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

[Noble, Richard]

This does go some way back. As noted by Jackie Dooley, in "Ten commandments
for special collections librarians in the digital age" in *RBM* in 2009:

"Karen Calhoun noted the need to 'get over item-level description' and get
more serious about streamlining cataloging. Our generalist colleagues in
libraries have
​ ​
made massive strides in this regard over the past decade or more. Isn’t it
time we do
​ ​
the same? Archivists generally let go of item-level description at least 25
years ago
​ ​
and have now widely embraced the Greene/Meissner mandate for 'more product,
​ ​
less process.'"

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.

*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".

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

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Rouse, Lenore <rouse at cua.edu> wrote:

>  Will et al.,
>
> 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.
>
> 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 *Loss and gain*
> 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 *just* 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 *just* this
> edition, why is WorldCat's default presenting me with 4 screens of
> irrelevant nonsense?
>
> Instead of "are we not users" maybe the question should be to the managers
> making these bizarre decisions "are you not librarians?"
>
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