FRBR, FRAR, and MARC- August 29, 2005 FRBR, FRAR, cataloging, metadata, MARCKaren Coyle has some interesting things to say about FRBR and the future of MARC. This dovetails with some of what I've been thinking about lately. At the very least, MARC standards are going to need a serious overhaul to reflect the kind of entity-relationship modeling present in FRBR and FRAR. I suspect that at the end of such an overhaul, the MARC standards would not much resemble their present form.The bugaboo here, of course, is how to create a...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/frbr-frar-and-marc.html A follow up- August 25, 2005 From Gainesville.com: "City commissioners have reinstated their public library director who had been suspended after a registered sex offender and three boys allegedly used library computers to access pornographic Internet sites."It's good to know that reason has prevailed, though it would be better if it hadn't happened at all.http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/follow-up.html I love my job- August 24, 2005 I do. I wouldn't dream of leaving my current place of work anytime soon. But it would take a stronger soul than I not to daydream just a little about the potential of this job:Dear librarians, Celebrity Cruise Lines Manager Edwin Rojas contacted me about finding librarians to work on their cruise ships for 6 month stints. Here's what I learned from Edwin (who can correct any mistakes I've made). You would sign a 6 month contract and you would be assigned to a variety of cruises 7-14 days in...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/i-love-my-job.html Portals and metasearch and OPACs, oh my- August 18, 2005 internet, libraries, portalsLorcan Dempsey of OCLC has yet another insightful post about presenting an integrated library web presence, including this bit:We tend to talk about the integration of library services, one stop shops, portals, and so on. I would argue that integration of library resources should not be pursued as an end in itself, but rather as a means to better integrate resources into user behaviors.This goes back to something I've been thinking about a lot lately, about how...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/portals-and-metasearch-and-opacs-oh-my.html Librarian=Internet Cop- August 15, 2005 filtering,internet,librariesIt's been all over library blogs today, and has even been slashdotted, but it's worth mentioning that a Florida Library Director has been suspended and may be fired outright because users of the public library she runs have viewed 'offensive content' on the web using the library's computers.I hear an awful lot from various politicos in the current administration about the importance of encouraging a 'culture of personal responsibility' when it comes to thinks like...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/librarianinternet-cop.html Billions and billions...- August 12, 2005 cataloging,OCLCAs has been posted in several blogs, Worldcat has now exceeded one billion records.Trying to comprehend the vastness of that amount of data leaves me speechless.(Really. See I have nothing more to say.)http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/billions-and-billions.html More on folksonomy- August 10, 2005 folksonomy,tagging,cataloging,searchSo I've been thinking more about Clay Shirky's 'Ontology is Overrated' article, and reading several interesting analyses of it.I have to admit to being caught up in Shirky's rhetoric for a little while. He's quite a clever and entertaining writer, and finding that in a tech person is rare (says the English major). But it didn't take long for me to get past my enamourment with his writing style to questioning his ideas, specifically the eitheror nature of...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/more-on-folksonomy.html Search Engine Divergence- August 8, 2005 cataloging,searchNearly everyone I know has a favorite Internet search engine, and most non-librarians I are confident that they get the information they need from their chosen search engine.However, in a recent SearchEngineWatch article, Chris Sherman elaborates on the tendency for search results to vary widely among search engines.Looking at the organic or natural listings for more than 485,000 first page search results, the study found that: 84.9% of total results are unique to one...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/search-engine-divergence.html NISO Newsletter Available- August 3, 2005 cataloging, serialsVia Catalogablog, the August issue of the NISO Newsletter is available. I'm particularly glad to see that the Serials Online Holdings format is a production release. Slowly, we inch toward the ability to integrate data from e-resource management systems and PAMs into our ILSs more seamlessly.http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/niso-newsletter-available.html Series treatment- August 2, 2005 cataloging, serialsMy current place of work handles monographic series in a way that just seems wrong to me, even though it's perfectly valid. It only seems wrong to me because it's different from the way I've dealt with series at every other library I've worked at. Here's our current practice as I understand it: Any numbered monographic series to which we subscribe is treated as a serial with analytics. Volumes are classed together, holdings are maintained on a serial record, and each...http://smotu.blogspot.com/2005/08/series-treatment.html |