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DC-GENERAL  September 2000

DC-GENERAL September 2000

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Subject:

Re: Search engines

From:

Hans Høgh <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:49:06 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (87 lines)





> The model that has worked for libraries for standard materials has been
successfully implemented in OCLC.  I would be interested in any thoughts on how
this model could be improved upon for Web resources.
>
> Martin Dillon
> OCLC Institute
Martin,
I don't know if "improved" is precisely the word I would choose, I would
prefer "change." My own thoughts on this are:
(A pre-Thanksgiving day prediction!)
1) identifying
In the absence of any genuine vendors in this field and types of
"approval plans," the task of "identification" will continue to be
extremely chaotic and spotty. In a way, we are in the same situation as
our predecessors were a couple of hundred years ago when they set up the
first "Books in Print". Today, a "Web Sites in Print" would be extremely
useful, but how would anyone even begin to create such a work? How are
we then to discuss jobbers and approval plans?
Any of these concerns will take a long time to implement.
2) acquiring
This will no longer be a part of librarianship, but will be in the hands
of Systems, who will make sure that the connections work, any passwords
are necessary, etc.
3) selecting
This may be the toughest of all to solve. In the absence of clearly
defined "publishers" (as has been discussed on this listserve) how can a
selector make a decision as to the quality of a web page? The only
solution I see is to have specialists evaluate the site, or preface
everything with "Beware!"
4) describing (in the sense of "Bibliographic Description")
It seems as if the bibliographic description will have to become less
important, since web pages change so quickly and without any notice. It
is as if all the states of a text were rolled into one object. Any
description (if it is to stay in any way current) will have to be done
in extremely general terms, perhaps similar to a collection-level
record, (which it is, in a sense).
I think that one of the reasons for the detail of bibliographic
description is that in the past, examining the physical item took a
certain amount of time (15 minutes to walk the stacks to get the book; a
wait for someone to bring something from the vault; a wait to get
something from inter-library loan). Now that access is instantaneous,
users can see the item immediately and get much more accurate
information than any record can give.
I know that the camp1 vs. camp2 is involved in this.
5) arranging (as I read it: Access points)
In my opinion, this is the real task of metadata: to assign access
points that are consistently retrievable. In spite of some protests to
the contrary, people love to browse; in fact, when you get a result of
850 in a search result, how can you do much of anything else? Since you
are browsing anyway, it would be nice to have a meaningful browse
instead of a mindless one based on the number of times a word is used,
or the number of links there are to the page, etc.
With less emphasis on description, I think there will be a lot of work
we can do with assigning extra access points, and giving users the power
to decide how they wish to display their results (by author, publisher,
newest items, etc.)
6) storing
will cease to be a library function and will go to Systems, or be done
outside the library altogether.
7) retrieving
This can change radically from today. There can be automatic e-mail
notices sent to people who request new items in certain subjects or by
certain authors. Who knows what else there can be?

What we can do now, is what Garry Forger said in his comments. Each
academic institution could use metadata cataloging for everything on
their own sites. (e.g. Princeton Library would catalog everything
produced by Princeton University, Yale could do Yale, etc.) If every
library did this and adhered to certain standards, primarily in the
access points, everything could be made "interoperable" and a huge
amount of some of the most important material could be brought under
control.
One final question: how can we get overworked librarians to oversee the
management of any of this?
     Jim Weinheimer
     Princeton University
     [log in to unmask]




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