What's the point?

A faster horse

2012-02-26T04:00:00.002-08:00

I was challenged recently to defend my assertion that we delivered the best service we could. "How can you say that you are delivering a good service," asked my challenger, "If you don't ask your customers what they want and then give it to them?" There was something about this that felt viscerally wrong to me, but I'm not a quick thinker - I'll never manage an elevator pitch unless the elevator breaks down - so it took until today for me to wake up with the answer.

Why should we think that what our customers want is necessarily the best thing for the service? Henry Ford famously said that he would never have developed the motor car if he had asked what his customers wanted, as what they would have asked for would have been a faster horse.

I find that all the time I am being asked for what in effect are faster horses, and I suspect that this is the position that most of us find ourselves in. Is it lack of assertiveness on our part, or lack of imagination on the part of our customers, that leaves libraries clip-clopping along on Dobbin?

In, out, shake it all about

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Gradually we, as cataloguers, are getting used to the idea that we do more than just create data - more than just record bibliographical information accurately and consistently and put it into a store (whether card catalogue or database) where other people can get to it. This is pretty much where we were thirty years ago - our job then was to get the information set down correctly and we let people use it if they could work out how. Our way of doing things was the right way, and they had to learn to understand, or at least to recognise, it.

Gradually we have got used to the idea that our responsibility goes beyond merely enabling people to access the catalogue, to actively helping them to find what they want in it - nowadays we are involved in how people search, how information should be indexed and how it should be displayed. So we are involved with the output of the information, as well as the input. And this means that we have got much more involved in database structure and all sorts of technical stuff that has more to do with IT than AACR. But we still think of our users as being readers, public or students, people who come into our libraries as customers of one kind or another.

I am starting to think that we have - or could have - another sort of user amongst our colleagues and managers. Here we are, creating and managing big databases full of information about our collections and our customers. They are not just public catalogues, but also mines of information about our library service. We can find out all sorts of useful stuff - yes, we can provide management information. Before cataloguers became IT-savvy, this was the job of the system manager (even if the first thing they did was to come and ask a cataloguer where to find the information they were looking for); nowadays you can buy expensive software to run standard queries for you (as long as a cataloguer has told the programme where to find the data).

Why isn't the cataloguer building the queries in the first place? We know what information is available, how it is structured, and we know what questions to ask to get the right answer out. We know how to build shelflists for stock checking, lists of new acquisitions for publicity, we can manipulate data about stock, funds and borrowers. Let's start unpacking all this data so that our colleagues and our managers can use it to improve the whole of our service. It is valuable information and we should be the ones to release it. Suddenly our role might become a whole lot more visible and relevant.

Why is classification a dirty word?

2011-10-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

I have been brooding on this for a while but have been nudged into expressing it by Karen Coyle's post. I can't articulate, let alone understand, the argument as well as Karen can; but I think she strikes the nail on the head when she says that we have forgotten about classification and about the importance of subject retrieval.
When, and why, did we suddenly get ashamed of classification? Most library users don't understand how classification works; a majority of librarians don't understand how classification works; but when did we get to the point where even a majority of cataloguers don't understand how classification works? Many cataloguers think that classification is all about shelf arrangement - that classification is only the number on the spine label.
Keywords just don't do it and never will. Do a keyword search for "pain" in our catalogue and you'll find some books about pain and pain relief; a number of novels which happen to have "pain" in the title; and a book in French about bread. And yet somehow, and largely I suspect because of Google and its ilk, we have come to think that's OK.
In libraries we will never be able to out-Google Google because we don't have the enormous resources that it would take, but that's not the problem. Why do we want to follow Google instead of doing something better?
Somewhere along the road we seem to have decided that users don't understand classification and therefore we shouldn't use it. Now there is absolutely no reason for users to understand classification, any more than there is for every driver to understand the mechanics of the internal combustion engine, or for every concert-goer to be a expert music theorist. Our job as cataloguers is to provide the engine, plus just enough guidance to enable our library users to get the best out of it. And anyway, people do understand classification otherwise they would never be able to find their way around the supermarket - almost every part of our public and private world is organised in some systematic way.
Classification isn't elitist, it is an absolutely essential tool for organising knowledge. We should be proud of it, not ashamed of it.

Remembering the card catalogue

2011-07-21T05:52:00.001-07:00

I was struck yesterday by this comment in an account of a visit to the Courtney Library in Cornwall:
"From a cataloguer's perspective this is the most fascinating aspect of this Library; there is no computerised catalogue for printed books".
I have said before on this blog that I am a very old person. I spent the year before my professional course, and the three years after it, working with big union card catalogues, so to a large extent I cut my professional teeth on them.
The first job people that like me were given, was withdrawing cards for items no longer in stock. The logic for this was, that if you took out the wrong card, it could be put back again. Only when you had proved your care and diligence in withdrawals were you allowed to file cards in to the catalogue, because a mistake there might not be found for a long time, if at all.
What I learned, and learned very quickly, was that a mistake in an entry, whether that mistake was a simple typo or a failure of authority control (not that I knew then that that was what it was called) meant that cards for the same entity were not filed together; equally, that cards with consistent entries filed next to each other and meant that lots of stuff by or about the same thing were brought together (I didn't know that this was called collocation). It was a very simple way to demonstrate the basic principles of a catalogue.
While I'm not advocating card catalogues as a better tool for today's world than their online equivalents, I wonder if it is as easy for new or aspiring cataloguers nowadays to get an understanding of the way catalogues "work" without such a pragmatic and hands-on experience.
Opinions, anyone?

"We don't pay you to be altruistic"

2011-06-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

There is a huge difference between using other people's data and being truly co-operative. Most people nowadays seem to take, but not to give back - and my manager was criticising me, not completely seriously, but not completely in jest either, some years ago, for taking extra pains to get something right so I could contribute it back to a shared database so other people could reap the benefit.

Discussion around RDA, and economic exigency, has often touched on the necessity nowadays of being able to take data from as wide a range of sources as possible, to save cataloguing time and effort. There is, rationally enough, a consequent acceptance of the "good enough" rather than the pursuit of an absolute gold standard. I used to be quite fundamentalist about this myself when younger, regarding a deviation from the standard as not error, but sin. I've mellowed over time.

Because of our dependence upon derived records, indeed, standards are coming to be seen as comprising consistency not with universally-agreed rules but with the style of your principal source of records and, to use a UK example, I have heard people say that they catalogue "according to BDS". (This is not to decry the work of my colleagues there, which is excellent). It does, however, reinforce the idea that you take the best records you can find, and tailor your own house style to them.

The emphasis is so much on taking and accepting, and editing as little as possible, that the idea of sharing has rather gone out of the window. And arguments have been made that if RDA allows a greater scope for cataloguer's judgement, then sharing is no longer possible - noone is going to want your version of the record anyway.

What I don't understand is why, if we are being looser about standards, this isn't going to make sharing easier. What is wrong with making something a bit better, even if you don't make it perfect? Can we, actually, afford not to be altruistic?

Building a career on laziness

2011-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

It worked for me - building a career on other people's laziness.

Most people don't want to spend time checking data, or working on data repairs - it's not exciting or glamorous, even if it teaches you an awful lot about the way the database works.

Most people don't want to go to boring routine meetings - but even the dullest meeting has other people at it who might turn out to be really interesting.

Most people don't want to engage with detail, with a mass of routine tasks, with the daily repetitious grind, and they'll be delighted if you offer to help them out with it. And cataloguers are naturally good at this sort of thing, after all - we've got the eye for detail, we can manage a whole heap of tasks, we can sort stuff out, we can spot patterns in things and fit things together - we've got that sort of mindset.

So it always surprises me that more people don't want to get involved in what seems to be the boring stuff, but is actually the stuff which teaches you an awful lot about the way your system, your organisation, fits together and works (or doesn't work). I've heard all sorts of excuses - I'm too busy, I haven't got time, I'm stressed enough already, why should I, it's not in my job description, why can't someone else do it. Some cataloguers even shun this sort of thing because they think that it feeds the stereotype and that cataloguers too should be dealing with ideas and strategies and policy.

Of course we should. Even if what I am advocating seems like the very opposite of high-visibility cataloguing, I don't want cataloguers to get stuck in the mud. But one of the ways to get influence and respect is to be able to sort out other people's problems, contribute ideas which help them achieve what they want to do, come up with ideas for developments which fit well with what's already being done and take it a bit further forward. These are the things which come out of knowing how things work and having a mastery of the detail, of the underside of stuff.

I think we should engage with our inner geek and take advantage of any opportunity to get involved with what's going on around us, even at the lowest level, and make that the first step on the ladder, because knowledge really does become power.

So, next time one of your colleagues is complaining about having to do something really really boring, offer to help out by doing it for him; he'll thank you for it, and you'll be doing yourself and your future a power of good.

Sorting the fact from the fiction

2011-05-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've had a bit of a break and was bemused and amused in equal measure on my return by the correspondence that has been going on amongst the RDA-L list members about main entries for fictitious characters who purport to have written books. To put it briefly, if a book presents itself as having been written by a character who we all know doesn't really exist, we still have to make that fictitious character the main entry. So, "The Hums of Pooh" will appear under Pooh's name even though we all know that Pooh didn't really write them and AA Milne did.

I've bleated about this before and it still strikes me as moderately daft. We don't classify by title (we don't do we? Please tell me you don't put "Leaves of grass" in botany) but do our best to find out what the book is really about - and therefore why shouldn't we make an equivalent attempt to discover and reveal the true author? Yes, we should also make it plain that the book seems to have been written by a fictional character, either in the statement of responsibility or in a note, because that helps and informs the reader - just as we make a note if a book is not at all about what the title makes it seem.

What bothers me, though, is that we are adopting this new rule - copying what it says on the title-page without any questioning or any application of common-sense - at exactly the same time as we are all jumping up and down trying to explain the importance of what we do, how we mediate and manage and moderate information to add value for our users. I think I'm going to find that quite difficult when I appear to believe that "Me Cheeta" was written by an ape.

Crispy bacon

2011-04-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

We often lament that cataloguing is a specialism, a niche activity, that not many people want and for which there is little or no market.

On my way to work, I often see a white van delivering to the various sandwich shops and delis along my route. On the side of the van is emblazoned, "Crispy bacon and cooked sausage specialists". Now I wouldn't have thought there was that big a market for crispy bacon, it wouldn't have occurred to me that a firm could have built a reputation and a business on it. But that white van has been making its deliveries for years now (in fact, they have extended the business, they used to be just, "crispy bacon specialists").

It cheers me up. A world that supports the crispy bacon trade surely has room in it for specialist cataloguers too!

Administrative? Who, me?

2011-03-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons for the lack of posts lately is that like many, if not most, library authorities at the moment, mine is engaged in restructurings, rumours and threats of redundancies, ever-changing plans and plots, to the point that now we begin to long for any conclusion at all, even the worst, as long as it puts an end to the uncertainty. It is all very time-consuming and tiring and noone is going to come out of it well.

One of the latest plans for restructurings - it was only yesterday, but there has probably been another one since - showed Bib Services being merged under the overall title of "Administrative Services".

Now, "Support Services" I could have borne with a reasonable degree of equanimity - we provide support and a service. That's what we do.

But there's something about "Administrative Services" that really puts my back up. There is, I suppose, nothing wrong with being an administrator - but to be part of an administrative service? Doesn't that sound petty and mean and unimportant and, well, downright unprofessional? A way of demeaning and belittling bib services into something which involves form-filling and pen-pushing and counting paperclips? The sort of bad name you'd give a dog before neglecting and finally shooting him?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, just as long as it wasn't called an administrative service.

Tell me, am I being arrogant? Am I just tired and overwrought and a big glass of wine and half an hour with Monty Don will make me feel better?

You say, "Resource discovery technology"; I say, "Catalogue"

2011-02-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

This is a response to the post on the High Visibility Cataloguing blog here:
http://highvisibilitycataloguing.wordpress.com/why-cataloguers/challenging-metadata-surrogacy-processes/ . I would have added a comment, but I just knew that I would have gone on too long!

You see, I agree 100% with Venessa's desire to raise the profile of cataloguers and I agree that it is something that desperately needs doing. I agree that we are seen as "antiquated gatekeepers" and I'd go further and say that it isn't only authoritarians who see us that way. When she says that we need to rethink who does what, or that we should challenge the legacy of our predecessors, I'm right there and cheering.

I differ with her in two respects, firstly, that in my opinion she doesn't go nearly far enough in redefining roles; and secondly, that I think that we shouldn't rely on changing words to make us sound good.

"The systems librarians is now an integral part of the cataloguing team". No. No. Cataloguers and systems librarians are becoming the same thing. I make no pretence of being a technician (start talking to me about servers and I'm thinking of Wimbledon), but a cataloguer deals with data, creates data, edits data, manages data, exploits data. Cataloguers are getting in touch with their inner systems librarian, and that's the way it has to be. Cataloguers aren't being asked to take on bulk editing, or digitization - that's what they should be, and are, wanting and needing to do, and deciding to get involved with on their own initiative. If cataloguers wait to be asked, then we'll soon be extinct. Cataloguers need to be "re-skilled"? Nonsense. We've got the skills, all we need is the courage to use them.

"Should we even still be using the term ‘cataloguing’ for what our role will be in the future?" Yes, there's nothing wrong with the word. Metadata is data about data - and it's what you'll find on a catalogue card. The added value that we bring is largely brought from rules and rulers, whether or not the cataloguer is sitting in a dark corner.

I don't have the word "cataloguer" in my job title, but I quite often introduce myself as, "the nearest thing you'll find round here to a chief cataloguer". I said exactly that in a meeting last week. And bless him, a senior manager spoke up and said, "Oh no, you're much more than that - you're one of the innovative people". That doesn't stop me being a cataloguer - I hope it makes me a good one, but a cataloguer is what I am and a cataloguer is what I'll remain. Not a metadata manager.

We'll redeem cataloguing when we explain what we do and why it matters, not when we change the name.

RDA and OPACs

2011-01-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

Following on from my previous post, about the gap between the standards we apply when creating data and the ways in which we want to use it, I would like to give some thought to what lies in the middle - our OPACs.

We are all data creators - we all create data and edit data and hold it in databases - and we all follow some sort of rules (AACR, RDA, ONIX, DC or whatever) to structure that data.

Equally, we all have views on how we want to make the data usable, the ways in which we want to make it available, the things we want people to be able to do with it.

We don't necessarily agree about either the kind of data we want, or what we want to do with it. But the fact is that in the middle, for most of us, sits our OPAC - which dictates both the structure we use and what we can do with it.

I often curse our LMS supplier into heaps - why can't our OPAC do this, or that? Why does it take so long to persuade them that this (or that) really is important and something our users are waiting for?

Sometimes I feel sorry for our LMS suppliers - if we can't, as a cataloguing community, agree about our data and its purpose, how can they possibly develop the means to satisfy us?

But for most of the time we are all making our decisions - about what our data should be like and what it can do - on the basis of the product in front of us at that time. Should we ensure that our data is to the tippest of top standards because one day an OPAC will come which can actually use all that data to its fullest potential? Should we tailor our data to what our OPAC can actually do at the moment and tweak and twiddle and bodge the standards to get the result we want now, never mind what happens five years down the line? Or do we make our data according to what we think we and our users will want in the future, even if we don't, and can't, actually know what we or they will want then?

You see, I think that is what RDA is trying to do. I think RDA is looking into the future and predicting what we will all want and trying to make provisions for it. We (some of us, including me) criticise RDA because it neither sticks with the standards we've already got, nor offers anything our present OPACs can make use of in any kind of a helpful way. And prediction is a sticky business - look at the predictions made 20 years ago about how we'd all be living now and they are mostly wrong.

What do we want, really really want - something that used to work, something that works now or something that might work in the future?

RDA and standards

2011-01-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

I have thought for a long time that there are two sorts of behaviour displayed in people who do cataloguing, with most people doing some mixture of both.

The first is the organising temperament - liking to sort things out, make things clear, set things out neatly, resolve muddle. This is the mindset that likes rules and clarity and consistency, that enjoys data creation and input.

The second is the mindset that puzzles out what to do with data, how to get it out, how searches and indexes work or ought to work, who want to use the data to produce answers.

As I said, most cataloguers are a mixture of both, and both are important. If the data isn't good, then you can't use it effectively. Rubbish in, rubbish out. On the other hand, there's no point in having data if you don't, or can't, use it. But although most cataloguers are a mixture of both types of mindset, and use both in their work, most cataloguers incline to one more than the other and are either data creators by instinct, or data users.

The whole RDA argument seems to be between those two ways of thinking. Opponents of RDA often worry about what will happen when the rules change, what the effect will be on catalogues which contain both RDA and non-RDA data, whether it will be possible, let alone desirable, to maintain consistency and order. That is the voice of the data creator.

Supporters of RDA believe that it will enable us to make more of our catalogue data, spread it more widely, combine it more easily with other types of data. That is the data user speaking.

Most of us are both data creators and data users and therefore end up divided on RDA. Is some of the heat in the debate generated by the fact that we are all arguing with ourselves?

I've got no time for RDA

2010-12-22T04:06:00.000-08:00

It's the season for bah humbug and in any case I've always been an RDA sceptic. It's not that I think it is out-and-out wrong, just that I'm not convinced that it is going to make a real difference to anything. Too many people are already saying that for RDA to be any good then we'll have to get rid of MARC as well, so it is going to be like unwrapping that Christmas present with great excitement and anticipation and then finding that it needs batteries to make it go and all the shops are shut. And so, in the metaphorical sense, I don't have a lot of time for RDA.

But I don't have time for RDA in the literal sense either. I signed up to the RDA mailing list and now, every morning when I sit down and log on, there are anything up to 30 emails waiting for me, all well-argued and interesting, and written by people with a much better grasp of cataloguing theory and much better brains than mine, on all aspects of RDA from the big picture to the teeniest tiniest subfield - and I haven't got time to read them. I simply haven't got time to engage with RDA in the way I should and the way I would like to. And that's before we get into the business of practical familiarisation and training (assuming that RDA is adopted, and I think that too much has been invested in it for it not to be adopted, whatever its rights and wrongs).

With the constant mantra to do more with less, and the current climate of cuts, I need RDA at the moment like I need a hole in the head. In fact, in the current climate of cuts, it's entirely possible I'll get the hole in the head before I get to RDA.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Creative cataloguing

2010-11-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Brunella Longo says: "cataloguing is going to be transformed in a process more and more technologically driven but, at the same time, it will become incredibly more discretional and creative" (I am quoting from her piece here: http://bit.ly/titleproper) and while I am all in favour, as I have said before, of cataloguers using their judgement and common sense, it was "creative" that brought me up short. I don't think of creativity in cataloguing as an unmixed blessing (in snippier moments I have used it as a term of abuse: "Hmmm - bit creative, that"). Too often it looks more like sloppy thinking or a skewed perspective that with hindsight appears perverse.

Brunella also says, "It is not just how good you are at cataloguing rules learned through your librarianship school or how good you are at managing cataloguers, copy-cataloguing services and paraprofessionals on a job rotation basis". Well - isn't it? (I admit to being biassed, as this is pretty much how I spend my working days).

While none of us want to be unquestioning drones, and many of us will think that some of the rules we use are not as helpful as they might be, the fact is that by using the same standards and applying them consistently, we help each other and our users by providing data that can be recognised and shared across services. Surely mavericks end up creating silos?

Is the perfect the enemy of the good?

2010-11-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a practical question - and I'd be interested in any views, because it is one of those things that don't get taught in library school but I bet we face quite often in the workplace.

As I have said before, much of our straightforward cataloguing is delegated to library assistants - who have no theoretical training in the rules of cataloguing and indexing and, very often, no previous experience. Their job is to download records, check them against the book in hand, identify errors or omissions and make any necessary changes. They deal with (what should be simple) adult and children's fiction, all English-language and all of it newly, or recently, published.

Were they professional cataloguers, I would expect them to know AACR and M21, and apply those standards sensibly - by which I mean, that if faced with a record acceptable in all respects except a fairly minor one (and I mean something like the omission of "by", or an ampersand for "and", in the statement of responsibility) then I wouldn't expect them to correct it. On the other hand, I would expect them to put right something that really matters - a mis-spelling in a name, or an added entry omitted. So they have to know what matters and make a judgement - is it worth spending time correcting or adding something if it doesn't affect retrieval and isn't misleading, bearing in mind that we none of us have time to do everything perfectly and their time would be better spent on something more important.

That's a fair enough expectation (in my opinion) for a professional cataloguer, but is it fair enough to expect the same of a library assistant? I find it quite difficult to explain the rudiments of AACR and MARC to library assistants, but they will usually believe me that there are rules which should be followed. What they find very hard to understand is when rules needn't or shouldn't be followed.

What I tend to end up with, therefore, is a simplified set of rules being rigidly (I could almost say, thoughtlessly) applied - which is not much to the benefit of the staff or the catalogue. I don't like people using tick-lists but I am often told that this is easier and that it is unfair to ask library assistants to do more than this.

What do other people do?

Socrates is right

2010-10-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

This brought me up short when I read it last week (it is from an article about Socrates by Bettany Hughes and was published in The Guardian on Monday 18th October):

Our modern passion for fact-collection and box-ticking rather than a deep comprehension of the world around us would have horrified him [i.e. Socrates] too. What was the point, he said, of cataloguing the world without loving it?

He wouldn't have meant cataloguing as we mean it, and love may be too strong a word, but who wouldn't agree with him if I were to paraphrase it as, "What is the point of describing and defining things if we don't approach them with a willingness to engage with them and like them?" I have always expected cataloguers to have an intellectual curiosity, but this goes beyond, to an openness of mind, a desire to do the best we can by the things we are handling and genuine goodwill towards authors of all kinds and the works they create.

There was a debate a while back about whether cataloguers are data inputters (of course we are) or more than data inputters (and of course we are that as well) - and when I try to define professional cataloguing it is pretty much as Socrates says, not a dull unthinking and routine recording of the obvious things about a work, but an active interest and a kindly teasing-out of the best within it.

Does anyone else think that Socrates has hit the nail on the head?

Standards

2010-10-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

I find myself talking about "standards" all the time, but meaning it in at least two different ways. The first is to mean recognised international standards in cataloguing and indexing - which, at the moment, in the UK at least, means AACR2, M21 and Dewey. It means following generally accepted rules, best practice, because there is safety in numbers, when we do what everyone else does, and because we believe ourselves to be abiding by principles which the best minds in the business have devised over time, so that we not only gain the undeniable and valuable benefits of interoperability, sharing and cooperation, but that somehow we are also doing "the right thing" and as far as possible future-proofing our data. But that simply isn't the case any more. We may input the data in AACR and M21 and Dewey, but our LMS's hold that data in all sorts of ways, they break it down and fragment it and build it all up again into structures that we have no control over and wouldn't even recognise if we saw it. The people who design our Opacs (not that they even call them Opacs now - the Opac is dead, apparently, and what we have got is a resource discovery tool) are spending their days devising new ways of "mining" and "parsing" the data which we thought we had got into the best possible format in the first place. So much for standards, if they have to be broken and re-made before they can be used.

But I also talk about "standards" when what I really mean is "quality" - keeping high levels of accuracy and consistency so that our records are fit for purpose and can be used as the foundation of an excellent service. These are the standards that we know we mustn't drop, even when we have to cope with reduced resources - instead we must work harder and smarter. But hang on a minute - how are we going to define quality if we don't have anything to measure it against? If we don't any longer have any agreement about what constitutes best practice, if we don't have agreement about shared formats and codes, how can we tell whether our records are any good?

If a language doesn't have a grammar, how do we know whether that language is being used properly? How can we communicate if we don't share meaning and structures? Are we reduced individually just making it up as we go along? Can anyone understand us? Is anyone still listening?

Do more with less? What rot!

2010-09-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

I am so sick of being told that we have to "do more with less" - and everyone seeming to think that this is a quite reasonable thing to ask and quite possible to deliver.

Can you do more washing-up with less washing-up liquid? Of course not. It stands to reason - with less washing-up liquid you can only wash fewer dishes, or wash the same number of dishes not so well. Isn't it about time we said so?

Is it too late?

2010-09-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

Several comments on the last post referred to the so-called "next generation" Opacs, and they struck a chord with me as I am in the process of implementing one such (which is the reason for my too frequent absences from this blog just lately). I agree that they have an enormous potential for revealing and exploiting the information that we have been putting in bib records for years and which our present Opacs have been unable to make use of - and, hopefully, a better subject search will be one of the benefits.

But I can't help thinking that the timing of these new developments is unfortunate. Yes, a better Opac, a more attractive and engaging and effective Opac, is exactly what we want not just to help our users (which is always the most important thing) but also to show our masters that what we do has a practical value and importance. At last it is obvious why we put all that arcane coding into our records and why we fuss about consistent forms of headings, because at last everyone can see what use it is.

However, at exactly the same time as it suddenly becomes worthwhile to catalogue things "properly", I (and I am sure I am not alone) continue to face a reduction in resources which will mean cutting back even further on full standard cataloguing and the staff who are capable of doing it. For years we have been passing more and more of the bread-and-butter cataloguing to non-professional staff and in the process have necessarily been simplifying what we ask them to do. That means, for example, not bothering overly much about Leader and 008 coding. In the context of our old Opac, which didn't make any use of such things, this made perfect sense - why fuss about something that wasn't being used?

Now I am looking at an Opac which depends on accurate and detailed coding of the fixed length fields in order to express format and form and all sorts of other very useful stuff (all of which I very definitely want my users to see). For a database that contains a fair amount of simplified catalogue records as well as all sorts of gruesome legacy data, that means re-cataloguing stuff. I face a daily struggle to persuade my masters of the case for cataloguing stuff in the first place, never mind re-cataloguing it!

If we had had these wonderful Opacs a few years ago, I could have shown what would happen to the catalogue if we simplified and downgraded our cataloguing. Look, I could have said - if we don't put the detail in, you can't use the catalogue to do this, or this, or that. But what my wonderful new Opac shows is the inadequacy of what we have done and I fear that it is now too late to turn back the clock. I do hope I'm wrong.

Shortcuts or rambles

2010-08-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

As both a cataloguer and a catalogue user, I know that I come to the catalogue with a range of different needs and expectations. Sometimes I know exactly what I want - I may even know that it is in stock - so I am using the catalogue to check where I can find it or to make sure that there is a copy on the shelf when I call into the library on the way home. At other times I'm not at all sure what I want.

It seems to me that we cater very well for the person with a clear idea of what they are looking for. If you know the name of the person who created it and the title, you'll probably be able to find it straight off. If you return a number of hits, you'll be able to filter them by date, or by format - if you want the most up-to-date travel guide, or the DVD rather than the Blu-Ray version. Our catalogues are designed to make it as easy as possible to get straight to your destination, and that's great (as I said in the previous post) for people who know what they want.

If I have no idea at all of what I want, even then the catalogue will help, by providing lists of new acquisitions, or links to shortlists or titles of current interest - the "what's new" or "what's hot" kind of lists. These are pretty much the equivalent of library displays - something to catch your eye when you arrive on the site. There is usually scope for doing a lot more of this kind of thing, but at least most catalogues offer something.

However, let's suppose I want some books about Florence, because I am going to be spending a long weekend there and I want to plan my visit. If I were to go into my local library and speak to a real live librarian, then pretty soon we would be having a conversation about my holiday, and what I might like to do while I am there, and with luck I would be steered in the right direction to find a book that satisified me.

But if I go to the catalogue, and type "Florence" in the keyword box - I am going to get a great mass of stuff and very little help in trying to sort it out. First of all, I am going to find that I've got stuff about Florence Nightingale, and whole series of the Magic Roundabout (it might take me a while to work out why), and I have to filter these out, and there is probably no easy or obvious way of doing it. Even if I ignore all these, then there is no helpful guide asking me whether I am going to be spending all my time in galleries, or restaurants, or watching the football - or am I going to be hiring a bicycle and would I like a guide to cycle touring?

Of course there used to be a tool that did just this and it was called a subject index. It collocated distributed relatives - so it was very useful for refining a search (making it possible to define which aspect of a subject you were looking for) but it was also brilliant for reminding you of aspects of a subject you might not have thought of and which the library had in stock. It was the nearest you could get to having a conversation with a friendly and informed librarian.

So why don't any of our wonderful new online catalogues incorporate subject indexes? The most help they offer is a "Did you mean...?" which covers little more than mistyping. Why can't we make it as easy to find and choose between Florentine history and Tuscan cycle tours, as between the 2nd and 3rd edition of a book or between the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of Shrek 2?

Librarians like to search

2010-07-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of talk recently about the effect of the Internet (and new media in general) on reading habits – and the suggestion that people are increasingly disinclined to read a text slowly, thoroughly and attentively, from beginning to end, absorbing and reflecting on it. While I am sure there have always been people who read instruction manuals and others who take the new gizmo out of its box, throw the manual aside and find out what it does by doing it, I suspect that more and more people, because of shortened attention spans, the endless distractions of the online world, less time to do the same number of things or just improved multi-tasking skills, are now hoppers and flitters.

What strikes me about this is that we are still constructing catalogues for the methodical searcher, for the person who will carry out a search and then refine the results by facets, even going so far as to follow a “breadcrumb” trail and re-trace her steps as necessary. Do we still have users who carry out a search this thoughtfully? Or (and old habits die hard, so it may still be the way that old users behave), do we still have as many as we used to have – and is it what new and young searchers do?

I think that people are increasingly inclined to do a search and, if they don’t find what they want, they don’t look at the results and try to analyse where it went wrong, how to put it right. They just try a different search. And they expect to get the answer immediately, not at the end of a sequence of refining and filtering steps. I think (you may or may not agree) that we are wasting our time when we demand or design catalogues with “Advanced Search” functions, with Boolean operators and ranks of facets. We should be concentrating on speed and display instead, before the hoppers and flitters have hopped and flitted off.

Remember the old mantra - Librarians like to search. Everyone else likes to find.

What should we be saying about ourselves?

2010-07-21T11:30:00.001-07:00

So, what has brought all this on? Well, having persuaded everyone that it would be a really good idea if we started to promote bib services a bit more, several opportunities have arisen, both in print/online and in person at open evenings and the like. And it has been borne in upon me that it really isn't very easy.

What do we want to tell people about what we do? What images do we use (a picture being worth a thousand words)?

I really don't think that cataloguing is a spectator sport. It is undeniably interesting for the person doing it, but thought processes are invisible and silent. It would be a rare talent who could make the process of cataloguing engaging and, anyway, do the processes actually matter? Demonstrations of cataloguing tend to turn into accounts of which button gets pressed and what the subfield codes ought to be, which is all good stuff but not likely to capture the attention of a passer-by.

People are important and pictures of people invoke human interest or just naked curiosity, but a surprising number flatly refuse to be photographed. Many cataloguers shun the limelight and are not natural performers - and a reluctant performer is worse than no performer at all.

If you rule out cataloguing and cataloguers, it leaves the catalogue itself as the thing being promoted, which is as it ought to be. I think I should be focussing on the catalogue and what it can do for people. Does anyone have a good idea of how to present it? Has anyone produced successful publicity and demonstrably increased catalogue use? I can't be the first person trying to do it...

What do cataloguers think they do?

2010-07-04T12:26:00.001-07:00

Following on from my previous post, and leaving aside any natural inclination cataloguers may have to be meek and mild - because people like that get sent to work in Bib Services Departments and once there, perpetuate the type by tending to appoint people like themselves, the loud and proud often seen as "not fitting in here" - is there something about a cataloguing job that makes it difficult for people to understand, let alone promote, the value of what they do?

I am struck that cataloguers tend to describe their job in terms of tasks. They talk about describing and indexing library materials, using standard rules and tools; they talk about the intellectual effort and judgement required to allocate classification and subject headings; and they talk about these things very well and explain what they do and what influences their decisions. But in answer to a question like, "What does your job as a cataloguer consist of? What do you actually do?", the reply is about input not outcomes. They describe what they do, not why they do it. Why don't they reply, "I help people find all the good stuff that is in our library - I help people find what they want"?

I don't know how true this is of other library staff. Do they too see their job in terms of stamping books, or tidying the shelves, or sending out overdues? Or do they see more clearly than cataloguers do where their jobs fit in to the service that the library provides to its users?

In all of this, I don't mean to denigrate cataloguers. I am just genuinely perplexed by how bad they are - or, to be fair, how bad we are, because I am one of them - at talking about their job and its importance. And in my next post I will explain why I am thinking about this, what it is that has brought it on.

What are cataloguers ashamed of?

2010-06-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

What do you think a cataloguer would say if you asked them in casual conversation what they did for a living? Would they say that they were a cataloguer? Would they say that they were a librarian? Or would they say that they "worked in a library" - and then steer the conversation away as quickly as possible?

I have worked and talked with a lot of cataloguers and I don't think that they are proud of what they do. They take a pride in their work (which isn't the same thing), they are hard-working, conscientious and very intelligent. But they are not proud of being cataloguers.

I suggest that this reticence springs from two things, the first being a belief that cataloguing is irredeemably arcane and rule-based, not something that can be explained or that, if it were, anyone would find interesting. Being a cataloguer therefore ranks alongside being a plane spotter or a model railway enthusiast - it is something that requires dedication, knowledge and skill, but smacks of the geek and the nerd.

The second thing is that cataloguing has always been part of "support services", a back-room role, and is therefore thought to suit people who are modest and reticent. When someone enters library work who is rather quiet, their manager's immediate reaction is to pack them off to the Bib Services Department. It is, after all, their natural home - and they come to believe that too.

So what now, when cuts, always threatening, come ever closer? If no case is made for cataloguing or catalogues by the cataloguers themselves, do they deserve to survive? How can we persuade them of the value of what they do and give them the courage and pride to persuade everyone else? How can we turn the meek and mild into the loud and proud?

Introductions

2010-06-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

I am not going to tell you who I am, because I want to maintain a distance between what I write here and my daily job, even though the one will naturally influence the other. Suffice it to say that I am a cataloguer (and have been for many many years - too many years, probably) and that I work in the United Kingdom. Although it hasn't always been the case, at the moment I am working in a public library. It's a fairly precarious position nowadays, and one of the things I want to explore through this blog is why this is so - why cataloguing is so little respected and valued. There will be lots of other things to say as well.

But, just in case the cloak of invisibility fails and you work out who I am, here is the all-important disclaimer - everything I say is my own opinion and I do not seek to represent the views of my employer or my colleagues.

And so - on to the first post.