Mod 6: Building Block Search

For my building block search, I was looking for information about early cataloging systems used in libraries. Using LibLit, I built my search with the terms (history OR origin) AND (cataloging OR classification) AND (library OR libraries OR technical services). While this search returned 457 results, there were multiple relevant items in the first page, including the article I chose as my primary result.

Mod 6: Specific Facet Search

To search for information on recent advances in cataloging in academic libraries, I began with the most specific information facet, cataloging advances. I searched in LexisNexis for the term "cataloging advances" in the Major US & World Publications, Blogs, and Web Publications categories, with a time limit of the most recent two years. I received 59 results, and searched within those results for the next most specific facet, "academic library". This narrowed the results to two items, the first of which was the most relevant.

Mod 6: Browsing Search

I selected BIP as the engine to browse seeking books and information about cataloging. I chose to browse the "Subject (All)" index and selected the "Cataloging" entry. 268 results were retrieved, the first of which fit my criteria.

Mod 6: Successive Fraction Search

For this search, in which I was seeking information about cataloging systems, I used ERIC. I began with the terms "cataloging method" to be found anywhere in the text and received 11 results. I added in the term "book" and narrowed the number of returned results to three, one of which I selected.

Mod 5: Tagging

acquisitions(1) at_pk(1) cataloging(3) librarianship(3) Librarianship: Technical Services(1) libraries(1) library(3) library science(14) library technical services(1) Library Technician(1) mls(1) nf(2) non-fiction(6) Out-of-date(1) pc(2) read in 2007(1) Spring 2007 Course(1) technical services(8) Technical services (Libraries)-United States(2) Textbook(3) textbooks(2) twu(1) work

The book I chose is Introduction to Technical Services, seventh edition, by G. Edward Evans. I searched for books tagged with "cataloging" and "technical services", and initially selected this one based on the title. Judging from the tags, this is actually a book used later in the MLS program, so it seems like I made a good choice.

Week 4: RSS feed

http://www.loc.gov/rss/pao/news.xml

For my RSS, I chose the Library of Congress news feed; since the LoC is such a major American library, a feed of its news headlines provides a daily update about its events and the issues it's involved it.

Mod 3: Podcast

http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/May/hour1_051107.html (Site and podcast description)

http://media.libsyn.com/media/sciencefriday/scifri-2007051112.mp3 (Podcast in .mp3 format)

I used Podscope, and searched for the term "library". After sorting the results by relevance rather than date, I found this episode of Science Friday in which the host and guests discuss an effort to digitize all library content to be made available online. Among the topics discussed are the challenges of cataloging such a vast amount of information in a new format, as well as indexing such a massive collection.

Mod 2: Related Blog

Through Google's blog search, I found a blog called Bibliographic Wilderness. The author discusses a variety of library-related issues, including cataloging. He presents information without becoming too technical; another blog I looked at, Catalogablog, was cataloging-oriented but so technical and specific that without having taken cataloging classes, I had no idea what he was talking about. Bibliographic Wilderness, on the other hand, is much more accessible and understandable. In the following quote, the author discusses the relationship between cataloging and copyright; I deal with copyright permission for electronic reserves on an almost daily basis in my job, so I found it interesting.

Assume for the sake of argument that there is some copyright inherent in a cataloging record (a not at all clear thing).

If any or all of a cataloging record does possess copyright, then it is of course held by the institution doing the cataloging, unless they assign it elsewhere.

In the case of LC, as part of the federal government nothing they do has copyright in the US.

In the case of large libraries doing original cataloging, I think it is in all of their collective interests to release this putatively copyrighted data into the public domain, in an exersize in mutual reciprocity.

Why do we share cataloging in the first place?

Isn’t that kind of mutual reciprocity exactly why libraries do cooperative cataloging in the first place, the very endeavor that gave rise to the regional ‘bibliographic utility’ of which OCLC is the only one left standing (in the US anyway)?

Libraries aren’t submitting their original cataloging to OCLC for the paltry sums OCLC ‘pays’ (ie credits) them for it; and they aren’t submitting it to OCLC in an attempt to help OCLC gain a monopoly on this information for their own business purposes. They’re submitting it, as they always have been, in order to freely share with other libraries in a collective endeavor of mutual reciprocity.