[DCRM-L] Deletion of copy-specific fields/data from OCLC master?

[Ted P Gemberling]

Dear Linde,
Of course we should put all local information on our own catalogs. But to put it all on master records, it seems we’d have to have software allowing us to specify how much will be displayed for a given book. Let’s say I was doing research on Chennai (Madras), India. If a book was just a general history of South India, I could specify that I only want to see “universal” information related to the manifestation. If it was a biography of some important  citizen of Chennai, I might want to it to show me every local note from every library. That might work, but I’m sure patrons would often complain that there was too much junk on records. How do you find the balance between too much information and too little? I think we need to recognize that catalogs are just a small part of the process of doing research. A researcher spends a lot more time looking through books and bibliographies than looking at catalog records.

Another point: that software might make life easier for researchers, but for the reasons Richard gave, it would make life a lot harder for catalogers. You would have to wade through a lot of notes to find the few that were significant.

$.02,
Ted
PS Thanks to the person who came up with “$.02.” I love that. I hope you don’t mind me copying you.

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Linde B.
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2015 11:49 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Deletion of copy-specific fields/data from OCLC master?

Dear Ted,
Having gone through the dissertation process in comparative literature (medieval and Renaissance Spanish), and conducting ongoing and robust professional-level academic research in book history (largely 15th through the 17th centuries), I not only create records for early materials when I have the chance, I make intensive use of them for that research.
I have not EVER said that we need to put "everything" in the record.  But the presence of marginalia, and indications of provenance, particularly early and/or contemporaneous provenance, are quite important to lots of different sorts of researchers.
In the bibliographic community, there is precious little faith in the surrogates most libraries create in any case, and the lack of faith is well-merited, for precisely the short-cuts and omissions we're discussing.

DCRM, of course, improves things, but undermining what little efficacious information is in records is an insult as well as an injury to researchers, particularly those studying book history and reception.
Your estimation of the usefulness of doctorvaters is perhaps overstated -- particularly if one is working in a new area, rather than an already sanctified and overworked one, in which one's advisor may well have trod all those avenues already and have in their capacious photographic memory all important details of every book they ever laid hands on.
We don't just identify manifestations -- that's my point: we also identify items.  After all, that's really all we have in hand: an item.  And items remain tokens of manifestations only when they have NOT accumulated any past interventions, i.e. history.
L



On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 3:45 PM, Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl at uab.edu<mailto:tgemberl at uab.edu>> wrote:
Linde,
When I was a history graduate student at Indiana University in the 90’s, I remember that IU was converting all their cataloging records to online. One time I happened to chat with a lady who worked on the recon team and mentioned that almost all the books I needed to use were still only in the card catalog. She said, “Let me guess, you’re a history student, aren’t you?” The point is that, unlike sociology, which in many ways studies the same subject, historians have to have access to all the old books. If someone publishes a new edition of a classic book, that’s not good enough for historians. You have to have access to the old ones. Sociologists are studying the big generalizations about society, so they don’t have to verify where Shakespeare first published Macbeth, for example.

One of the consequences is that historians spend time building bibliographies of old editions of works. If you are a history graduate student, typically the professors in the field you specialize in know where the best collections are for that subject area. I never got to the dissertation stage, but I’m guessing if I had, my professors would’ve told me which libraries to go to. I know that doesn’t preclude them missing some important copies, but after all, as a PhD student, you are given years to do research.

This comes back to the basic point that’s been raised before: can the “surrogates” (catalog records) be expected to tell you everything about a book? As Thomas Mann liked to say, it’s still important to browse shelves. Digitization of books can’t replace that because it only gives you keyword access to what is in them. Print books are still important.

You wrote: “As catalogers we record the evidence, we don't interpret it.” Well, you have to interpret it enough to know if it’s necessary for identifying the manifestation.

Ted Gemberling

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>] On Behalf Of Linde B.
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 1:12 PM

To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Deletion of copy-specific fields/data from OCLC master?

Mr. Gemberling writes:
I​ think it’s really the job of historians and bibliographers to study the lives of authors, not catalogers. Of course that information is valuable and should be on your library’s record for the book, but I wouldn’t put it on the master record. Historians have the means to track down the libraries where authors’ presentation inscriptions are more likely to be.
I beg to differ with your analysis here.  It is the job of catalogers to record the important features of the book-in-hand as both a token and as a specific copy, in part because of what Mr. Noble asserted, i.e. information that may indicate that the item provides evidence of a different issue.  And, in part because the widely distributed copies of a book (whether expression or manifestation) accumulate history, the role of the CLEARLY IDENTIFIED LOCAL information in the COLLECTIVE catalog is precisely to make available an indication of what that history is.

As catalogers we record the evidence, we don't interpret it.   That's the difference.  (Which puts paid to FRBR in the library world, since it requires catalogers to make judgments that require considerable knowledge of the scholarly DOMAIN and to interpret it rather than record it.)
Further, I think the assertion that "historians have the means to track down blah blah blah" is absurd -- that would require communicating directly with EVERY LIBRARY HOLDING A COPY of the book -- what would take a cataloger 5 mins MAX to record will waste HOURS of the time of (largely beleaguered and underfunded) historians.  I am reminded of both Cutter and Ranganathan's observation about wasting readers' time.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D138C4.F9862A80]
​
and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science#Fourth_Law:_Save_the_time_of_the_reader

Linde M. Brocato


On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 6:01 PM, Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl at uab.edu<mailto:tgemberl at uab.edu>> wrote:
Jane,
I
​​
think it’s really the job of historians and bibliographers to study the lives of authors, not catalogers. Of course that information is valuable and should be on your library’s record for the book, but I wouldn’t put it on the master record. Historians have the means to track down the libraries where authors’ presentation inscriptions are more likely to be.

For example, we have two books authored by Queen Victoria that have her presentation inscription to her physician. Of course I put a note of that on our local record, but I wouldn’t put it on the master record unless it were necessary to catalog the book. In other words, if in the preface Queen Victoria had said, “my wonderful physician helped me a great deal in writing this book” and never gave his name, then the presentation inscription would help identify someone who should be an added entry. But just the fact that he got a copy of it with a presentation inscription will not ordinarily help catalog the book.

Just my two cents. Maybe I’m underestimating the value of local information. Certain kinds of books—especially I’d think manuscripts—make notes like that absolutely essential. But I don’t think printed books are enlightened very often by inscriptions.

Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>] On Behalf Of Jane Stemp Wickenden
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 5:31 PM

To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Deletion of copy-specific fields/data from OCLC master?

I recall cataloguing an anonymous 16th-century book at (I think ) Balliol College, in the mid-90s, with the author's presentation inscription in the front (he was a Balliol man). Technically a copy-specific feature, but of bibliographic significance, as no other copy recorded such an inscription.

Apologies; I am evidently reaching my anecdotage. ;)

Jane
(Oxford University Early Printed Books Project, in the dim and distant days).
On 15 December 2015 21:54:31 GMT+00:00, Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl at uab.edu<mailto:tgemberl at uab.edu>> wrote:
Yes, that’s my understanding of what the subfield 5 is for, when you have information that you’re not sure is only of local interest. If your copy proves to you that the note is unnecessary, go ahead and delete it. But don’t delete all 500’s with subfield 5. As Richard says, they may contain important clues to some mysterious aspect of a book.


I recently cataloged a book with a record created by NLE (National Library of Scotland?). There were a number of local notes on it. I’ll admit I wasn’t bold enough to remove them from the master record, but since NLE was the only other library using the record, I added $5 NLE to the 500’s.


Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library


From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Noble, Richard
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 3:43 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Deletion of copy-specific fields/data from OCLC master?


If you do that with all $5 note fields you might lose one of my precious gems--that is, when it's a feature of Brown's copy (and almost certainly of some but not all other copies) that is the clue to variation within a manifestation (issue, roughly), I will usually tag it $5 RPB. But perhaps I shouldn't do so, as long as the note explicitly states that the observation is based on the Brown University copy. I don't like such notes that leave one wondering "Where did that come from?"


I'm too old now not to be bold, so I've taken to sweeping LC's local collection (710) and acquisition notes (561) out of master records. If you want such information about LC's holdings, search their local catalog.


Of course, our  opac doesn't even display $5 in its "regular [full, labelled] display", only in our "coded display" (what others call MARC or Staff or Librarian view).

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
<Richard_Noble at Br<mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu<http://own.edu>>


On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 4:21 PM, Randal S. BRANDT <rbrandt at library.berkeley.edu<mailto:rbrandt at library.berkeley.edu>> wrote:
I've also gotten bolder with age and now generally delete copy-specific information from OCLC master records. I do make an exception for $5 DLC, however. Not yet bold enough to delete Library of Congress information.


We also set up a routine job for our Systems Office to sweep the ILS periodically looking for instances of $5 that contain non-UC Berkeley organization codes and remove those fields, whether they be notes or access points, from our local catalog.



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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.



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it is that we live in a world of failed Hobbesian states.
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--

If you don't have a seat at the table you're probably on the menu.

-- Elizabeth Warren



The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure

and the intelligent are full of doubt.

-- Bertrand Russell



For conscience to work:  either a very strong religious belief

--extremely rare.

Or: pride, even arrogance.

If you say to yourself in such matters: who am I to judge?

--you are already lost.

-- Hannah Arendt



Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

--Simone Weil, philosopher, mystic, activist (1909-1943)



Don't sell your soul to buy peanuts for the monkeys.
--Dorothy Salisbury Davis
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