Professional Development

Earlier this afternoon, Lauren C., Leslie, Patty, Chris, Jean-Paul and I attended (watched? listened to? whatever) a NISO Webinar called Bibliographic Control Alphabet Soup: AACR to RDA and the Evolution of MARC. The program consisted of three presentations related to RDA and the future of the MARC format.

The first speaker was Barbara Tillett, the Chief of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office at the Library of Congress. She discussed the history of bibliographic control up to RDA (Resource Description and Access), which is intended to be a new cataloging code to supersede AACR2. RDA grew out of an attempt to develop an AACR3. RDA attempts to incorporate FRBR principles (which has been discussed in a number of other entries. If you have any questions about it, just ask me), and tries to be more universal than AACR2, which is tied to the English-speaking world. Furthermore, RDA reflects changes in technology (both in terms of the content it describes and how content is described), changes in focus (bibliographic description is not just for a local library, but for an international audience), and a change of view (moving from describing items to, in FRBR-terms, describing entities).

So, what does all that mean in practical terms? Well, the RDA code has two major areas it describes, elements of records (in database talk, entities and their atrributes) and relationships (between elements of a record, and between various records). RDA simplifies a number of the descriptive rules for cataloging, using a “take what you see” approach. Rather than qualifying information with parenthetical statements and re-ordering data, as AACR2 requires, RDA would note information as it appears on an item, which will make it far easier to harvest data automatically. RDA also makes the rule of three (the rule that no more than three authors can be listed) optional, gets rid of Latin phrases in notes, dispenses with GMDs (general material designations), gets rid of the “polyglot” designation, allows for more complete data in authority records, etc. All of these changes are made with an eye toward allowing data to be harvested and generated in automated ways more easily from the records, making the records more intelligible to users, as well as strengthening the relationships between records for related and derivative works.

The second presenter was Diane Hillmann, the Director of Metadata Management Services at the Information Institute of Syracuse. Hillmann was very knowledgeable about her topic, but moved very quickly and assumed a lot of familiarity among her audience with the topic she was discussing. It was fairly confusing, but we were able to identify her main point, which was that the exclusive use of MARC by libraries limits us in exchanging data outside the library silo. Nobody else uses MARC, nor are they likely to. Descriptive metadata use outside the library world is exploding and we’re not in on it. To get libraries into the general metadata game, part of the project of the RDA developers is to develop a vocabulary with defined data elements that can be used to create cataloging records, but that are also searchable and intelligible to the Web in general.

The third and final presenter was William Moen, the Director of Research from the University of North Texas’s School of Library and Information Sciences. He discussed a research project he and a team conducted from 2005 to 2007, in which they studied how many of the fields and subfields available in the MARC format were used and/or indexed by libraries in their bibliographic records. They did frequency counts and analyses of more than 56 million MARC21 bib records from the OCLC database. 211 fields and 1,596 subfields were used at least once. Looking at records in the Books, Pamphlets and Printed Sheet format, Moen and his team found that 7 fields appeared in all of the records, while 15 fields occurred in more than 50% of the records. Many, many fields had very few occurrences. The 656 field had only one occurrence. About 60% of all fields and subfields are used in less than 1% of the records. This led Moen and his team to consider the idea of developing core bib records in the MARC format that use a limited number of the currently available fields. By identifying the fields that are used in all bib records, combined with the most commonly used fields, Moen and his team developed proposed core bib records. However, Moen does not advocate simply leaving the decision up to statistical analysis. If we are to move to a more streamlined core MARC record, he suggests that catalogers think long and hard about what is actually needed in the bib record, and that the MARC format be revised with an eye toward supporting the FRBR-defined user tasks (he also asks if we really know which content designations are needed to support a given user task).

As the broadcast part of the webinar wound down, Lauren, Leslie, Patty, Chris, Jean-Paul and I engaged in a lively and interesting conversation about the issues raised in the presentations that last well-past our scheduled end time. That struck me as a very good sign that this webinar was quite worthwhile.

I know this is a bit late, but I’ve finally been able to dig myself out from under.The 24^th Conference of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) was held during the first week of June, and I served as co-chair of the Conference Planning Committee, with the spectacular support of Chris Burris as our AV Coordinator.Planning and running a conference is an interesting and exhausting experience (as many of you found out with the Entrepreneurship Conference).The Conference Planning Committee is sort of the Tech Services Department for the conference, we handle the logistics, while the Program Planning Committee handles the solicitation and selection of programs.

Our attendance was down this year, to only about 450 people, but it went fairly smoothly, if I do say so myself (I only lost my temper once, and that wasn’t even a major meltdown).The conference included a day and a half of pre-conferences, and two and a half days of regular conference sessions.There were also two off-site catered events (one all-conference event, and one optional event that required separate payment), an all-conference reception for the opening night, a first-time attendee reception, and a lunch and three breakfasts to coordinate.We had to take care of room assignments for sessions, signage, computer and other technical needs, set up of an internet cafe, copying programs and info for attendees, stuffing bags for attendees, poster session set-up, and registration.In addition, we not only had to coordinate the bus travel to and from our off-site events, we had to improvise a shuttle service from the Asheville airport.After NASIG signed the hotel contract to bring the conference to Asheville, the shuttle company that ran from the airport to the hotels went out of business, and the taxis in Asheville are outrageously expensive.So, we chartered a bus and ran our own operation.

To be honest, the whole thing felt kind of like organizing a massive wedding for 450 people that lasted for four days.It was satisfying, but exhausting.I came home the day the conference ended and slept for 13 hours.

If you get involved in conference planning (although with Wanda becoming Vice Pres/Pres.-Elect of NCLA I should say “When you get involved in conference planning”), I have three major suggestions:

1) Set deadlines and keep them as best you can.Conferences are big operations that involve a lot of players, and there are lots of moving parts.Some players can’t get to work on their tasks until other tasks are completed, so it’s key to have a schedule and firm(ish) deadlines.With my CPC, I arranged for monthly conference calls and sent out rough timelines that sketched out the major tasks that needed to be completed over the next two months, with an indication of who was responsible for that task.It seemed to help keep us on pace.

2) Nail down plans for everything you can anticipate you will need to do.This is really very basic, but the more detailed your plans are for the stuff you know you’re going to have to deal with, the better able you are to handle the unexpected stuff that inevitably arises.

3) Be flexible.This goes with my second point.The more you have planned, the better able you are to handle the surprises along the way.Even changing a plan you’ve already developed is better than having to improvise an entire approach on the fly.

Above all, keep a sense of humor (I know I said I had three suggestions…so sue me).

Sorry this is so late, but at least the info included is not time-sensitive.Like several other folks here, I went to the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver in late-January.I stayed at the apartment of our former colleague Jim Galbraith, who is now living in Denver and working for NetLibrary as a Product Manager.Jim sends his greetings to all.If you get out to Denver within the next year, you should look him up.Of course, by this time next year, it’s anybody’s guess as to what town he’ll be living in.

I got to Denver a little early so I could attend a meeting of the NASIG Executive Board before the conference began, in my role as co-chair of the Conference Planning Committee for the upcoming 2009 NASIG Conference in Asheville.I was only able to stick around for the first two days of the conference, but I managed to attend a few good sessions, which I’ll now discuss.

Actually, the first session I would like to mention is one that wasn’t held.The CC:DA (Cataloging Committee: Description and Access) was supposed to hold a four hour meeting on Friday, Jan. 23 to discuss RDA (Resource Description and Access), the proposed new cataloging code which is intended to replace AACR2.However, due to a lack of responses, the entire meeting was cancelled.That told me that we are quite a way from actually implementing RDA.

That is not to say that there was no discussion of RDA at the conference.That Friday afternoon I attended a meeting of the CCS Forum, which was focused on RDA specifically.The meeting discussed RDA in general terms and the expected benefits of the new standard, but without getting into the nuts and bolts of the standard itself. In her presentation, Barbara Tillett, the Chief of the Policy and Standards Division at the Library of Congress, claimed that RDA is a content standard for the digital age, but one that can be used for all other formats, and that is flexible enough to accommodate future formats.RDA is not an encoding or presentation standard, but is preparing the infrastructure to build for the future, by taking into account user tasks, content standards and conceptual models (particularly the big buzz-word model FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), which space will not allow me to describe here-if you would like to know more about FRBR, please ask me, I will be happy to explain).We currently do not have the systems to deliver the content that RDA allows for.A MARC/RDA Task Group is looking at changes needed to the MARC standard to accommodate RDA, which would require very fine granularity of data to fully implement.Tillett argued that the first release of RDA carries over a lot of AACR2 practice and “case law” (as it were), because library administrators pushed for this continuity to make the transition to RDA less traumatic and extreme for catalogers.She argued that future revisions of RDA would move further from AACR2.Tillett also said that training materials must be developed to help catalogers make the transition from AACR2 to RDA.So, to sum up, the RDA standard has been developed, but we still don’t have a MARC format that can implement the standard, catalog systems that can implement the standard, or training materials to teach catalogers to use the standard.As I said above, I think we’re years away from implementation.

On Saturday, Jan. 24, I attended a session of the CCS Copy Cataloging Interest Group.Joseph Kiegel of the University of Washington discussed their experience as the first library to implement OCLC’s WorldCat Local.WorldCat Local (WCL) is a tool for using bibliographic records directly from OCLC’s database rather than downloading records from OCLC to load into a local system.Instead, the local system contains holdings information and other local information that is fed up to WCL.WCL has driven ILL and consortial borrowing through the roof at U of W.The major drawback to using WorldCat Local is that a library must use the records available on OCLC as they are, even if they have errors, unless the library has Enhance authorization from OCLC, which allows the library to edit the master record.Library staff must go through extensive training to get Enhance authorization in a given format from OCLC.There are six bib record formats, and, of the 232 Enhance authorized libraries in the country, none are authorized to edit all six formats.Indiana University has five formats, and twelve other libraries have four formats.This suggests that WCL is a workable option only for fairly large libraries, with large staffs that can absorb the high levels of training and specialization.In order to address this problem, UCLA is beginning an experimental program with OCLC to loosen OCLC’s current restrictions on the editing of master bib records.The training for the experiment is to begin in February.

I also attended a session with some interesting discussion of holdings records for e-serials, but I think I’ll spare you all those particular musings, considering the current length of this entry.If anyone wants to discuss any of the stuff I’ve written about here, please get in touch.

From June 5 to 8, Chris and I attended the 2008 NASIG Conference in Phoenix, Arizona at the Tapatio Cliffs Resort, which sounds nice until you account for the fact that Arizona is a sun-blasted hellscape unfit for human habitation. Nevertheless, I attended a number of useful sessions at the conference. Highlights included:

Real ERM Implementations: Notes from the Field - a panel discussion including Ted Fons of Innovative Interfaces (moderator), Karl Maria Fattig of Bowdoin College, Jeff Daniels of Grand Valley State University, Paul Moeller of University of Colorado, and Toni Katz of Colby College. The panelists discussed their experiences implementing an ERM at their library. The libraries ranged in size of staff, size of collection, timeline and preparation of implementation, and in their staff’s enthusiasm for the process. However, a few common concerns and observations emerged. Far from reducing the amount of work performed by Technical Services, the implementation of the ERM meant that staff spent more time working with the knowledge base and link resolver, rather than doing copy or original cataloging. The ERM allowed information regarding terms of use and other acquisition information to be consolidated in one generally accessible location, and allowed for the divorcing of content from the management of that content. In order to implement the ERM, huge flows of communication had to be maintained among all parties involved and, in at least one case, a long, often painful process of re-working and re-designing all workflows and responsibilities had to be performed, with a goal of designing the system as if it were a new start-up (a process that included three consecutive all-day meetings, with the director present forcing the process along). It was difficult to figure out the workflow and procedure consequences of implementing the ERM, and was made more difficult by the fact that there were no standards for data entry into the ERM. All recommended that planning for ERM implementation should be thorough, have sufficiently long timelines, should bring in all stakeholders (including public services), and should encompass widespread training among the staff in accessing the ERM.

When Did (E)-books Become Serials? - a panel discussion including Kim Armstrong of CIC, Bob Nardini of Coutts, Peter McCracken of Serials Solutions and Rick Lugg of R2 Consulting. The gist of this presentation was that the similarities in the management of e-books and e-serials are becoming greater than the similarities that e-books share with print monographs in terms of management. The primary similarity is that e-books and e-journals share similar deliver systems. Also, e-books are like e-journals in that they are available by subscription, and they are acquired primarily by pre-defined publications from the publisher or by self-selected collections by subscription. However, e-books are not like e-journals in that there are many more individual titles that require many more individual decisions, they have less granular content, there are questions of long-term ownership, their purchase may include platform or maintenance fees, monographs have a strong tradition of expert selection, monographs tend to have more data in their bibliographic records than serials which creates metadata issues, they are discovered traditionally by the OPAC and MARC records, and linking and aggregation are less developed. The acquisition of e-books is based on inventories of individual titles and selections are decided by the library/customer. There is often coordination with print access in acquiring e-books. And e-books make possible acquisition on demand (bibliographic records for e-books are loaded into the catalog, and if a customer selects the book for access, it is purchased at that point). The acquisition of e-books also raises the issue of whether to subscribe to e-books or purchase them, if purchasing them is even possible. Libraries generally say they don’t like subscriptions, but they have a history of purchasing subscriptions, so it’s very likely that publishers will continue to offer e-books by subscription. The management of e-books is complicated by the existence of multiple editions with many different ISBNs, making it difficult to collate editions of a single title (although the xISBN may help here). Different editions in multiple languages also add problems with efficient discovery of the e-book you’re looking for. Serials Solutions announced at the conference that they have added e-books to their knowledge base, and will now be providing management and tracking resources for e-books.

MARC Holdings Conversion: Now That We’re Here, What Do We Do? - a panel discussion including Steve Shadle of University of Washington (moderator), Frieda Rosenberg of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ted Schwitzner, Illinois State University, Sion Romaine of University of Washington, and Naomi Young of University of Florida. This panel discussion covered the experiences of various libraries in implementing full MARC format holdings records in their catalogs. The benefits include establishing prediction patterns for claiming, allowing for automatic update of holdings summaries, and the ability to upload holdings records directly to OCLC’s Union List. However, the planning for the conversion and the amount of work required is large and daunting. Here at Wake Forest, we use only a couple of fields in the MARC holdings records and have other means of establishing claim patterns, updating our holdings summaries and Union List records, which do not require very much work. Or, at least not enough work to make it worth our while to fully implement the MARC holdings record. It may become an issue when we are preparing to migrate to another system, but I recommend that until then we leave our current system in place.

Since Leslie has already done such a good job of summarizing the keynote address of the RTSS Spring Workshop, I will discuss the next most useful session I attended, “Next Generation Cataloging Standards: RDA + FRBR,” presented by Erin Stalberg, Head of Metadata and Cataloging at North Carolina State University.

RDA, or Resource Description and Access, is the new code being developed as a successor to AACR2. Work began in 2004 on AACR3 with the intension of making the rules more flexible and comprehensive, yet the group working on it soon found that the changes needed were too sweeping to be accommodated in an AACR3, and thus RDA was born. RDA is a content standard, not an encoding standard, and it is intended to be independent of MARC, but compatible with the MARC format.

RDA is to be a new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world. It is designed to cover all types of resources. Although it is being developed for use in libraries, it is intended to be applicable anywhere. And the code is designed to be compliant with FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, a conceptual model for bibliographic description, not a set of rules).

The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) is the group responsible for developing the new code, and it includes international representation, although it is heavily represented by the English speaking world (US, UK, Australia, Canada, etc.). The completed version of RDA is expected August 2008, but it is being vetted by a large number of cataloging groups, committees and interest groups in ALA and other organizations.

Stalberg outlined some of the areas of description that will change under RDA (punctuation, where titles are derived from, use of abbreviations, etc.), but I won’t bore the non-catalogers with that info, particularly as the code has not yet been adopted.

The JSC is committed to guaranteeing that RDA-produced records will be compatible with AACR2-produced records, which will thankfully save us from having to retrospectively re-catalog our entire collection. However, this also results in the criticism that if AACR2 records are compatible with RDA records, does RDA really go far enough in re-vamping the catalog code. That is, isn’t RDA then effectively AACR3? Other criticisms include that RDA is too complicated, too confusing and too redundant, and that the code still has too much emphasis on human creation and manipulation of records, not enough on computer-to-computer interchange.

The real takeaway for me from this session was that, as a practical matter, RDA is a long way from affecting actual cataloging practice in libraries. Not only must RDA be approved by the JSC and a huge number of cataloging interest groups in the US and abroad, the MARC format will have to be updated to accommodate RDA, bibliographic utilities (such as OCLC) will have to accommodate a revised MARC format, ILS systems will have to be revised to work with new RDA-compliant records, and catalogers will have to be trained in working with the new rules and attendant format changes. Optimistically, we’re looking at several years (if not longer) before records cataloged according to RDA are in use.

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but two weeks ago on April 10 and 11, I attended the North Carolina Serials Conference in Chapel Hill.  The focus of the conference was primarily on personnel and employment issues.

The Opening Keynote was delivered by Pamela Bluh of the University of Maryland, President of ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services).  She discussed how the Serials Section of ALCTS changed its name to the Continuing Resource Section, because some materials don’t strictly fit the serial or monograph categories, like looseleafs and, more crucially, websites.  According to Bluh, the name change reflects a “permanent shift in the bibliographic universe,” and that librarians need to adapt to new materials and develop new methods for handling them.  Bluh argued that this change is a microcosm of the changes facing ALCTS, which needs to develop procedures and products to face the challenges of the present and future, including breaking down the barriers between sections as separate silos.  This type of thinking informed the new ALCTS strategic plan, which is now available on their website.

Later that afternoon, Tamika Barnes McCullough of the Triangle EPA Library spoke on “The Cocktail Speech: How to Market Your Services.”  She emphasized that librarians are constantly marketing their services, whether they know it or not, and that how we present ourselves is important in our careers as well as in attracting new people to the profession.  Basically, she suggested being positive.

The next morning, there was a panel discussion called “Turnabout Is Fair Play: Recruiting Outside the Box,” which, in my opinion, was pretty safely inside the box.  Nothing much interesting or original came from it.

I then attended a concurrent session called “Who Care About Catalogs Anyhow?” conducted by Sandy Hurd of Innovative Interfaces.    Hurd argued that as long as libraries buy and manage resources, we will need to describe them and display what we own and offer.  Despite enormous changes in technology and information sources, stuff still needs to be organized and accessed, and that’s where the catalog comes in.  She discussed various things that are being done to make catalogs more useful, such as companies that sell book data (cover pictures, tables of contents, reviews, summaries), like Syndetics, which we use.  She described how the University of Nebraska at Lincoln is working to link out to academic departments from the catalog, such as adding slide photos with metadata to the catalog, or links to special departmental collections.  Other enhancements include adding scoped searches, link resolvers, real-time updates, personalized RSS feeds, ratings, reviews, and reading histories.  The more collections are exposed in the catalog, the more collections are expanded and the more usage increases.  One potential problem for the future of the catalog is that catalogers at the Library of Congress (a major source of all cataloging copy) are aging and will be retiring in the near future.  With fewer catalogers, how will stuff get cataloged?  One potential solution is selective enrichment, using embryonic metadata that is enhanced by users adding information to entries.  It will need some kind of bibliographic control, but it might be used well with non-academic genre fiction.  A more useful application might be asking for tags for photos, like we have done here with some of our Digital Forsyth photos.

The next concurrent session I attended was “MARC Record Services:A Comparative Study of Library Practices” by Rebecca Kemp of UNC-Wilmington.  The presentation was based on an article she published in “The Serials Librarian.”  Because you can look up the article if you’re interested, I won’t go into much detail here.  The presentation discussed Kemp’s survey of libraries that use MARC record services (Serials Solutions, Ex Libris, EBSCO, or IDNet) to provide bibliographic records for electronic journals.  The results fit very closely with our experience here.  Most libraries were happy with the services, appreciated the greater accessibility to their e-journals, but were occasionally displeased with the lack of detail in some of the bib records provided, and sometimes found the record-load process rather difficult.

The Closing Keynote was “Recruiting for the Next Generation,” presented by Rick Block of Columbia University, Long Island University and the Pratt Institute.  In a highly entertaining talk, Block discussed the cycles of job openings for librarians from the early 20th century on, defining the periods of  librarian shortages and periods of oversupply.  He said that we are currently in a shortage phase, but that this is the first shortage where age is a factor.  Block pointed out that libraries are exacerbating the shortage problem by not offering enough entry-level jobs, what he calls the entry-level gap.  If graduates from library school can’t find jobs as librarians, they may leave the field.  He argued that libraries should offer more entry-level jobs, so we can bring in new people, new ideas and increase diversity.  Block also argued that we should recruit new librarians by actively promoting the profession, by marketing librarianship as a good mid-life career, and by recruiting among undergraduates, paraprofessionals and interns.

I am a regular attendee of the NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) Conference, but this year’s experience was quite different because I was on the Conference Planning Committee. The conference (including pre-conferences) was held from May 30 through June 3 in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was the Chair of the AV Committee, which meant I was kept very busy throughout the whole conference. I had to make sure that each meeting room was set up correctly for each session, had to field numerous questions regarding AV, and also worked the Registration desk. Although I only managed to attend one full session, it was still a rewarding experience, and I think the conference went well. If anybody else is interested in doing conference planning work for a future conference, I would recommend you try it, but would suggest that you keep your sense of humor and, no matter how much you plan, be prepared to make any number of last minute changes.

The one full session I attended was a presentation by Katherine Adams and Britta Santamauro of Yale University, called “Successive Entry, Latest Entry, or None of the Above? How the MARC21 Format, the Concept of a Work and FRBR Revitalize Serials Management.” In this session, Adams and Santamauro presented their vision of an ideal “best of all possible worlds” catalog system. In this vision, they assumed that technical innovations would make this possible, that rule creating and managing agencies would adopt new standards, and that legacy data and systems would take care of themselves. Basically, it was more of a thought experiment and a dream, rather than a real, practical solution. That’s not to put it down, I actually think that more of this kind of thinking is needed from catalogers to try to prod system developers to create the sort of systems that can do what librarians want them to do, not just take the systems sold to us. In Adams and Santamauro’s ideal catalog, FRBR concepts would fully be integrated into both cataloging rules and cataloging systems. Accordingly, serials would be cataloged using three basic records: a superworkspression record, a manifestation record, and an item/holdings record. The superworkspression record would be a FRBR-style expression record, that would incorporate all title changes and variations throughout the history of a serial into one record. The manifestation record would have data for a particular title and its particular format. And the item/holdings record would be virtually the same as current item records. It was an interesting model, but one that is a bit hard to describe in a blog entry without diagrams and stuff. Nevertheless, the takeaway idea that librarians should speak up about what they want their catalog systems to do is a good one.

On March 29th and 30th, I attended the 16th North Carolina Serials Conference for the first time in three years. A few years ago, the registration fees jumped considerably from one year to the next, and the content did not seem strong enough to justify continuing to go. Thanks to a bit of prodding, I attended this year and was delighted to find that the depth of the content was greatly improved and fully justified the registration fee.

Calhoun and Reynolds on Catalogs

The most interesting sessions at the conference were the opening keynote and the closing keynote, which both complimented and contradicted each other. Because they are so linked in my thinking, I’ll write about both sessions in one entry. The opening keynote was by Karen Calhoun of Cornell University, and incoming Vice President for Cataloging and Metadata at OCLC, entitled “The Changing Faces of Catalogs: Accelerating Access, Saving Time,” and the closing keynote was by Regina Romano Reynolds, head of the National Serials Data Program, the U.S. ISSN center at the Library of Congress, entitled “To Boldly Go: Transforming Catalogs and Cataloging to Meet User Needs.”

Calhoun based most of her presentation on a report she prepared on behalf of the Library of Congress called “The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration With Other Discovery Tools” which was released about a year ago. Calhoun argued that we need to rethink the catalog in light of a changed information world and that users are not getting what they need from the OPAC. As information systems, catalogs are hard to use, and, in an academic setting, are used primarily by faculty and graduate students, with fairly low undergraduate use. She discussed many of the known features of Millennial students, that they enjoy interactive tools, collaborative learning, etc.

Calhoun then discussed the results of a poll question posed to students, “Where do you begin a search for a information on a topic?” 84% said web search engines, while only 1% said library web pages. This struck me as exactly the sort of poorly worded poll question that is designed to induce panic in the library world. I find these sorts of apocalyptic pronouncements about the future of libraries to be quite tiresome and far off the mark (our profession seems to take a perverse joy in predicting our own demise). The question doesn’t allow for comparison to information seeking behavior in the pre-Web age, doesn’t consider that most information needs are fairly shallow and don’t require a library, etc. Lest I be accused of explaining away the problem, Reynolds addressed these very issues in her presentation, which drew heavily from a study conducted at Ohio State called “Sense-Making the Information Confluence: The Whys and Hows of College and University User Satisficing of Information Needs”. Reynolds pointed to survey data that showed that students go to a variety of information sources teachers, friends, “Dad,” etc. and that many information needs are simple to meet. We will never get back patrons to answer simple ready-reference questions in the same numbers we had in the pre-Web days. However, when it comes to in-depth, thorough searches, the library was the number one choice. And many people still trust library sources more than random things found on the Web.

Calhoun claimed that library catalogs must come to terms with the facts that content has changed, user needs have changed and search behavior has changed. Accordingly, she argued that catalogs should incorporate social networking software, to allow for simple things like “people who searched this title also searched” functions as well as more complex models where the configuration and design of the catalog adapts and changes based on the what users search for and what they do with the catalog. Calhoun also argued that libraries should try to pursue a user-centric model and push our services out, making our catalogs visible to users where they’re searching. That is, that integration should be outward rather than inward.

While pushing our services out to users does make sense, Reynolds pointed out that libraries may not get credit for this work. Students often use databases provided by an academic library and don’t even realize that the library is providing the service, even if it is clearly marked and branded. Reynolds essentially agreed with most of Calhoun’s comments about the need to change the catalog, but gave more concrete examples of changes that could improve the search experience, such as spellcheck, word stemming, relevance ranking, better labels, reduced jargon, utilizing serial links already present in bib records, using FRBR granularity, icons to represent formats, “word cloud” results a la AquaBrowser, adding tables of contents, reviews, and recommendations, improved subject access, metasearching functionality, user tagging, folksonomies, etc. Reynolds also argued that one thing library catalogs do very well is to collocate large amounts of information and that we should retain and expand on that function in future catalog models.

Calhoun agreed that library catalogs do certain things very well and will remain necessary for tracking local holdings for print books, serials, videos, etc. But, she argued that cataloging departments need to make much better linkages, need to simplify and exploit all sources of cataloging data, need to automate and streamline workflows, need to explore automatic classification and need to mine rich catalog data. Reynolds touched on many of these points and gave a concrete example of a project she was involved in that attempted to simplify cataloging data, the creation of the CONSER standard record. The goal was to create a less costly record that would be compatible with existing standards, applicable to all formats and focused on user needs. The resulting record stripped out some of the intricate detail of serial bib records and left only those fields that were genuinely of use to users. It has sparked some controversy in the serials cataloging world, but it represented a fairly bold attempt to respond to the changing library catalog, which was the shared theme of the two keynote addresses.

Empowering the Library Search Experience

In this session, Holly Johnson of the Howard County Library in Columbia, MD discussed her libraries implementation of an AquaBrowser based catalog, and Kristin Antelman of NC State discussed some of the issues with their implementation of Endeca.

Johnson began the session with an in-depth demo of AquaBrowser. I have to say it looked really nice. I particularly liked the “discover cloud” results that gives a cluster of related terms, which are each searchable. The system also has relevance ranking, the ability to refine options by format, and can support RSS feeds. You can look at their AquaBrowser catalog.

Antelman discussed the Endeca implementation and pointed out a few problems with the system. For one thing, relevance ranking can be tricky with serials. For example, a search of “New York Times” brings up the record for the newspaper in twentieth place. Why? Because the phrase “New York Times” can occur many times in the bib records of related titles like “New York Times Book Review,” because of title changes, related titles, key titles, etc., and the more times the phrase appears the more “relevant” the record is. Also, the natural language query functionality of Endeca doesn’t necessarily effectively use the LC Subject Headings. A search on the phrase “causes of the Revolutionary War” brings up only three records (and two of those are for the same title in print and on microfilm). But, using a subject authority search brings up 388 records. The shallow skimming of the LCSH by Endeca can be really shallow.

Other Thoughts on the NC Serials Conference

I also went to a panel discussion on institutional repositories that drew heavily on a preconference that I didn’t attend. The panel boiled down to the following:

• Pro: Institutional repositories can change the scholarly communication model by making faculty works publicly available, they can make material widely and permanently available, and they can preserve at-risk material.
• Con: A lot of universities talk about wanting to have IRs, but few actually do. The IRs that have been created are lightly populated with material, and very little faculty-produced, peer-reviewed material is available on IRs.
• Response: Perhaps IRs don’t have much material in them because they’re still in the embryonic stage. When the Web was new, there was very little useful stuff on it, and many “experts” said that there would be little need for most universities to have anything up on the Web. Give IRs some time.

And I went to a session that introduced me to SUSHI, or the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative Protocol. The talk was a bit over my head, but I at least got that SUSHI is a standard that vendors and other content providers can use for communicating usage statistic reports (COUNTER reports) to libraries. Beyond that, I get a little fuzzy.

On Monday, March 12th, I joined Mary Scanlon, Ellen Daugman and Sharon Snow and headed to Chapel Hill for the 2007 Librarians’ Association of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Conference, which had the theme “From MySpace to OurSpace: Connecting With Millennials.” Here are the sessions I found most interesting:

Are We Ready to Rethink Libraries for NetGen Students? – by Joan K. Lippincott of the Coalition for Networked Information

Ms. Lippincott began with a good general introduction to Millennials, or, as she calls them, NetGen students. Most of this material was familiar and similar to stuff we’ve been hearing about this generation for a while now: born between 1982 and 1991, they grew up with computers and mobile technologies, they’re always connected, they’re used to multi-tasking, they’re visual and experiential learners, they like to work in groups, and they’re producers of information as well as consumers. Now, of course, not all those attributes apply to everyone born between 1982 and 1991, but they provide a picture of how this group as a whole differs from previous generations of students.

However, despite NetGen’s familiarity and comfort with ubiquitous information technology, Lippincott has the sense from her research that NetGen is good at incorporating technology into their recreational lives, but not necessarily into their academic lives. She doesn’t believe that they use technology effectively in terms of being information literate, net savvy and visually literate.

Lippincott believes that libraries can play a role in increasing NetGen’s effective use of technology in their academic lives, but that libraries must transform in various ways to accomplish this goal. She cited a poll asking NetGen students what information sources suit their lifestyle and information needs, and the results were not positive for libraries. 64% of respondents said search engines suited their lifestyle, 30% said the online library, and only 24 % said the library.

In order to connect libraries to NetGen students, Lippincott argued that we must rethink our content, tools, service style and environments. She argued that library content should be more graphical, less textual, more multi-directional and less linear. She said that we should go for more graphical, visual displays of our collections in websites and such. Furthermore, we should begin or expand collections of webcasts, podcasts, and digital video, because these are sources that are and will continue to be important to NetGen students. She also recommended libraries work to provide services to pda’s and mobile devices. Regarding tools, Lippincott argued that we need to change library search tools from their traditional receptive, query-based, highly-structured, complex models to models that push out information, are interactive, are open and less-structured, and are simple. We need to do a better job of connecting users to the right search tools, and need to encourage faculty to develop new, specialized search tools. As for service style, Lippincott argued that we need to change to a less formalized approach, allowing service to be provided by trained students who function more as coaches, rather than always or exclusively relying on experts. She also argued for encouraging group activities and exploration. Group activities also formed the basis of her major idea for changing library environments, namely, providing more group spaces for collaboration.

Lippincott closed by offering some suggestions on how to accomplish this sort of library transformation: hire new types of staff (rather than traditional librarians), train existing staff, work in teams with students, “reverse mentoring” (having a younger, less-experienced person show an older, more-experienced person how to use new technology), experimenting and piloting, adapting and adopting, doing research assessment, and letting go of the old way of doing things.

Special Collections – by Richard Szary, Dr. Connie Eble, Laura Clark Brown

Richard Szary, the director of Special Collections at UNC-Chapel Hill, spoke first during this session. As he freely admitted at the beginning, Joan Lippincott covered much of the territory he wanted to discuss during her keynote address. However, he did hit on some interesting ideas. Szary explained that special collections are supply-side. They’re unique. Users have to come to the special collections, so they haven’t necessarily been friendly or easy to use. If you’re the only game in town, everybody else has to adjust, not you. And he honestly pointed out that special collections are not primarily concerned with ease of use or access, they are concerned with the selection and preservation of collections that have long-term value to society. With that in mind, Szary argued that many of the same methods that Lippincott endorsed could be used to encourage Millennials to connect with special collections, however, he stipulated that these methods should be used in such ways as do not disrupt the authority, quality and integrity of the collection.

Richard Szary was followed by Dr. Connie Eble, an English professor and Laura Clark Brown, manuscripts librarian, both at UNC-CH. Eble and Brown described a course they co-taught called “Interpreting the South From Manuscripts: A Seminar for First Year University Students.” The course revolved around freshmen working intensively in the UNC special collections to study the American south, and it seemed to be quite successful (even if I personally found the recitation of the details of the course to be a bit tedious).

Innovating Library Systems – by Andrew Pace and Tito Sierra

Andrew Pace talked about NCSU’s Endeca catalog system, which has been talked about quite a bit recently. If you haven’t seen it, it’s really something. Its use of faceted searching more effectively leverages the rich subject data of MARC catalog records, and it also allows for customized relevance ranking. The implementation looks great. The major drawback I see for using Endeca is that the front-end has to be designed and created by local staff, which works fine for a very large institution like NCSU, but would be very problematic for smaller libraries that can’t assign enough staff to oversee the programming and maintenance that needs to be done on a homegrown system. You can find out more about NCSU’s Endeca implementation at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca

Tito Sierra then spoke about NCSU’s Quick Search project, which is an attempt to create a single-box search engine that can search across multiple search tools at once. A federated search essentially. The design principles were that the search must be fast, with results in less than a second, that the results must be intuitive, and that the tool should be modular, rather than a one-size fits-all approach. Not all of the modules are currently active, but they include a Best Bets module, which gives a single result for each of the 100 most common search terms entered into the system to give quick access to high demand terms; a FAQ module with answers to commonly asked library questions, a library web pages module, which tries to provide relevant Google-style search results; a catalog module, which directs users to catalog-relevant searches; a journal results module, which provides direct links to journals for known-item journal searches; and an article module, which is the hardest module to get to work properly (the search is slow and poorly ranked). All of the technology used in the Quick Search tool is open source, and highly customized for local use. You can learn more about the project at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/quicksearch/