Monthly Archives: November 2011

Fixed Field Coding. Extended Remix

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I am afraid I will not be at lecture time this Thursday. Here is a handy video substitute for me.  You can listen to them before or after but not during my esteemed colleague’s fixed field lecture.  Please visit the wiki for lab content to go with these you can even start working in the Connexion client.

#1 Fixed Field in OCLC for books http://www.screencast.com/t/Ph1ckgX5Nex
#2 Fixed Field in OCLC for Fic, Sound and Video http://www.screencast.com/t/Tm77b7we0Qy
#3 Fixed Field in Horizon and the webopac view http://screencast.com/t/1P9IBCwI
COntact me if you have technical trouble. The first one takes an eerie while to get going but runs after that. Teach me to run wild and loose with my huge (dual)screen resolution

RDA references

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Linda Woodcock certainly offered #libr511 an excellent base of education in RDA last week.  An inspiration talk about dumping the preserve our inventory and shift catalogued to user purposes of find, identify, select and obtain.

While Linda did not post her slides with our wiki she makes a good point that many great resources for self guided study are online. Here is a sampling of resources that interesect or where referred to:

Reminder to find UBC test records in the library catalogue you can search kw: rdacontent to find them in OCLC us the search dx:rda.

 

Cataloguing4Coders

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Starting late last week a thread on Cataloging4Coders took off on the Code4Lib listserv.  These top library data manipulators are readying for their next conference and want to add to the event more knowledge current, and historical, of how library data works.  I chuckled most certainly at the the original post which states more than a few coders are “yearing for knowledge of this Darkest of Library Arts”

What do you think they want illuminated??

To check out the whole thread search for the topic: Cataloging4Coders @C4L12 We need you brains in their archives. Highlights list might start out as:

  • How more functionality can be devolved from data
  • The history of AACR and MARC
  • Why library data is as varying in scope/intensity per record as it is, this is their question of ‘reliability of data
  • commonly used MARC
  • metadata project management esp. for digitization
  • cataloger to coder communications challenges
And it is certainly has some advice for the cataloguing community I have to second the message of:
“I wish is that there were some way to get more catalogers to see that despite Watson, there are serious limitations to what computers can practically do and that we would be better off if we worked with computer’s strengths instead of trying to make them do things that are hard for them to do so we can reproduce the form of the card catalog (as opposed to the function).”  From Kelly McGrath at Ball State
ps.. to join or otherwise learn more about Code4Lib go here: http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mailing-lists/code4lib/

Wherefore Technical Services

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I feel often that you as students think we are teaching you how to work in a technical services department.  But of course we are not.

This course looks to give you the FUNdamentals of the catalogue.  How the artifacts of the catalogue record is made.  But this is problematic to get.  To know more about how technical services works you have to get your fundamentals sure but we want you to know… What happens in there?  What are the rules by which the library collections and mandate come through?

This is a list of how Tech Services represents themselves.  Needs improvement?

A vintage consortia piece http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/services/cataloguing/workflows/

Cataloguing standards for the British Library http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/catstandards.html

Penn State libraries http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging.html

Policies like these are only a hint at the actual style guides within that set out local rules and protocols.  There are a set of triggers that say while you could just describe every item to the best of your ability, don’t do that.  It is important that libs of every stripe are conversant in this and finding out which collections get the total treatment and which are marginalized.

But I guess I should not assume to limit catalogue metadata is synonymous with limits on access?