“What They Don’t Teach in Library School” An ALA Preconference Sponsored by ALCTS/ALISE/LC/Libraries Unlimited June 22, 2007 Karen Calhoun On Competition for Catalogers

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 2 “What Changed in the US with Hurricane Katrina was the feeling that we have entered a period of consequences…” – Al Gore

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 3 How Much Stress is Too Much?

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 4 My Report to the Library of Congress Calhoun, Karen. The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools –Washington, DC: Library of Congress, March

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 5 My Thesis: We Need to Rethink the Catalog in Light of a Changed World Users are not getting what they need from online libraries and catalogs Content has changed Users have changed The library service model must change The catalog must change Catalogers must change WHO? WHAT? HOW? WHERE?

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 6 Library Catalogs, Cataloging, and Catalogers MARC, AACR, and LC Cooperative cataloging Affordability and scalability More than descriptive metadata Metadata is a strategic issue for libraries “Save the time of the reader.” --S.R. Ranganathan, 1931

The Way We Worked Books Journals Newspapers Gov docs Maps Scores AV Dissertations Special collections Manuscripts Papers Univ records Journal articles Conference proceedings Etc. Library catalogs Archives Abstracting & Indexing services

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 8 Being a 21 st Century Librarian Starting points: –Technology-driven research, teaching and learning –Disintermediation (decrease in guided access to content) –Global “infosphere” –Accelerating shift in information seekers’ preferences for Web-based information and multimedia formats Librarianship: “There are few professions which contribute so much to the saving of time and to the progress of science.” –Library Journal, 1890

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 9 Geocentric/ Aristotelian view: The local catalog is the sun Heliocentric/ Copernican view: The local catalog is a planet

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 10 Full Text: Digital Repositories and Interactive Learning

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 11 Second Life Second Life Library and Info Island 5,853,971 “residents” (April )

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 12 A New Kind of Cataloger Examine assumptions Be involved with information objects of all types Move to next generation systems and services Make information (including, but not limited to library collections) more visible and easier to use Metadata and beyond

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 13 Crisis or Opportunity?

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 14 Opportunities for “New Age” Catalogers Metadata recycling and reuse Workflow analysis and quality improvement

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 15 The Continuing Importance of Books Books and serials are not dead, and they are not yet digital ARL libraries spent the lion’s share of US$665 million on books and serials in 2004

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 16

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 17 Digitization Projects

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 18 A New Way to Work “Instead of being a hoarder of containers, the library must become the facilitator of retrieval and dissemination.”—William Wulf, 2003 Blakeley, Daniel H. Cornell Center for Materials Research Facility Staff page

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 19 Making Library Collections and Services Visible Library must be where the users’ eyes are –Interconnections, interoperability, and information delivery Offsite storage and the challenge to browsing Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships Much more robust and interconnected discovery and content delivery systems “2 ½ cheers for Google.” --Paul Duguid, May , Cornell University

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 20 Affordability and Scalability Expense of cataloging Rapid growth of Web resources and digital assets Need more than descriptive metadata Interoperability issues Competition for Resources to Develop New Library Services Shrinking tech services departments Streamlining tech services workflows Increasing use of external sources of data; automated cataloging methods Changes in Information- Seeking Behavior Preference for online information Reliance on simple keyword search Decline of subject searching Expectation of seamless linking Table 1: Challenges Facing Traditional Cataloging

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 21 Availability of Catalog Librarians LIS schools not teaching cataloging LIS grads not choosing cataloging Graying of the library profession (demographics) Significance of the Catalog Catalog is one part of a much larger infosphere Many new types of scholarly information objects not covered by catalog Future of Individual Library Catalogs Less emphasis on one catalog per library Shift toward multiple catalogs appearing as one catalog; shared catalogs; cataloging or indexing interwoven into the Web (e.g., Google Scholar, Open WorldCat, worldcat.org) Table 1, Continued: Challenges Facing Traditional Cataloging

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 22 Increasing investment in access systems Help build new kinds of systems for IR and delivery; many new kinds of metadata; emphasis on re-use, interconnections, interoperability Active participation in the university community Blurring of lines between what has been public services and technical services; project and team-based workplaces; involvement in campus projects and digital asset management; consulting work; decreasing involvement in traditional cataloging duties Technology-driven research, teaching and learning Need for “IT fluency, esp. metadata specialists; increasing involvement in large-scale digital library research, development, and production projects Table 2 : Forecasts and Implications for Metadata Specialists

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 23 Disintermediation and user self-sufficiency Catalog librarians have always served those who want to work autonomously; metadata specialists will also enhance ease of use through expertise in indexing, data organization and management, access vocabularies, taxonomies, ontologies, etc. Rising need for understanding of visualization and other techniques to support browsing Increasing use of metadata for linking of wide array of information objects Global infosphere, Web- based information, and multimedia Metadata specialists will develop/lobby for standards and best practices, but proliferation of systems and object types will continue; continued need for integrating frameworks and interoperability tools Table 2 Continued: Forecasts and Implications for Metadata Specialists

June 2007Calhoun - ALCTS ALISE Preconference 24 Thank You! Being a Librarian: Metadata and Metadata Specialists in the Twenty-first Century Forthcoming in Library Hi Tech, v25 n2 (Summer 2007) Preprint 17 December http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/ 2231