Who is the user?

Many of you may have noticed this site yesterday. It was featured in wordpress’ “hot blogs of the day” or whatever they call it.

In light of our discussions on “who is the user?” It is sometimes interesting to gain a perspective from someone not connected to Library Science. This blog shows one perspective on the lay person’s view of the library:

“It’s been a long time since I got an overdue notice from the library. That’s because it’s years since I’ve been to a public library. The folks at Barnes and Noble are much nicer, and the bathrooms are cleaner too.”

http://anneandper.wordpress.com/

Note of thanks from Karen Calhoun

Below is a note of thanks from Karen Calhoun.  If you have thoughts or comments about her visit with class, please share them:

Just a quick note to let you know how much I enjoyed “talking” with your students and guests yesterday afternoon.  I’m grateful that you had the idea of inviting me.  I hope that it was a productive experience for all; I’d be interested in any feedback you have to pass on or offer yourself.

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Audio recording of tonight's session now available

Mark Lindner informed me a short while ago that the audio recording of this evening’s session is now available via the archives.  Thanks, Mark!

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Fred Kilgour and Henriette Avram

As noted in the posting I just add to the class blog previously (thanks, Anthony!), Fred Kilgour, a visionary pioneer for transforming libraries, died earlier this week at the age of 92.  He was the founder and creator of OCLC and I highly recommend that in addition to the obituary Anthony mentions, you take a look at this post from the It’s All Good blog, a blog maintained by several OCLC staffers, which talks quite a bit about Mr. Kilgour’s legacy and background.  Then there is another site where memories of Kilgour are being compiled.

How interesting that Mr. Kilgour’s death comes relatively soon after the death of another giant in our field, Henriette Avram.  Mrs. Avram was the creator of the MARC record structure.  Upon her retirement she was also the Chief of the Cataloging Division at the Library of Congress, I believe.

I cannot overstate the importance and impact of the work of these two people on technical services and libraries in general.

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Founder and creator of OCLC dies

Anthony asked me to communicate this announcement to the rest of the class:

I wanted to pass this along to the class today, but it didn’t
seem to come up on the main blog page.  I linked it to my
own “theobiblos.wordsmith.com” blog;

Here’s the obit:
http://columbus.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2006/07/31/da
ily12.html

Question about Calhoun Report

Hi all,

I’ve been reviewing the Calhoun Report for our class tomorrow and have a question about something that I am hoping you can help me with. On page 10, she states that catalogs have moved from “characters-based” to “client-server based.” By “characters-based” I am assuming she doesn’t mean catalogs that are honest and true–is she talking about characters as in data?

Thanks,

Colleen

Amazon muscles in on libraries

LISNews.org | Amazon Introduces End-to-End Library Processing

This news item follows an announcement late yesterday from a library vendor, TLC, about an agreement with Amazon to provide pretty much the same thing:  shelf ready material.  As you know from a few of the readings assigned for the course, library vendors such as Yankee Book Peddler and Blackwell have been providing this kind of service for a number of years.  One has to wonder how this might affect their business.

I find this development apropos to come at this time and at the end of this course.  It clearly shows the magnitude of constant change faced by those working in technical services in libraries.

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Interesting blog post re LC

In light of the many references to the Calhoun Report throughout the course, as well as the impact of Google on technical services, particularly cataloging practice, I found this blog posting to be very interesting reading.  It appears to be a written version of a report to Congress by a representative of AFSCME at LC, and it gets to the heart of the issue regarding LC’s focus on building a digital collection and how that relates to its mission and the reality of continuing to collect mostly print-based material.  Here are some quotes that are particularly striking:

“In fact, the Library’’s mission is not the same as Google’’s mission.”

“…it’s [sic] also a fact that the Library cannot digitize the vast bulk of it’s holdings while the U.S. copyright law remains in effect.”

“The point is this: while digitization projects are useful and prestigious, they provide access to only a microscopic portion of the Library’’s collections, and for that reason should not be regarded as core functions that are more important than existing operations, such as our cataloging and classification work. In it’s rush to “transition” to the digital age, the Library should not lose sight of its core mission nor abandon its traditional base.”

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Questions for Karen Calhoun

In yesterday’s class you articulated several questions that you would like Karen Calhoun to address in next week’s class.  Below is a summary list.  If any of you has thought of additional questions, please send them to me via email or comment on this post by the end of the day and I will include them in an email I plan to send to her:

Tell us about the hows and whys of selecting your interview candidates, including the development of the questions you posed to them.

What reaction from public libraries, if any, has your report received?  Or from other areas of librarianship aside from large and/or academic libraries?  What about reactions from co-workers, peers?  Were these reactions expected?

Has the report had the impact you expected?

What do we need to do to further study patron behavior?  Do you agree that decisions with regard to the evolution of the catalog need to be informed by that research?

Have you received feedback indicating what if any of your suggestions are being implemented? Which ones?

How do you hope to build on this study?

How much information, and what kinds, do you think is appropriate for the catalog? We don’t want the catalog to duplicate the web do we?

Library catalogs demonstrate the advantages of a controlled vocabulary over keyword searching. How does you feel about giving that up?

what type of long tail benefits would you like to see if research libraries could make their collections more visible on the web?

Without Web-like enhancements users will continue to evade the catalog. What can libraries do right now, to deal with this?

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MARC Format

Steve has asked a couple of times if everyone is familiar with MARC format.  If you haven’t taken cataloging, here’s a quick tutorial.

 http://www.lib.usm.edu/%7Etechserv/pdc/marc21_tutorial_ie/