[DCRM-L] Future of Bibliographic Control

[Laurence S. Creider]

I have a few comments that I was unable to get to Randy before the draft
went out to DCRM-L, and I have been out of commission the past two days. 
My e-mail system doesn't seem to want to send this reply to anyone but the
whole list, so here goes.  I have interspersed a few comments on the draft
below.  I apologize for not getting these out earlier.

Larry Creider

-- 
Laurence S. Creider
Head, General Cataloging Unit &
Special Collections Librarian
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM  88003
Work: 505-646-4707, 505-646-7227
Fax: 505-646-7477
lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu


On Tue, December 11, 2007 3:01 pm, Randal Brandt wrote:
> Greetings:
> Below is a draft of comments on the report of the Library of Congress
> Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. These comments were
> compiled by Larry Creider, Nina Schneider, Deborah Leslie, and Randal
> Brandt and are to be submitted on behalf of the Bibliographic Standards
> Committee. Comments are due to the Working Group on Saturday, Dec. 15.
> Please give us any feedback you can by Friday, Dec. 14.
> Thanks,
> Randy
>
> ***********************************************************************************************************
> The Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) of the Rare Books and
> Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of ACRL welcomes the opportunity to comment on
> the Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control drafted by the Library
> of
> Congress (LC) Working Group (WG) on the Future of Bibliographic Control.
> The Bibliographic Standards Committee is especially encouraged by the fact
> that access to rare and unique materials is recognized as one of the five
> central themes within this report.
>
> The Bibliographic Standards Committee strongly agrees that, indeed, there
> are many institutions and organizations that have the expertise and
> capacity to step forward and play significant roles in the bibliographic
> future. Only if we are allowed and encouraged to do so will this be
> successful.
>
> Although the Bibliographic Standards Committee is most interested in the
> second theme of the report relating to the exposure of rare and unique
> materials, we realize the recommendations of the entire report will impact
> rare book and special collection repositories just as significantly.
>
> What follows are specific comments on many aspects of the report.
>
> In general, the report ignores the impact of the vast quantity of
> materials
> on the Web and the issues of selection and providing access to them,
> except
> by talking indirectly about making use of metadata.
>
> Page 6: It is gratifying to see that the Library of Congress has learned
> that announcing major changes to the library community without advance
> preparation, as happened with their series decision, is not the way to
> introduce change. The ability of the cataloging community, together with
> OCLC, to discover ways to cope with that decision is an indication that
> the
> Library of Congress can indeed rest easy in the knowledge that there are
> organizations and institutions who are willing to step forward and
> volunteer their expertise in cataloging standards.
>
> Page 7, Paragraph 2: The Bibliographic Standards Committee agrees that
> users would be better served if access to a variety of materials were
> provided in the context of a unified philosophy of bibliographic control.
> Unfortunately, this desire is most likely impossible to realize given the
> commoditization of information and proprietary considerations.
>
> Page 7, Paragraph 3: The Bibliographic Standards Committee strongly
> disagrees with the statement that "Consistency of description within any
> single environment, such as the library catalog, is becoming less
> significant than the ability to make connections between environments."
> Both are important; minor inconsistencies are tolerable both within and
> between databases. Major inconsistencies need to be remedied lest they
> result in chaos. Introducing a database with no authority control into one
> with authority control eliminates any authority control and adequate
> precision or recall in both databases.
>
> Page 7, Paragraph 4: What is meant by "cataloging?" Perhaps this needs
> redefinition as much as "bibliographic control." It is "necessary to
> embrace a view of bibliographic control as a distributed activity, not a
> centralized one." Fortunately, this has been happening for a few years
> thanks to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) and OCLC's master
> record concept.
>

Insert after the second sentence?  The "WG seems to use "cataloging" to
denote everything that is outdated and "bibliographic control" to denote
all that is new and good."

> Page 8, Paragraph 1: The Bibliographic Standards Committee is very worried
> that the Working Group accepts the commoditization of information without
> a
> nod to the notion of information as a public good. Does this mean that the
> Library of Congress will begin charging for its services? Should we expect
> to see pop-up ads on Classification Web in the near future? Are the
> nation's public libraries a target for mergers and acquisitions?
>

I think the last sentence goes over the top.  The other sentences make the
point adequately and with some degree of possibility.

> Page 9-10: Redefining the Role of the Library of Congress. As mentioned
> earlier, the Bibliographic Standards Committee agrees that LC might want
> to
> reconsider its responsibilities to the nation's libraries. There are many
> experts in public, academic, and special libraries that would be willing
> to
> work with LC to create partnerships and opportunities to improve the
> universe of bibliographic control. This will be a new world for LC and a
> learning experience for all involved, but a public recognition that the
> locus of expertise has given way to many loci is necessary. As LC is
> aware,
> the Bibliographic Standards Committee is very involved in the creation and
> maintenance of standards for the rare materials community. The
> Bibliographic Standards Committee is willing to share its expertise and
> expects that LC recognizes its expertise and willingness to share it.
>

I believe this sentence is gratuitous and possibly needlessly offensive. 
LC has a tradition of recognizing the expertise of BSC and cooperating
with the group.

> Page 10: The shift of bibliographic control of primary resources within LC
> does not mean that traditional cataloging practices must be abandoned. The
> traditional practices need revision and need to be coupled with other
> means, but they will continue to be necessary for materials of all
> formats.
> As we will see in Recommendation 2, traditional cataloging practices will
> be necessary to make some of these resources available. These resources do
> not leap into malleable electronic metadata without costly human
> intervention and intellectual activity.
>
> Page 11, Section 1.1: Eliminating Redundancies. Although a good idea, the
> amount of intellectual effort and physical work saved by transferring
> descriptive metadata is not the basic cause of the cost of bibliographic
> control. Even classification could be more automated than it currently is.
> The real, barely reducible, cost comes with controlling names, titles, and
> subjects.
>
> Page 13-14, Section 1.2: Copy cataloging and loading of LC authority files
> are not the only reasons that libraries have reduced staff. Budget
> cutbacks
> and lack of qualified professionals, as well as the soaring costs of the
> materials and licensing should also be considered.
>
> Page 15: Overall, the Bibliographic Standards Committee agrees with
> Recommendations 1.2.1.1-1.2.1.3. LC could make better use of PCC-produced
> data. If the recommendations in 1.2.2 to examine original cataloging
> programs and sub-programs at the Library of Congress are to work, LC will
> need to do a better job than it has in the past of identifying and working
> with other entities. As mentioned above, LC will need to explicitly
> abdicate from the library community's expectation that it is THE source of
> knowledge in these areas and direct some inquiries to other institutions
> or
> groups.
>
> Page 16: Recommendations 1.2.3 and 1.2.4. The problem is not simply the
> number of PCC participants; the problem is with institutional barriers to
> expansion of PCC participation. For example, when NACO and BIBCO
> catalogers
> move from libraries where they have been trained in NACO and BIBCO
> procedures and made contributions to libraries that are not members, their
> expertise is lost. The Bibliographic Standards Committee also recognizes
> that libraries need to expand the number of certified librarians within
> their institutions. NACO certification, and perhaps BIBCO certification,
> should be attached to catalogers and transferable with the cataloger.
> There
> should be investigation of ways OCLC can encourage small, specialized
> libraries, to achieve Enhance status, which is necessary for BIBCO
> membership. OCLC in particular should consider amending its loading
> algorithms and rewards for upgrades and corrections to avoid M-level
> records with 20 libraries attached whose catalogers have done work in
> their
> local catalogs but found it too time-consuming to make the changes in the
> "master record."
>
> Page 16-19, Section 1.3: The section of collaborating in authority record
> creation is excellent, particularly in its recognition of the inescapable
> amount of human intellectual effort that is devoted to authority work. A
> great deal could be done here by making participation in cooperative
> authority processes easier, as mentioned above.
>

How about "section on collaboration?"

> Page 18: Again, the Bibliographic Standards Committee is willing to work
> with LC to increase collaboration on authority data and controlled
> vocabularies.
>
> Page 19-21: Enhance Access to Rare and Unique Materials. On the whole,
> this
> is an excellent section. Some things might be added. First is that
> increasing cooperative collection development by research libraries will
> mean that more current material, particularly from foreign countries, will
> become "rare" and require original cataloging because no one else holds
> these materials. Research libraries need to commit to the fact that
> creating unique collections will require more resources for bibliographic
> control of those materials.
>
> Page 20, Recommendation 2.1: Rare book and special collection repositories
> have recognized the need to make the discovery of their materials
> possible.
> The Bibliographic Standards Committee has gone a long way towards this
> goal
> in codifying rules and emphasizing access to a greater number of items and
> empathizes with LC in prioritizing these materials.
>

I would like to say "codifying rules in different formats" rather than
just "codifying rules."  The need to provide access to non-traditional
rare materials is part of the theme of this section.


> Page 20, Recommendation 2.2: "Streamlin(ing) cataloging for rare and
> unique
> materials, emphasizing greater coverage and access" is an oxymoron. One
> can
> streamline some of the processes, but poor access will hinder users from
> finding the materials they need almost as much as providing no access at
> all. When thinking about the different levels of 2.2.4 and the "some level
> of access" of 2.2.1, institutions need to remember the way in which
> broadsides were ignored not so long ago and the way pamphlets were bound
> together and given an assigned title with little or no access to the
> individual pamphlets. Individual items of these types often have great
> research (and monetary) value and are used in serious scholarship. By not
> providing full access, libraries hinder discovery by both scholars and
> collection development staff who must decide how best to spend limited
> resources on new acquisitions. The Bibliographic Standards Committee notes
> that there is tension between recommendations 2.1 and 2.2. There is danger
> in merely shifting unprocessed materials to under-processed materials by
> adopting an uncritical approach to "some access." The Working Group cites
> the ARL White Paper on "Hidden Collections" (on p. 19) and would be
> well-advised to consider the approaches examined there more carefully.
>
> Page 20, Recommendation 2.3: Integrating finding aids and databases and
> metadata records into the discovery tools for rare and unique materials is
> a wonderful idea. However, these systems need to have the ability to limit
> to or exclude such materials.
>
> Page 21, Recommendation 2.5.1: Is it necessary to share metadata for
> unique
> materials?
>
> Page 21, Recommendation 2.5.2: Success will depend on OCLC's ability to
> offer federated searching on institutional records and to make it easier
> for finding aids or images, for example, to be loaded into OCLC.
>
> Page 21-22: Position Our Technology for the Future. It would be foolish to
> adopt a replacement for MARC that does not retain the advantages of MARC
> (e.g. subfields for searching) or that does not address the major defect
> of
> MARC, namely its inability to handle hierarchical relationships. Would it
> not be better to work with Web developers to increase the relevance and
> ranking of library catalogs and standards and to index MARC records in
> such
> a way as to increase visibility in search engines? Catalogers and
> programmers will need to work together to make this possible.
>
> Page 23-24, Section 3.2: Standards. The report states that "it is through
> consistent application of standards that the full value of bibliographic
> data can be released across many potential use environments" and that
> standards are in reality, a business issue. Standards not only remove
> barriers, they also impose barriers, particularly those relating to cost.
> Standards require conceptualizing data in a certain way. A better argument
> for standards is the utility for the users of bibliographic data, which
> goes along with recognition of their limitation. We need to recognize the
> limitations and shortcomings of standards along with their undeniable
> value
> and not blindly endorse anything simply calling itself a "standard."
>
> Page 25, Recommendation 3.2.1-3.2.2: Suspend work on RDA. This makes
> sense,
> even if not for the reasons given. Some in cataloging community think that
> it goes too far, others think it doesn't go far enough. Until ALA and LC
> agree on a format for the recording and display of data, and detailed
> statements on encoding, existing catalogers will find it very hard to
> implement RDA. The Bibliographic Standards Committee also wonders how the
> recommendations in 3.2.2 will, if at all, affect Descriptive Cataloging of
> Rare Materials.
>
> Page 26, Paragraph 2: It is unlikely that machine applications will ever
> be
> the primary users of bibliographic data. They may be one of the major
> manipulators of such data, but the users remain human, with human
> objectives. It is enough to say that we need to structure encoding schemes
> that support such manipulation.
>
> Page 26, Section 4.1, Paragraph 3: "... most users now conduct their
> research in multiple discovery environments: search engines, online
> booksellers, course management systems, specialized databases, library
> catalogs, and more." This is similar to the what users have always had to
> do, consulting catalogs, periodical indexes, newspaper indexes,
> bibliographies, printed catalogs, microfilm, etc. The difference is that
> at
> one time, researchers had to travel to different institutions or use
> different machines. Most of this can now be done from one computer, which
> gives the illusion that these resources should all work the same way.
> Unified searching may be an unattainable goal.
>
> Page 27, Paragraph 2: The report's assertion that library users value
> features and data that help them make sense of results by ranking,
> organizing, and clustering, may or may not be true. Recall and precision
> of
> results is just as important, if not more so.
>
> Page 27, Paragraph 3: It is very disturbing to learn that LC considers
> that
> a library catalog should be designed to ingest or interact with records
> from sources outside of the library cataloging workflow. Unless there are
> stringent guidelines and intense oversight, any idea of authority control
> or standards will be negated. If LC is concerned with the overwhelming
> responsibility and staffing issues of updating and maintaining its
> records,
> this would indeed be foolhardy decision. Rather, LC should consider an
> alternative, using its catalog as a base, but leaving the integrity of its
> catalog intact.
>
> Page 27, Paragraph 4: "Many libraries have chosen to produce metadata to
> satisfy the needs of their most sophisticated users, despite the fact that
> such users are but a small percentage of their total user base. They do so
> under the increasingly dubious assumption that all users will benefit from
> the greatest detail in cataloging." This statement contradicts the whole
> tenor of Recommendation 2 and promulgates an atmosphere of
> anti-intellectualism. Ideally, we, as information professionals and
> librarians, should encourage discovery and deeper understanding in
> everyone
> who makes use of a library. Nevertheless, the fact is that discoveries and
> research are made by the small number of users who make intensive use of
> primary sources and secondary literature. This is as true of scientists as
> of humanists. Such intensive use of information requires complex tools to
> study the very complex reality we live in. What is required in the library
> catalog is detail sufficient to distinguish resources so that the user may
> discover and select them. The larger the database, the more sophisticated
> the user, the more detail may be required.
>
> Page 28, Recommendation 4.1.2.1: It is reassuring to see that LC
> recognizes
> the importance of maintaining the "integrity of library-created data."
>
> Page 28, Recommendation 4.1.3.1: Algorithms need to go a long way before
> they are useful in suggesting works that might be useful to patrons. Their
> algorithms fail to distinguish between scholarly and popular material.
>

The last sentence would be clearer if it read something like, "For
example, commercial search engine algorithms fail to distinguish between
popular and scholarly material."

> Page 28, Recommendation 4.1.3.2: If implemented, this will take longer
> than
> creating original controlled vocabularies and their variations.
>
> Page 28, Section 4.2: Realization of FRBR. What does the statement "FRBR
> suggests alternatives for analyzing intellectual content for bibliographic
> control" mean? FRBR proceeds from what users, do or are supposed to do,
> and
> posits ways of constructing relationships and displaying those
> relationships.
>
> Page 29, Paragraph 2: Developing a means to exchange work-level data will
> take thought but is hardly less feasible than many of the other
> suggestions
> the report adopts, such as recasting LCSH in a hierarchical structure. The
> cataloging rules are part of RDA. In the report, the WG calls for the
> suspension of work on rules that will support the creation of authority
> records using FRBR, but then attack the FRBR model for not having such
> cataloging rules. The real problem will be finding the resources to apply
> FRBR retrospectively and to materials whose metadata is inadequate for any
> but the most basic purposes.
>
> Page 29, Recommendation 4.2.1.3: There are at least as many problems with
> the concept of Manifestation as Expression. Nonetheless, the fact that
> these determinations are flexible and subject to development as
> scholarship
> intensifies on a particular group of Works, with the related Expressions
> and Manifestations, allows for the model to stay alive.
>
> Page 30, Recommendation 4.3: Although the Bibliographic Standards
> Committee
> is particularly interested in description, subject access is an important
> aspect of discovery. This section, and the diagnosis of problems, ignores
> the basic fact that LCSH is complex because reality is complex. Navigating
> the thesaurus and the Subject Cataloging Manual is difficult, but so too
> is
> describing the world of knowledge. Any attempt to do justice to a
> resource's subject is bound to be difficult. The length of LCSH strings is
> more a problem of catalog displays. Oddly, LCSH strings are quite useful
> for keyword searching which can then allow retrieval of other items with
> the same or similar subject strings. LCSH is not, and should not be,
> designed for novices. Such individuals are best served by starting with a
> keyword search and then building on the subject headings or bibliographies
> to find other materials.
>
> Page 31, Recommendation 4.3.2: De-coupling of strings is possible, but
> hardly necessary when keyword searching of subject strings is so
> effective.
>
> Page 32, Recommendation 4.3.3.2: "Apply terms from any and all appropriate
> sources of controlled subject headings in bibliographic records to augment
> subject access." How does this fit in with the streamlining mentioned in
> Recommendation 1? How does this reduce the cost of cataloging? How will it
> help the user?
>
> Page 32: The Desired Outcomes do not flow from the recommendations. The
> result of the recommendations on LCSH will be more complex subject
> analysis, not less, and certainly not more intuitive. It will not be
> easier
> to update and to apply. Terminology may be more current but certainly not
> more consistent. The application of the recommendations will require
> substantial resources that may or may not be justified. Rather than test
> FRBR, the recommendations concerning LCSH should be tested for feasibility
> and user benefits before they are put into practice.
>

For clarification,  the first sentence should say, "The Desired Outcomes
for section 4.3 do not flow from the recommendations."


> Page 35, Recommendation 5.2.1.2: This recommendation is excellent, but
> until libraries make clear that there is a demand for graduates with these
> skills and that cataloging and bibliographic control are the backbone of a
> library, the recommendation will languish.
>
> Above all, there needs to be a commitment on the part of the institutions
> involved to invest in the expertise required for control of these items:
> technical knowledge of papers, bindings, printing and photographic
> processes, reproduction technologies, languages, scripts, subject
> expertise
> in areas ranging from chemistry to denominational schisms, as well as
> electronic systems, encoding schemes, and programming ability. Only if
> institutions are willing to value this expertise will there be the
> necessary personnel to realize these outcomes. In this report, the Working
> Group never really commits itself to the notion that no matter how many
> shortcuts can be found, how much electronic manipulation of metadata is
> done, libraries will still have substantial investments in the human
> aspects of bibliographic control. Until this fact is recognized, they will
> not be able to make the changes that will lead to effective implementation
> of the recommendations, let alone implement some of the others that are
> needed.
>

Last sentence would be clearer if "they" were replaced by "libraries."

> Respectfully submitted (on behalf of the ACRL/RBMS Bibliographic Standards
> Committee),
> Laurence S. Creider, New Mexico State University
> Nina Schneider, Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
> Deborah J. Leslie, Folger Shakespeare Library
> Randal S. Brandt, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
>
>
>
> __________________________
> Randal Brandt
> Principal Cataloger
> The Bancroft Library
> (510) 643-2275
> rbrandt at library.berkeley.edu
> http://bancroft.berkeley.edu
>