2007/08/21: CC:DA, SciVee & academic cataloging

I want to write about CC:DA comments on RDA Ch.6 and 7, but it will take me eons to pull together the issues. I started the new gig yesterday and have some thoughts akin to Karen's about starting a new job.

In the meantime, I want to point out SciVee, an incredibly cool tool for disseminating scientific information. It makes me incredibly happy to see SDSC's involvement. I first saw scientific visualizations back in 1996 when I was SDSC's librarian. At the time I was responsible for maintaining a bibliography of publications by the center's researchers. The "bib" as it was affectionately known, was kept for NSF reporting purposes. Big grants mean big accountability and the number of peer-reviewed publications is one measurement of a project's success. At the time I felt that it would be really cool to create metaworks of articles with their associated publications, presentations AND raw data. Those metaworks would need to be engendered via metadata for bibliographic families. Ten years later all of these disparate yet related materials are beginning to come together within tools scientists can use. That's just wicked rad!

Even though I'm glad to see this trend, it does make me ponder the role of cataloging and metadata services within academic libraries vs. public libraries. Our audiences are so different and the types of materials we deal with are so different that I wonder if it's a good idea to continue to hold alliances with rules such as RDA. As CC:DA reviews RDA, I'm continually reminded to think about small, rural, public libraries and the needs of those libraries with less funding. Can a standard for bibliographic description work for both the academic handling bibliographic families pulled together on-the-fly AND the small town librarian handling graphic novels?

I have my doubts.

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posted by Laura @ 7:46 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

2007/08/15: I'm baaaack

I've returned from cycling the Underground Railroad. Another tour member - Crazyguyonabike -- posted a ton of pix. We didn't take many ourselves since Adventure Cycling is going to be sending us a DVD with all the photos they can gather from the 90+ participants. What's really incredibly cool is that OCLC has teamed up with Adventure Cycling to provide a map of public libraries with Internet hot-spots along the route. Makes me proud(er) to be a librarian.

My daughter Z. did an AMAZING job as stoker on the tandem with wife M. as captain. She got to learn about some American history which she'll be taking in school this year as a fifth grader. She also had so much fun that she wants to continue doing tours in summer vacations to come. Yay. Next year we're thinking about cycling Greece since 6th grade is ancient history. We'll see.

I'm catching up with CC:DA work. Our commenting period for the revised Ch.6 & 7 is over. Now voting members are in the phase of reviewing one another's comments on the CC:DA wiki and indicating whether they agree/disagree. The process, while tedious, is very interesting to me. Lots of folks have strong feelings about it. I suspect it will take me several hours to work through it. Fortunately, my wifi works on the front porch and there are no rules against reading RDA commentary from a deck chair with an icy glass of Mojave Red.

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posted by Laura @ 1:53 PM 0 Comments Links to this post