<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px">For OCLC to say their data shows users don't care about IRs seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it's a small population, but if indeed "</span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px">users who care about copy-specific descriptions generally don’t see OCLC as a useful discovery tool</span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px">," that's probably because the copy-specific information that lives in IRs is not exposed in public worldcat searches anyway.</span><div><font face="Georgia, serif"><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></span></font><div><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px">We don't create IRs at Columbia, and I'm perhaps too new to know all of the background behind that, but if the records can't be publicly searched anyway, it would seem our time is better spent upgrading master records that are actually visible, and maintaining copy-specific information in our local Voyager records, where our users, reference staff, etc. are more likely to find it.</span><br><div><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px">Matt</span></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 12:35 PM, Noble, Richard <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:richard_noble@brown.edu" target="_blank">richard_noble@brown.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:small">This does go some way back. As noted by Jackie Dooley, in "Ten commandments for special collections librarians in the digital age" in <i>RBM</i> in 2009:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif" style="font-size:small">"</font><font face="georgia, serif">Karen </font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">Calhoun noted the need to 'get over item-level description' and get more </span><font face="georgia, serif">serious about streamlining cataloging. Our generalist colleagues in libraries have<div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"> </div></font><font face="georgia, serif">made massive strides in this regard over the past decade or more. Isn’t it time we do<div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"> </div></font><font face="georgia, serif">the same? Archivists generally let go of item-level description at least 25 years ago<div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"> </div></font><font face="georgia, serif">and have now widely embraced the Greene/Meissner mandate for 'more product,<div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"> </div></font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">less process.'"</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif">As I recall that startlingly antagonistic address (at the 2008 Preconference), we were also told to "get over ourselves", and I think what we're hearing is that OCLC would rather get over us.* They are, in accordance with their business model, satisficing. However that therm is technically defined, we know that in our endeavor, this means that Excellent + Good = Good, Good + Good Enough = Good Enough, Good Enough + OK = OK, OK + Whatever = Whatever, and that the job is to persuade the customers that Whatever is the New Excellence.</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif">*Granted, the report indicates that Calhoun was addressing the matter of archival cataloging, but my recollection of the address that it was rather more generally and sometimes offensively "disruptive".</font></div><div style="font-size:9.71667px;font-family:serif"></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div><font face="'courier new', monospace">RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY</font><div><font face="'courier new', monospace">BROWN UNIVERSITY :: PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912 :: <a href="tel:401-863-1187" value="+14018631187" target="_blank">401-863-1187</a></font></div><div><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><</span><a href="mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU" style="font-family:'courier new',monospace" target="_blank">Richard_Noble@Br</a><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><a href="http://own.edu" target="_blank">own.edu</a></span><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace">></span></div></div></div><span class="">
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Rouse, Lenore <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rouse@cua.edu" target="_blank">rouse@cua.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Will et al.,<br>
<br>
We ARE users but many of the people making decisions about our work
are not. I see two similar trends which nobody has mentioned yet,
which do or will obscure or obliterate bibliographical difference as
badly as ditching those IRs. One is a tendency in large libraries or
consortia to merge bib records for "the same" title. In the case of
certain consortia, this will mean dispatching all local notes to the
holdings record while merging all the stuff that belongs in the bib
record. The devil will be in distinguishing the local from the
general note. You all know it's not always possible to determine
whether the cancel or other feature in your copy is present in every
copy. Even if you can separate out the local info from the general
(including 655s, 7xxs who is going to want to look at local notes
for multiple holding institutions when they are parked in the
holding record and not near related info in the bib record? Not my
idea of user-friendly. How will the important information in the
local notes even be searched if it is no longer part of the bib
record? That should theoretically be possible, though it's not clear
to me that the makers of the feudal business model are concerned
with such minutiae. Some of them seem to believe fewer records are
cheaper than more records; it's rumored to be a great cost-savings
to copy catalogers. <br>
<br>
Another aspect of this merge mentality just came to my notice last
week. I discovered that WorldCat may stealthily merge all editions
of a title without letting the user know. Example: my search was for
<u>Loss and gain</u> by J. H. Newman, ed. by Sheridan Gilley. The
search retrieved quite a slew of hits, including a local one I was
not aware of. But next to the results is a disclaimer "Show
libraries holding <u>just</u> this edition or narrow results by
format" A click on this reduced my results to one library: the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (!). So, if I SEARCHED for <u>just</u>
this edition, why is WorldCat's default presenting me with 4 screens
of irrelevant nonsense? <br>
<br>
Instead of "are we not users" maybe the question should be to the
managers making these bizarre decisions "are you not librarians?" <br></div></blockquote></div></span></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><pre cols="72">-- <br>Matthew C. Haugen<br>Rare Book Cataloger<br>102 Butler Library<br>Columbia University Libraries<br>E-mail: <a href="mailto:matthew.haugen@columbia.edu" target="_blank">matthew.haugen@columbia.edu</a><br>Phone: 212-851-2451</pre>
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