,654 2.1 1,276,903

Sound Recordings 241,940 0.4 1,702,342 3.0 1,944,282

Projected Media 22,088 0.04 1,415,606 2.5 1,437,694

Graphic Materials 62,625 0.1 506,401 0.9 569,026

Three-Dimensional Objects and Realia

62 0.0001 73,013 0.1 73,075

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Example results

7,595,887 LC-created records in dataset Type of Record: Book, Pamphlets, and Printed

Sheets Total number of unique fields: 167 Number of fields accounting for 80% of

occurrences: 14 fields (8.3%) Number of fields accounting for 90% of

occurrences: 21 fields (12.6%) Approximately 110 fields (66%) occur in less than

1% of all records

[Note: Fields are cataloger-supplied, not system-supplied]

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Example results

Field TagNumber of Records Where Each Field is Used at Least Once

Number of Total Occurrences of Each Field

Cumulative Total Percentage of Field Occurrences

650 5,387,282 11,778,732 10.910%

008 7,595,887 7,595,887 17.945%

245 7,595,887 7,595,887 24.981%

010 7,595,726 7,595,726 32.016%

300 7,586,264 7,586,415 39.043%

260 7,585,926 7,585,928 46.069%

050 7,027,027 7,095,639 52.642%

100 5,626,011 5,626,018 57.853%

500 3,264,297 4,582,571 62.097%

020 3,845,934 `4,235,426 66.020%

082 4,034,888 4,036,101 69.758%

043 3,665,624 3,665,626 73.154%

504 3,373,297 3,403,714 76.306%

700 2,312,712 3,240,072 79.307%

880 512,563 2,327,504 81.463%

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Questions for catalogers, 1

Can the data inform your local practices? What about the 60% of all fields used in

less than 1% of the records? What is really needed in a bibliographic

record? Support for the four user tasks? Management of information resources? How do your systems use the

infrequently used data?

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Questions for catalogers, 2

Can you argue persuasively for the cost/benefit of your existing practice?

Should the focus be on high-value, high-impact, high-quality data in a few fields/subfields?

Can you identify these few fields/subfields?

What would it mean for costs of cataloging?

What would this mean for training?

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Adopting new cataloging practices

Select the appropriate metadata scheme. Use level of description and schema (DC, LOM, VRA Core,

etc,) appropriate to the bibliographic resource. Don’t apply MARC, AACR2, and LCSH to everything.

Consider …abandoning the use of controlled vocabularies [LCSH, MESH, etc] for topical subjects in bibliographic records.

Manually enrich metadata in important areas Enhance name, main title, series titles, and uniform titles for

prolific authors in music, literature, and special collections. Automate Metadata Creation

Encourage the creation of metadata by vendors, and its ingestion into our catalog as early as possible in the process.

Import enhanced metadata whenever, wherever it is available from vendors and other sources.

Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California (December 2005)

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AquaBrowser – Arlington Public Lib

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Dempsey’s acronymic density or

Metadata schemes: DC, MODS, CDWA, VRA, etc.

Metadata content standards AACR, CCO, DACS, etc.

Metadata encoding standards: MARC, XML, RDF, etc.

Metadata container/wrapper standards: METS, MPEG, etc.

Discipline specific metadata schemes: GILS, CSDGMI, GEM, IEEE-LOM, etc.

Other schemes of interest: TEI, EAD, etc.

“I've often said librarians should like any metadata they see.” (R. Tennant)

…this is the present future!!

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The changes are here and coming

The library as network centric not building centric A node on the network in competition for users

The library catalog as one metadata repository A rich repository of detailed metadata, which needs to interact

with other network systems The network centric library:

Exposes, transforms, reuses, and aggregates metadata Supports interoperability of metadata

The library cataloger as metadata maven Organizing and managing a wide variety of resources in multiple

repositories with different metadata schemes Digital libraries Institutional repositories Image databases ,,,,

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Closing quote

Thus, if librarians are involved at all, it is already clear that their role with respect to metadata will be vastly different from their old cataloging role. As libraries and other agencies continue to make information accessible via the Web, there will be considerable need within the academy for the development of portals, tools, and strategies customized for precision research on the vast Web…. So far, most major developments in these areas have taken place outside of libraries, in the commercial database or portal world, and this trend is likely to continue. If colleges and universities determine that librarians should be involved, this could constitute a solid platform for academic libraries in the next generation. (Campbell, 2006)

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References Index Data Master Key

http://mkey.indexdata.com/demo/ OAIster.org MARC Content Designation Utilization Project

http://www.mcdu.unt.edu Karen Calhoun. (2006). The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration

with Other Discovery Tools http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf

Lorcan Dempsey. (2006). The Library Catalogue in the New Discovery Environment: Some Thoughts

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/dempsey/ Bibliographic Services Task Force. (2005). Rethinking How We Provide

Bibliographic Services for the University of California http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf

Designing the future -- Library Systems and Data Formats http://futurelib.pbwiki.com/

Next Generation Catalog [listserv] NGC4LIB@listserv.nd.edu

Jerry D Campbell.(2006) Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as a Virtual Destination.

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0610.pdf