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

[Auyong, Dorothy]

With respect, it is not just the duplicativeness and often lack of quality of the master records that has us decrying the loss of IRs.  It is the loss of being able to look at *copy-specific* records from peer institution in an aggregate/shared bibliographic environment that is going to be quite a loss.  IRs are searchable and retrievable for viewing and derived cataloging within Connexion. Without them, catalogers will have to search hundreds of separate local catalogs in order to find copy-specific nuances. Granted the IRs were a tiny sub-set of the OCLC universe, but it was a helpful one. They were also viewable within First Search.  They were searchable, but not viewable within WorldCat which led to all sorts of really strange and frustrating retrievals on occasion.  (A former owner tracing for example would pull up the Master Record in WorldCat, but no indication of WHICH holding library that tracing belonged to, or any indication on the visible World Cat record of why that search retrieved that record.) I long ago gave up searching in WorldCat so I don’t know how they have adjusted their algorithms –but I think that particular egregiousness is no more. It still frustrates me how little bibliographic information is viewable within a WorldCat record.

OCLC’s flat-footed and hard of hearing attitude towards the concern re: making item-level data discoverable and transparent for rare materials has been a deep-seated frustration of mine since we joined as part of the OCLC/RLG merge. The Rare book/materials community will probably need to look elsewhere for support I agree, but with limited IT, limited budgets, limited personnel and all of the usual ills facing cataloging and special collections staff many of us may find ourselves disenfranchised from *those* tools as well.  For the larger picture of shared cataloging, OCLC is still the 100,000 lb gorilla in the room. Perhaps newer ontologies, BibFrame environments, linked data, etc. will create better linkage to our collective silos of item-level data in the long –term, but in the short-term most of us will have to retreat back to our local data towers and raise the siege ladders.

Dorothy Auyong
Principal Rare Book Cataloger
Henry E. Huntington Library
dauyong at huntington.org



From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 10:36 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] OCLC's IR webinar (May 13)

Matt,
I’ve never used IR’s myself, but I understand the reason this development hits a raw nerve is that many people on this list think there are too many duplicates in OCLC to find good records within a reasonable amount of time. They need the IR’s to find them.

One point I made awhile back: can we expect this problem to diminish over time? There are no more pre-1801 books being published. If we concentrate on upgrading good records to DCMB(x), could we gradually get to where we can just ignore non-DCRM(x) records?

I generally ignore non-English records unless all the English records are bad. I take pride in how little original cataloging I do. Sometimes I even upgrade awful UKM records if they fit the item I have in a minimal way.

Probably about once a month I create a new record and then, doing a last search before updating the holdings (i.e., adding my record to the database), stumble on another one I missed somehow. I go through the laborious process of moving all the detailed fields I put on my record to the other one.

Maybe this work pattern isn’t feasible for everybody. If I was used to using IR’s, I might think they are indispensable.

Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library



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