[DCRM-L] OCLC's IR webinar (May 13)

[Jeffrey P. Barton]

For whatever it’s worth, I share the perplexity, and even vexation, of Francis and Will.

I sat in on one OCLC session yesterday and found the “A” portion distinctly short of info—very terse “answers” to my questions about how we’ll avoid losing local notes and info in this process when IRs get dumped, and just what the process will entail to ‘migrate’ local data from IRs to so-called LBDs; also how, in future, we’ll go about adding select locally-coded manifestation-level info from our Voyager records to OCLC via this LBD mechanism.  (We catalog in Voyager, and all our original master records and modified IRs get batch-uploaded to OCLC each quarter.)  Basically, their answer to those question seemed to be, “e-mail us and we’ll discuss with your library.”

I imagine all will be revealed in the fullness of time, but it seems perplexing at this point.

Jeff Barton
Cotsen Children's Library Cataloger
Rare Books & Special Collections Department
Princeton University Library


From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Lapka, Francis
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 11:36 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] OCLC's IR webinar (May 13)

I omitted from my summary – for fear that it might come off as crankiness – the part where OCLC’s moderator said that he had no data on the usage rates of IR records by catalogers (in the Connexion client). OCLC moderators also reassured us that in a proper cataloging workflow we don’t really need to see the IRs.

Francis




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 Will Evans
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 11:02 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] OCLC's IR webinar (May 13)

Are we not users?
I am vexed by OCLC's attitude and more than a little disheartened. Given our small numbers, data driven decisions hold little promise for accommodating present and future concerns of the rare materials community.
While we are not an IR library, we frequently use the information within those records to aid in identification, when navigating a sea of inferior records.
How did a feudal business model, where we create the product but have no voice in how that product is maintained or delivered, survive into the 21st century?


Will Evans

Chief Rare Materials Catalog Librarian

Library of the Boston Athenaeum

10 1/2 Beacon Street

Boston, MA   02108



Tel:  617-227-0270 ext. 224

Fax: 617-227-5266

www.bostonathenaeum.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.bostonathenaeum.org_&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=t7GDkvcZa922K6iya7a6MxgVxxw7OjL0m1rPBXkflk4&m=U2ok5q4kpAuk5J1D4k9nigDFjYjwYhQu1YLjshnWHHg&s=9LHwjCZaUPV4uhV_aeGFuhgwXmo9220nDSnSWffl2B8&e=>




On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 10:27 AM, Lapka, Francis <francis.lapka at yale.edu<mailto:francis.lapka at yale.edu>> wrote:

Yesterday’s webinar on the demise of Institutions Records and the transition to Local Bibliographic Data was primarily a Q-and-A. Compared to the discussion that Yale catalogers had with an OCLC rep in April, there seemed much less ambiguity that OCLC has no plans to provide access to the local data of any institution other than your own, no matter how much we say that this is important to us. Moderators held firm to the talking point: OCLC data suggests that its users don’t care about IRs.

It’s tempting to think that the OCLC data is somehow wrong, but I’m inclined to accept their conclusion at face value: users who care about copy-specific descriptions generally don’t see OCLC as a useful discovery tool. So is there much point in investing energy trying to make OCLC fulfill a role for which it is ill-suited? If we want a mechanism that enables searching of copy-specific data across institutions, we should probably look elsewhere.

Francis







Francis Lapka  ·  Catalog Librarian

Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts

Yale Center for British Art

203.432.9672<tel:203.432.9672>  ·  francis.lapka at yale.edu<mailto:francis.lapka at yale.edu>





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