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Showing posts from 2014

Metadata Update #22: Reflecting on Classification Numbers

I had a chance recently to listen to a colleague in the public library sector talk about classification numbers and the assigning of Dewey call numbers to materials that were to be housed in a specialized collection which would be devoted entirely to business clientele.   One of the challenges she faced was the fact that so many of the resources were catalogued in the 650s, with most of those being in the 658s.   She found  books on how to write business plans for bakeries and wondered if she could put those books somewhere in the 640s along with other books about commercial baking.   She also had a book on business writing for performing artists and wanted to put that somewhere in the 700s, etc.   She reported that her request to reclassify materials for this collection created considerable controversy in the technical services department with cataloguers who agreed with the appropriateness of reclassification to make the organization of materials more relevant in the specializ

Metadata Update #21: Standing on the edge of something new

This blog post was written at a point where my term position was coming to an end and I didn’t know if I would get the tenure track position which I did eventually get.   It seemed to make sense as a “metadata update” at the time but when I rediscovered this post the other day, I was less convinced of its relevance.   In the end I decided to edit the post and share it.   The summer of 1984 was about as hot as it gets in Saskatchewan, at least that is the way that I remember it.   All of my friends were getting summer jobs. With up-coming band trips and my budding interest in the latest clothes and records, I decided that it would be good for me to break out beyond the world of paper routes and babysitting to get a “real job”. I don’t actually recall the details my first little resume but I’m sure that it was an impressive little sight with all of my babysitting experience, the various paper routes I had over the years and a reference from my piano teacher who I considered

Metadata Update #20: April 2014 RDA updates

This blog post was originally intended to be posted in June 2014: I’ve finally gotten around to completing my reading about the April 2014 changes to RDA.   As is the case with reading the details of any descriptive cataloging standard, it’s enough to either give you a headache or put you to sleep if you try to focus on too much of the detail at once. I do have a few comments to make about this update.   First of all, many of the changes are, in my mind, just clarification of the points which help to bring metadata creation away from the world of trying to fit as much information as possible onto a little index card and into a complex international information environment.   For example, it is reinforced that for serials you don’t assume that users understand that “v.” stands for volume.   Instead, volume should be spelled out as such as should issue.   This does make sense in an international, multicultural and multi-generational environment.   Certainly, for many users “v”

Metadata Update #19: CLA 2014

I attended the Canadian Library Association’s annual conference in Victoria British Columbia on May 28 th to the 31 st .    The setting and the spring weather were wonderful. Notice that I haven’t used the usual abbreviation of CLA seeing as for some of my readers the abbreviation CLA stands for California Library Association.     The two large library associations which are both commonly called CLA has definitely confused me in the past.   Of course, in thinking about RDA, I see another situation where limiting the use of abbreviations where the audience for either a metadata record or a piece of writing moved from the local to international sphere. This was my first time attending CLA and I wasn’t quite about what to expect.   In the previous two years I had attended ALA Midwinter and had come to enjoy the highly specialized meeting and presentation topics as well as the fast pace of the event.   In looking at the CLA line-up I was a little concerned that I may not find en

Technical troubles!?

To my horror, I see that I have four blog posts which I wrote going back to this spring which I never published to this blog.  I see that a couple of them are out of date.  I'll update them and start posting them as time allows. With all of the editing tools in Blogger there is no reason to type out my posts in Word and then cut and paste them in here so I'm going to stop doing that. I was getting ready to type out my November post which is a follow-up to my Library 2.014 conference presentation when I discovered this...so, it looks like you'll actually get five blog posts in the next month or so.  Nothing like doing everything at once. Check back in a few days once I've had a chance to update my CLA conference update.

Metadata Update #18 - RDA for Music and thoughts about FRBR

I recently attended a joint ALA/MLA webinar on music cataloguing for RDA. I'm not going to use this blog post to talk about the content of that webinar but I do want to mention an impression that was made upon me. MARC is a linear, two-dimensional container for metadata. It's worked very well for a very long time and it still works well. However, in our current computing and communications environment we can do better. In a world of linked data, big data and structured data, our MARC records start to show both their strengths and their limitations. OCLC's project to convert MARC records to linked data shows MARC's strengths. The fact that such an old 20th century standard has stood the test of time to be transformed into a new life in the 21st century is a testament to the technical minds who have developed MARC as a metadata container over the decades. I have spoken to many cataloguers, and I am included in this category, who are frustrated by the fact that