Cataloguing - Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely

1
Cataloguing - Huh! What is it good for?
Absolutely

• Gordon Dunsire
• Presented at Information Skills and Competencies,
  National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, on 9
  November 2006

2
Overview

• Cookery
• Games
• The G-spot
• Star Trek (the few and the many)
• Arithmetic
• Global domination
• Saving the planet
• The Beatles

3
Cataloguing,

• metadata, and the organisation of knowledge
• Whats that got to do with libraries?
• Less and less (overall)
• Archives, museums
• Information-rich commerce (business, tourism,
  etc.)
• Citizenship (politics, current affairs, etc.)
• Saving the planet

4
The raw and the cooked

• What cataloguers do for the information user is
  similar to what commis chefs do for the head chef
• Or saliva does for the stomach
• Pre-digest information (save time)
• What is this book about? (without reading the
  whole thing)
• How big is it? (without going to the shelves)
• Is the author the same as that bloke on the
  telly? (without checking their national ID card)

5
Playing games

• Writing is a creative act
• and writers like to be creative
• Ceci nest pas une pipe
• (Its a painting)
• And The blind watchmaker isnt a
  visually-challenged horologist
• Its a book
• About genetics
• J. Smith Jane Smith Jane A. Smith?
• New! Improved! (Publishers like to sell)
• Not everything is Ronseal

6
Functions of bibliographic metadata

• Assist people (and machines) to
• Find
• Identify
• Select
• Obtain
• information resources to suit their needs

7
Google?

• Very effective when you know what you are looking
  for
• Useless when you dont know what you are looking
  for
• Results 1 - 10 of about 442,000,000 for what we
  dont know. (0.13 seconds)
• Its in there somewhere
• there are known unknowns there are also
  unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we
  don't know (Rumsfeld)

8
Cost-benefit

• Creating reliable metadata is expensive
• Computers are necessary to reduce costs
• But not sufficient
• At best, 60 accuracy in a controlled, focussed
  information environment
• Any improvement requires an earth-shattering
  breakthrough in artificial intelligence
• Reliable metadata is useful to many, many people
  over long periods of time

9
Create once, use many times

• A good record costs 8-10 (fec!) to create
• A good record is effective
• When it is relevant and retrieved (recall)
• When it is not relevant and not retrieved
  (precision)
• So what is a good record worth?

10
What is cataloguing worth?

• Time saved with good record per user search 10
  seconds
• No. of copies of good record used 100
• No. of searches involving a copy 1000
• Total time saved (1000x100x10)/3600 hours 277
  hours of users time
• Rate 277 hours for 10 0.04p per hour
• Slightly below the minimum wage

11
Cooperation, Collaboration

• Cataloguing is a cooperative and collaborative
  activity
• Records are shared and recycled
• Regional, national, international
• Lots of people creating records for lots of
  resources
• Effectiveness and efficiency requires standard
  approaches for assured quality control
• Consistency, coherency, completeness

12
Cataloguing standards

• Developed through practice and theory for over
  100 years
• Old age does not imply uselessness
• Recent developments to meet needs and demands of
  the digital age are international in scope
• Multi-lingual
• Multi-cultural
• Multi-community (technical)

13
International standards

• Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records
  (FRBR)
• Improving catalogue structure
• Resource Description and Access (RDA)
• Improving catalogue content
• Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
• Improving catalogue access
• Big changes are in the offing
• Tomorrow never knows the end of cataloguing?
• http//www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/102-Danskin-e
  n.pdf

14
De-professionalisation

• Inevitable
• Trained, experienced metadata creators are
  expensive
• But less expensive than authors
• And a lot more effective than folksonomists
• Globalisation, cooperation creates a bigger pool
  of good records
• Higher proportion of copy-cataloguing
• Paraprofessional skills required

15
Transferring skills

• Metadata isnt just for bibliographic retrieval
• Preservation and digitisation
• Formats, technical metadata
• Administration
• Data protection freedom of information
• Recycling
• Reusing parts of resources (e.g. graphics)

16
Want to know more?

• Join the Cataloguing and Indexing Group in
  Scotland
• Join the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group
• Check out the SLAINTE digital library
• Reports, presentations, papers, articles
  supporting continuing professional development
• Lots of stuff about cataloguing developments
• http//www.slainte.org gt digital library

17
Thank you

• Me
• g.dunsire_at_strath.ac.uk
• The presentation
• http//cdlr.strath.ac.uk/pubs/dunsireg/catisc.pps
• The metadata for the presentation
• OCLC WorldCat
• SLAINTE digital library
• Strathprints (University repository)
• real soon now