Speaking Invitations

Although I have not managed to post as frequently as I had hoped, I have been receiving a lot of speaking invitations as a result of my work in this area. I have had to turn down several, unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts or other legitimate reasons. Other invitations I have forwarded to my superiors for possible permission to accept.

In response to e-mails, I must say that I do not feel "muzzled" by the Library of Congress in my discussions. If anything, my sense of self-censorship as a staff member seems to be more severe than that of my superiors.

This blog itself, for me, is an extraordinary occurrence. It developed only from my promise to post my presentation for public consultation--and responses--and the realisation that it was not appropriate to post these materials on the LC Web site. I think, as soon as the need for this blog has passed, that I will delete it.

Next Topic: OPAC/ILS/whatever

I have had a flurry of e-mails about my scripted comments and ALA discussion about OPAC, ILS, "inventory of resources"

Unfortunately, it is taking me a bit of time to digest all this and to make something coherent (to me, at least) of it all. In a few more days I will post on both the topic and the discussion.

That Cat

A goodly amount of the response that I have had so far to my posting has been about the photograph of The Cat. I chalk this up as an experience in humility.

He is Angus MacFangus, Dread Laird of the Underbed, Stalker of Feet, Gutter of Catnep Mousies, Bane of Bisquit Di Biscotti.

He seems to have been abandoned, or worse, a house cat that someone attempted to remake as an outdoor cat.

A little over a year ago, I happened to see him on our back deck, eating rain-soaked squirrel chow. I began feeding him, which got him through the winter, and during this past spring he became quite trusting and friendly. At one point, he walked in the open door, made friends with the feline-in-residence, and has happily spent his days slumbering in the front window when a lap is not available.

Bisquit Di Biscotti has just pawed me. As the Senior Cat, he reminds me that it is his right to have his picture posted here as well. He suggested a photo of Himself holding court during Christmas dinner.

Another PowerPoint Link

Many people have reported difficulties accessing the PowerPoint file through the previously posted link. Another link that seems to work is

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dcgkb2ms_12p6kc2hr&invite=hhj3qzc

At ALA, some people commented that the PowerPoint slides, as published, were not very informative. I refrained from responding that, if the slides had been informative, people would not have needed to come to the presentation--nor would I have received their input during discussions.

PowerPoint's popularity seems to go through phases. There are those who do not seem to be able to function without it. Others refuse to use it, as the audience spends more time on the printouts than in listening to the speaker. There are federal agencies here in Washington that have banned it from staff briefings. I continually nag the Cooperative Cataloging Team to keep their presentations minimalist.

ALCTS Catalog Management Discussion Group
12 January 2008
1:30—3:00 pm
Philadelphia Convention Center, Room 107B

The text of my remarks was keyed to the PowerPoint earlier mounted as a Google document at

http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid="dcgkb2ms_12p6kc2hr'" frameborder="'0'" width="'410'" height="'342'"

A couple disclaimers:

1. By no means whatsoever can anyone construe this as an official document from the Library of Congress.

2. If I were to give this presentation tomorrow, it would be different.

Slide 1: Generic Title

Thank you, Magda, for your kind introduction. I wish I felt as impressive as I sound. Good afternoon, everyone.

When Magda first contacted me about speaking to you about the report of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, I was somewhat hesitant to accept, as the invitation was based on the preliminary report made at LC and Web cast. We had not yet seen the draft for public comment, much less the final report. And now, of course, we see the extensive revisions that simply underscore the fluidity of the situation. The discussions and comments that I have seen of these versions, however, reassure me that there is good cause in making this presentation. I must warn you, we are still in the process of preparing an official LC response to this report, and that my remarks and our discussion today can be taken only as some part of that process.

At the Library of Congress, three groups will analyze the report and make recommendations directly to the Associate Librarian

• My group, originally formed as part of the Library Services Strategic Plan to examine bibliographic records
• Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, and key managers from that Directorate
• Thomas Mann, General Reference Librarian in the Main Reading Room, Library of Congress, will head a group that will study the report’s recommendations for their impact on the scholarly community

Dr Marcum will continue to meet periodically with the Working Group as our committee work progresses. Additionally, she will speak at the LC exhibits booth, number 1946, today at 2:00 pm and tomorrow at 11:00 am. The Web cast of the Working Group’s preliminary report will be shown at the LC booth this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.

Slide 2: Documents

This Working Group on the Future (as I have truncated it) follows a series of conferences and reports—most of these are cited by the Working Group in their report and on the LC Web site devoted to the Working Group. For example: the Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium and Karen Calhoun’s study, "The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with other Discovery Tools", which was a by-product of that conference; LC 21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress prepared by the National Research Council; and even some of the thinking that went into the Program for Cooperative Cataloging Strategic Directions.

The Library Services Strategic Plan is in the final editing stages and should be soon posted. On the whole, I think you will find that this strategic plan includes many elements of the Working Group's reports and recommendations. My mind entertains heresies on the strategic plans, as well as the visions and missions that accompany them. These unfortunately are too often the products of those vested in the past who now feel in a position through writing them to control the future. As we all know, while the future develops from the past, it is hardly controlled by it.
This strategic plan, however, and the new one in final development by the PCC, differ from my from such failings. At times, they are quite radical--if a committee product from the depths of a government bureaucracy can be thought radical.

Slide 3: Working Group Background

I think others have already covered the composition and procedures of the Working Group. It is important to remember that its composition was totally independent of LC. This does not mean there was a lack of knowledge of LC. I am acquainted with over half of the Working Group members through their participation in the PCC; many of them have served as PCC officials and on PCC committees. I bask in this reflected glory. I am also somewhat miffed. I couldn’t get a word out of any of them about what they were up to until they made their preliminary report.
While the Working Group might have missed some in-house details about LC, it produced something that I think is extraordinary for LC. This report could have been a dry recounting of what LC is currently doing with, worse yet, a congratulatory paean about how well this fits into present and future needs. Instead, we received a snapshot of the current state of the profession and of LC’s place in it, coupled with open and pointed discussion of our collective future.


Slide 4: Approaching the Report

This is a very complex document—one thing ties into another and a reading of any one section pulls the reader into another section. My initial fear was that I would not be able to cover the entire document in the time we have. Then I realized that I am not here so much to talk, as I am here to listen. One of the most important realizations I had in reading the report was that it doesn’t matter to whom the Working Group tentatively assigned a recommendation. No one of us can do any one task alone. We will all need help and we will all need to help each other. In the words of the great Canadian philosopher, Red Green, "Remember, we’re all in this together."


Slide 5: Recurring Themes

During initial discussions at LC, a Cooperative Team member said that one of the remarkable things about this report is that for the first time many disparate things that we unconsciously "knew" are clearly stated in one document. There are recurring themes

Advocacy appears in many guises and is something I will comment on throughout my presentation

Automation is a constant. The topic could be called "Beyond Automation" One of my greatest complaints within LC and as a librarian is that, historically, we have been very good at automating our current manual workflow. We then rest on our laurels. To my mind, there is little difference among typing catalog cards, writing them in Library Hand, or copying and pasting data from an electronic resource into a template for a bibliographic record. We must go beyond this to the direct manipulation of metadata for our purposes.

Consequences abound. As I said earlier, this report is not in praise of the way we now do things. It warns of the consequences if we continue to do as we now do.

Desires do not lurk beneath the surface. The Working Group wears them on their sleeves in this report. They are the collective future that the Working Group would like to see.

Economics are brought to the fore. In the past, someone (Congress, a legislature, a university) gave us lots of money and we spent it. This was simply the way we did things. Nowadays, those some ones want to know why they should give us money, what it’s for, and what we did with it. They are very quick to point out—and even mandate—efficiencies and cost-savings. At this point in my presentation, I will simply point you back to my first point "Advocacy". [Footnote 1]

Profession-Wide is the scope of the Working Group’s considerations. What we do—and our fate within the information profession—affects everyone.

One of the most fascinating people I have been lucky enough to meet in my life was an English Jesuit who had ended up as a professor at Georgetown University. One day in class he was expressing his great displeasure at what we had written for an essay exam. One of my classmates asked the traditional American college student question, "How do you want these things organized and how long should they be?"

He answered, "Presentations should be organized in the manner most suitable to their exposition. Length is determined by the need. Sometimes a paragraph is all that’s necessary, sometimes several volumes." He went on to say that, in our case, he preferred a paragraph. I have never gone wrong when I have followed this advice.

Accordingly, I will start at the end of the Working Group report and work my way through to the Introduction. Most people seem to run out of steam around parts 3 or 4. Part 5 contains a great deal of material that should be considered by us all, and will serve as a suitable launching pad for the rest of my presentation.

Slide 6: Strengthen the Profession

In reading blogs, list discussions, and e-mails, I have indulged myself in the existential issues of our profession. Who are we? What are we? What is our locus? Karen Calhoun calls it the "Infosphere" in her report. Michael Gorman refers to the "Human Record", however in-human or non-human it may be. Other bloggers have taken up "Information Ecosystem". On good days, it makes me think of Teilhard de Chardin: the cosmic cataloger, at one with the hymn of the metadata. On bad days it makes me think of us as the Arctic ice sheet. Nonetheless, it is all-inclusive and immediately apprehensible as an active, rather than static, concept. So, where do we, the Foresters of the Information Ecosystem, go from here?

Advocacy underlies this entire section.

We must make the case for the value of what we do (1) within our own profession (2) within our system of professional education (3) to our funders and (4) to the general public. We cannot do this without an evidence base provided by research. We can assume nothing. We must demonstrate that what we are doing has value. We must demonstrate that the way we do these things has value. We must demonstrate that our final product has value. If we cannot demonstrate these things after self-examination, we should consider jettisoning them. Otherwise, it will be done for us. Some of this is being done within the Library of Congress, compelled to a great extent by the annual budget hearings. Some of this is being done through associations to which LC belongs, such as the PCC. An important part is missing: our ability to utilize developments within the research community.

Communication, within and without the profession, is essential in achieving Section 5.

If we don’t communicate with the research community to develop an evidence base, we have not the basis upon which either to do our jobs or to engage effectively with those outside our departments. Throughout Section 5, there are recommendations to hold conferences. As a profession, we do like our meetings. There are other venues to explore through which we might achieve these recommendations: the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the old White House Conferences on Library and Information Services. The Librarian of Congress or other officers and their deputies are ex officio members or participants in these bodies or activities.

Competition is another side of Advocacy and is something for which we must brace ourselves.

I know, you're all sitting there thinking about Darwin. We are in competition on a number of levels: within our own institutions for space, for staff, for funding; within our educational institutions for research support, for teachers, for tenure; before our financial providers for money. I am not advising the days of "all against all, in which life is nasty, brutish, and short", but the days are past when someone will give us these things. We must go out and get them—perhaps at the expense of another’s pet project.

We are in a recruitment competition. It does not matter what kind of library you are, your library is in public service. We are in competition for the type of people who are interested in public service. We must make the case that their altruism can be satisfied through the library profession. This is where the section on education comes in. Once we have recruited librarians, we must provide them with meaningful, research-based, professional education that suits their present and future roles in sustaining the Information Ecosystem. Classroom, lecture hall, internships, seminars, and workshops: these abound now. We must coordinate them. We must know if they’re doing any good.

Slide 7: Embrace the Future

Sections 3 and 4 intertwine with each other to such an extent that I have combined them
Web as Infrastructure is a new concept to a lot of us.

We have thought of it in the past as exostructure—something external. We have learned through experience that people will not come to a library, either in person or through the Internet, and use the library as a portal to the Web. We are lucky that people surfing the Web find a library and enter it. Very simply, if we go out on to the Web, we have the potential, the abilities, and the tools to become one of the most influential user groups on the Web.

Standards for this environment are plentiful—perhaps too plentiful.

We need the communication necessary for us, as a group, to agree on what to use (and where we may safely disagree) and to simplify these standards so that they are clear, concise, and coherent to the everyday user—both the user who applies standards and to the user who profits from the application of these standards. This is an area of work that goes far beyond traditional cataloging standard setting. Libraries are no longer the single force that can dictate how a patron discovers, locates, and accesses information. Communication is also necessary to let everybody know when a standard is available on the Web—note the surprised comments on Autocat that LC Office of Network Development has made certain databases available for Web use. To revert to Section 5 of the report, we need the research necessary to know the use, or uselessness, of what we do in this area. [Footnote 2]

Design for Living –I know, Section 4 says to design for today and tomorrow, but what else is that but living? It’s also less grim than the equally a propos "Design for survival" (Besides, it’s about time for a Noel Coward allusion)

If the OPAC/ILS, whatever, is to be viable (and with it, us) it must incorporate the long-requested, long lists of improvements we have made of vendors. These electronic means must fully realize the value that we have built into bibliographic records over the past hundred years—see, for example, the wondrous use made of our MARC21 records by the World Digital Library. That, our authority work, reference structures and linkages, catalogers’ notes, must be integrated into the search experience. Term completion, cloud tags, even a user’s search history and user group folksonomies are amenable to a unified treatment. Users searching our inventory of resources must be able to find what they want (even if they didn't know they wanted it) by means of what they know—not by means of what we tell them they ought to know.

LCSH is much on everybody’s mind these days.

I find it interesting that LCSH is in the Web section of the report. Jay Girotto of Microsoft gave a fascinating talk at the PCC Participants' Meeting last June during ALA--Annual during which he discussed incorporating LCSH into search engines.

There have been so many controversies over headings and applications over the years to show that LCSH is not all things to all people. Lynn El-Hoshy, in one of her SACO workshops in the 1990s, called LCSH a Victorian dowager being carried, somewhat unwillingly, over the threshold of the 20th century. As M’Lady LCSH is hauled, stays cracking and groaning from her very soul, into the 21st century for her Internet debut, the situation becomes starker. Applying the recommendations of the Airlie House Conferences has helped maintain the status quo, but how much longer can we maintain this, before the entire system (the good with the bad) becomes unsustainable?

LCSH is an historical accretion. There are certain embedded practices—the treatment of ethnic groups, languages and literatures--that do not stand up in this new environment. Simply observing these anomalies as a fact neither explains them nor justifies them. Some of these hinder making LCSH easier to apply and to augment or to revise.

I think, however, that Martha Yee has dealt with FAST—it is easy, but it throws out the value of LCSH. We can forward all of this if we can make LCSH available as a usable database on the Web. From there, it can become a valuable, controlled folksonomy for the Web.

As a sidelight, we have revived discussions with the various necessary stakeholders for an OCLC national review file for SACO proposals. This will enable OCLC members to input, revise, review, reconsider, new LCSH proposals with input from others who have access to this file. In this way, the only subject proposals entering the LC workflow from OCLC members will be those ready for final editorial review before addition to LCSH. It sounds simple, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.


Slide 8: Enhance Access to Rare and Unique Materials

Section 2 to some extent overlaps with Section 1. I think that two different streams have become a single confluence.

Digitization as Preservation was presented as a way to allow consultation of certain resources without eroding the integrity of the resource.

This has expanded to a realization that digitization provides access to a resource. Regardless of where a user may be, or when the user desires access, the user may consult the item.

Original cataloging backlogs are growing throughout the library community.

Robert Wolven of Columbia University, a past PCC chair and a member of the Working Group, said (and very well) at a PCC Policy Committee meeting that we have long had a consensus in which we have accepted inefficiencies in our original cataloging operations in order to further copy cataloging. This consensus is breaking down as we realize that we are building original cataloging backlogs of materials (even modern print publications) that are unique to our own institutions.

Something has to be done to realize the value of these materials. Many seem to think that the potential solution is to turn these materials into metadata through digitization and then manipulate that metadata to provide access. In any case, it requires us all to re-consider cataloging operations in general as we re-assess copy cataloging in order to provide access to these unknown materials.

Slide 9: Efficient Provision of Bibliographic Access—I have renamed Section 1.

This must start at the creation of a work by an author, or at least at the proposal for a manifestation from a publisher. The initial metadata should be manipulated from that time on to provide access—even though this could mean a sort of continuous revision of bibliographic data as more is learned about the author, the work, the needs of the institution to provide inventory control, and the needs of the user.

Radical Rethinking of cataloging operations within LC and the Information Ecosystem

Two of the many buzzwords flying about are "sustainable" and "unsustainable" The way we have done things at LC is unsustainable. Either we now no longer have the staff, or soon we will not have the staff, to support our habitual labor-intensive workflow for cataloging, training, review, and editorial functions. We will no longer be given the staff and the funding to go on as we have done.

Realization of Group Strengths is a much better view than the assumption that cataloging burdens will be dumped on the community at large.

I don’t think that I’m shocking anybody who does not work at LC by saying that there are things others do better than we do. So, let’s let everybody do what they do best, accept the communal results, and move on. This is not a burden. It is what each of us is already doing. We simply must find a way to share the products of this labor.

Slide 10: Cooperative Programs I must say up front are nothing new.

I was recently given a Cooperative Cataloging Manual printed in 1944 to guide the resumption of cooperative programs begun as early as the 19th century as soon as the War was over. What has revolutionized cooperation and made possible its extraordinary growth in the past 10 years is the Web and the Internet.

Membership in the PCC has actually been more fluid than most people realize. While it continues to be institutionally based, simply by hiring NACO/SACO/BIBCO/CONSER trained catalogers, an institution may, if it so chooses, join the PCC. We have even begun making provisions for trained catalogers who move to non-PCC institutions. The PCC itself has moved beyond program-centric activities. Under various agreements, training is being developed for non-PCC members. We need to embark upon a radical re-thinking of what constitutes PCC membership: Contributions of records? Participation in activities? Some other activities?

In expanding participation in the PCC, we need to take the next step in exploiting the Internet and the Web

Training should be done as modules, available on the Web as distance education

This will free catalogers and their institutions from the current burdens of a five-day NACO training seminar. As part of LC’s reorganization, Judith Cannan will be the division chief for the Coop Team and the PCC Secretariat. She is a past president of the precursor to ALCTS. Her duties at LC are designing and providing training to staff. I think we will do this.

Devolution of program functions to the membership will expand membership and active participation

In the final report of the working group, I see that the word "divest" occurs frequently in this section. I have made no secret of my belief that the component parts of the PCC—NACO, SACO, BIBCO, and CONSER will eventually operate independently of LC with LC as a participant and facilitator. BIBCO and CONSER already operate in this way.

NACO can do so in a short time. Already, over half the training and review is done by non-LC personnel. Combinations of independent members and of funnel projects will be able to coordinate within and among themselves documentation, training, review, and even governance.

SACO will be more difficult as long as there continues to be the need for editorial review. I do not see how we can avoid that if LCSH as a system is not to collapse. We need to recognize, however, that the present method of one-on-one training, review, and mentoring, while manageable from LC with a dozen or so institutional members, is not sustainable with over 700 institutional PCC members—which represent a few thousand catalogers.

What this means, of course, is my own planned obsolescence as a Cooperative Team leader. I am as comfortable with this as I am with giving up "control" over these programs to their members.


Slide 11: Introduction of the Report to what?

Not so scary a future as we might fear, but to a truthful realization of what we each can do in the Information Ecosystem.

I don’t know why people fear the future. It is a fatal enmeshment in the past that we should fear. There is one thing, though, about the past over which many commentators on the report have correctly skewered the Working Group. What is this business about redefining bibliographic control? Even Roy Tennant, while he says it's not "bibliographic" and it's not "control", knows better.


Appendix on RDA and FRBR:

As much as I would like to delude myself that today’s turn-out is the result of my legendary platform skills and speaking abilities, I suspect that it has something to do with the Working Group’s recommendations on FRBR and RDA. This report, and its implications for the information community at large is too important to be reduced to a single issue, regardless of one’s feelings about that issue. That is why I have left the topic to the very end. It is very unfortunate that RDA has become such a professional flashpoint. There are times, frankly, when I think the discussion has made us look silly.

The part of the report that concerns me most is the section on FRBR. The Working Group represents the spectrum of managers and administrators in the US who will decide to implement RDA in their libraries. Their misgivings about the effect of FRBR and RDA on the large bibliographic databases and on legacy data subsisting in the US, and indeed, WorldCat, should be addressed. Communication is probably the major issue here. Such research may well exist, but it has not been brought to the fore in a persuasive manner.

The release of the General Introduction and the Statement of Principles this year will help greatly. In reading the draft chapters as they come out, it is clear enough that, if one selects certain options in one chapter, one will select certain options in another chapter. Unfortunately, internal consistency of a system does not necessarily validate a system. When we see these additional documents, we will have an external standard to judge the purpose of RDA and to gauge whether or not each chapter meets that purpose. Further, the June unveiling of an RDA database model will demonstrate greater ease of usability.

The name Panizzi has been used a great deal in discussions. I decided to go to the source and fetched from LC’s stacks everything we had by him and most of what we had about him. He was not a cataloger. He was a highly talented administrator who created the modern library. Some historians call him the greatest of all. Along the way, as part of his achievements within the Information Ecosystem, he invented cataloging. If his system proved not to serve user needs, I don’t doubt that he would have changed it.

We will see the whole of RDA, in a database format, in June at ALA Annual. I hope then that we shall all be pleased. At the pre-ALA briefing for LC staff, Deanna MArcum said that we shall probably have a public announcement ready for ALA--Annual.

Footnotes

Footnote 1: During discussions after my presentation, I had the epiphany that "economics is not just about money" We can view economics as the efficient application of our resources to achieve our goals. It does not matter how expensive something is to do. If we must do it, as part of our work, it becomes economical to do so.

Footnote 2: In discussing standards subsequent to this presentation, one of the more interesting aspects that came up was the process for actually formulating and implementing them. It seems that the current practice of doing so in other parts of the Information Ecosystem has evolved far beyond the older model that librarianship, to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the area, continues to follow. In other regions of the Information Ecosystem, standards setting begins with a communal perception that a common approach is needed. Development follows a participatory process in which communal participation develops consensus and eventual acceptance of the standard. Necessary maintenance of such standards can then become institutionalized, but not really the actual standards setting itself.

During discussions, participants strongly contrasted this climate for standards setting with technical librarianship, seen as a highly institutionalized (and potentially exclusionary) process in which a few, in the belief that they are acting for the common good, develop new standards and implement them. This was graphically described as creating legislation whether or not new laws are needed--and potentially more than is needed.

Also, we must join Occam in deciding what is necessary and what is not. During another meeting at ALA, I half-listened from the audience as catalogers discussed how to go about coding a specific fixed field. After a half hour of this, someone stood up and asked, "Does anyone actually use this field? We don't" After general agreement that no one uses the field, nor plans to use it, the meeting moved on to the topic of order of notes fields. Serials and monographic catalogers follow differing prescribed orders. Too often, the first question we ask ourselves is how to do something. The first question should be whether or not we ought to do it at all.

ALA Mid Winter 2008

12 January 2008 (Saturday)
1:30--3:00 pm
Philadelphia Convention Center
Room 107B

ALCTS Catalog Management Discussion Group

I will give a presentation on the Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. As a general convenience, I will try to pre-post my PowerPoint slides on this site. Later, I will post my actual remarks.