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Month: October 2006

WorldCat Wikified?

Published by Iris on Friday, October 6th, 2006

The Next-Generation Catalog listserv (ngc4lib) has been imagining and planning the catalog of the future. Lately, they’ve started bringing cataloging into the discussion, arguing that catalogs and cataloging, search and metadata, are inseparable. We can’t really overhaul the catalog without at least examining cataloging and MARC to make sure that we create fully exploitable metadata and then exploit it fully using the next generation of search systems.

The newest development in the debate between local and union catalogs is an idea to combine the best of both worlds. What if there was a core of authority controlled records (from WorldCat and others) overlaid with a wiki-like structure that would allow catalogers from all over enrich the records?

This layered service would have all the multi-faceted richness of collaboratively-produced union catalog and would increase efficiency by reducing the duplication in effort by millions of catalogers. It would also have to be filterable down to local holdings and possibly only the record enhancements needed or wanted by local catalogers.

Needless to say, this has sparked a lively discussion. Some people worry that allowing general modification to the wikified records would result in less authoritative records, while others argue just as vehemently that records would end up no worse than they are already.

As with most other discussion on this list, this particular debate is raging over a structure and service that does not yet exist. But it is fascinating to watch people negotiate their visions of the future and, in the process, uncover and define the fundamentals of good catalogs.

For those who are interested, this list is open to all, and instructions for signing up (as well as list archives) are located here. Also, the members have begun building a wiki to track the conclusions of their discussions. You can see this developing resource here.

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No Wonder We Felt Busy

Published by Iris on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

A huge part of the librarians’ job at MPOW is spending time working individually with students, and we keep statistics about how many students, what class years they are, how long we spent, what their majors are, and such like. Well, we learned today that these numbers increased last year over the year before by 63%!

This is most important (to my life) because we’d just been told that these stats were actually down from the year before. But at the eleventh hour our reference associate discovered that the spreadsheet we were using wasn’t actually counting everything we put into it. As soon as we fixed the formula, our numbers jumped so high we spent quite a while trying to figure out how we’d gotten it wrong again. But it wasn’t wrong. We’d just been busy.

Funny how a couple little numbers can make you feel so much better about your work day.

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What Are You Up To These Days?

Published by Iris on Monday, October 2nd, 2006

The Carleton College reference & instruction librarians are exploring information literacy instruction and student research needs, and we would love to hear about your experiences and perspectives on these topics. So we’ve created a short survey (only 8 questions) to try to get a sense of what’s being done in other libraries and of the current state of student research. The survey is anonymous unless you choose otherwise.

This is my first survey, so I’ll be crushed if we don’t get any responses (hint, hint).

[Update: Public librarians, you can respond, too, if you work with college-age patrons or do a lot of instruction. When you get to the question that asks what type of school you work at, just indicate “Other” and tell us that you’re at a public library.]

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Is "Pod" proprietary?

Published by Iris on Sunday, October 1st, 2006

Apple is mad at a company called Podcast Ready for using the term “pod” in connection with a “portable listening device” (citing the letter sent to Podcast Ready, as reported and displayed by Wired). And this is apparently not the first time in recent history that Apple has tried to lay claim to the word. Apple also claims to have applied for a word mark for “pod,” though this doesn’t appear in the USPTO’s searchable online database.

In all fairness, though, just because I can’t find it doesn’t mean they haven’t applied. What’s more, if they want to be taken seriously by the USPTO, they have to send these letters to people to prove that they’re defending their mark.

I also notice that several other corporations have applied (as recently as yesterday) for the rights to the word “pod.” Just search for “pod” or for the serial number 78964910 to see examples.

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