Category Archives: metadata

Understanding FRAD and authority control

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My cataloguing course came to an end this week, which means that after 12 weeks of thorough study I’m apparently now familiar with, if not competent to work with a host of acronyms such as AACR2, MARC21, LCSH, DDC, and of course, DC.

Something we haven’t addressed, however,  is RDA or FRBR, which in some respects is acceptable since the former hasn’t been formally released and the latter, as I’ve now tattooed on my arm (not really), is a framework, a guideline, a conceptual model. But what little I do know of the organization of information (something I think all librarians should know something about) suggests that RDA and FRBR is the way to go and the things to study if I want to (1) make a real difference in the field, and (2), find a half-way decent income.  So in between my final assignments I’ve been reading a lot on the FRBR game. I may turn it into a reading course for next term.  we’ll see how it goes.

In the mean time, here’s another set of rough notes, this time on Glenn Patton’s “Introduction to FRAD”, from Taylor (2004).  There isn’t anything real exciting to report from this chapter, I don’t think, except for Patton’s summary of what a good authority file should do:

  1. Document decisions made by the cataloger when choosing appropriate records for a BibRecord as well as when creating new access points.
  2. Serve as a reference for these two functions listed above (i.e. choosing and creating).  This provides information to distinguish one authority file from another and can reveal when a brand new access point is needed in the authority file.
  3. Control forms of access points.  Patton adds that “in an automated environment, [it will] change those access points when the authority record itself is changed.”  I understand Patton’s context more than his original statement, but for now that’s good enough for me.
  4. Support access to the BibRecord by leading the user from the name that has been sought to the name listed in the BibRecord.
  5. Link bibliographic and authority files in different ways, e.g., to allow data elements to be converted into different languages and scripts that are appropriate to the user’s needs.  This is fairly general, I think, but I’m happy to let it be.

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I don’t know if the concept of authority control is something we give much thought to – I know my fellow students and I didn’t in our class.  Authority records were just things we double-checked to ensure that our BibRecords would be correct.  And in this day of automation and electronic data transfer, I suppose authority control is more and more rudimentary.  But there can be so many value judgments in this particular area that things can get heated or philosophical.  On the one hand, we’ve given ourselves (if you will) the power and authority to grant a person or body a name. On the other hand, we’ve given ourselves the power and authority to signify an individual by a certain term.  We can be as absolute (and arbitrary) or as relative as we choose to be on this one – it plays tricks with my background in the humanities.

Anyway.

FRBR and the (or my?) future

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There’s a good chance that I might begin a directed study on FRBR (i.e. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) in January, my last term of classes in library school.  I’m pushing for this in part because I’m not enthused about the course options for winter term, but mostly because I’m not comfortable with the level of knowledge I have on the organization of data and records to feel qualified to apply for a job in the sub-field.  One might say librarianship is all about teaching nowadays, and to a certain degree I would concur (although I do bow to the “jack of all trades” argument when the argument does arise). However, so much of what librarianship has been, and will continue to be in the future is the organization of information.  Some one out there has got to get down to task and develop massive storehouses and systems of data, and our skills and training should make us well-equipped.  But right now, I definitely feel that I need to learn more if I want to have any chance at work in this side of the profession.

Anyway, to prepare for the FRBR course, I’ve begun some preliminary reading.  I’m acquainting myself with things like FRBR and FRAD, as well as RDF – I want to see the Big Picture by way of this class, and I want it to help me be able to make macro-level decisions and policy statements at my future workplace, if not contribute to the cause itself.  I think it would be interesting to work in this field, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I hadn’t recently broadened my career searches to include work that involves metadata.  But here’s the hitch – without sounding like some sort of unknowing student (because i actually do know a thing or two – not three or four, i confess,  just one or two), I really don’t know as much as I want to when it comes to working in the metadata field.  When I look at job postings in this area, I notice that most of them demand X number of years of cataloguing experience, yet it seems that fewer professional librarians are doing this kind of on a regular basis anymore (i.e. it is a role filled more and more by Lib.Tech’s).  Now, without the skills or the desire to do strict cataloguing, I wonder how I might ever become a dyed-in-the-wool info.organization sage.  I suppose a little more reading and a little more time ruminating will naturally lead to answers and wisdom on this one.  I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, for some mind-blowing entertainment this weekend I scanned some of my FRBR notes – feel free to consider my cribnotes from Arlene Taylor’s Understanding FRBR (2007), at least the first chapter.  At the very least you can make a character sketch of me from my poor penmanship..

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e-Books and MARC

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Happy Fall!

I haven’t posted here much lately.  School is in session and I’m still holding down an information literacy internship that amounts to 15-20 hours a week of work, so I’m a busy little bee. My apologies for that.

I’ve got a MARC story to tell.  Yes, I can hear the pitched groans out there.   Anyway, at one point at work today I had to figure out roughly how many e-books our library subscribes to. All I needed was a general figure to paste into a flyer to promote the growing e-book collection, but this question posed a dilemma that required four other staff members to wrap their heads around.  After speaking to our database management librarian, our systems librarian, as well as the two tech services staff who really are the experts and daily managers of the e-books as they exist in the collection, we still didn’t have a solid answer.  Although we could all go into our own records and tally up the numbers, it would have been nice if the catalogue could spit out a number for us.

The problem is that, like so many other organizations, our catalogue was not designed to properly account for e-books. We can list the e-book’s format as a book and as an Internet resource in two different (but not mutually exclusive fields), and we can flag the item as an electronic resource in the 245 field under the GMD. And like so many other libraries, we also choose to list an e-book in the 655 genre/form field.

So, there are several ways for us to mark the e-book in MARC.  However, without a chance to mark the simple format field as an e-book in our catalogue, it has become difficult to query the database to see exactly how many items we subscribe to at the moment.  We can limit our queries to “electronic resource” in the title field to access the GMD, but this also calls up items with those words anywhere in the 245; limiting the query in a similar manner under the 655 field isn’t so great either because it then calls up many digital gov.doc serials that are also entered in the catalogue with this field

At any rate, an answer has been found.  When I left work this afternoon, some of the staff were performing a common command line search to figure out the answer to the question I was wondering at 830 in the morning. I did feel bad for asking the question, since it created a little bit of work, but it was nice to see that people with the know-how on this one where up to the challenge and were determined to come to a answer by hook or crook.

It’s this sort of work that has really made me come to respect cataloguing and database management.  It’s one thing to know MARC codes and indicators like the back of your hand, but it’s another to understand the reasons why certain items are flagged the way they are and what the ramifications are in the present-day and into the future.  I don’t think my question, as it was posed, is going to force a major re-think of how e-books are catalogued at the library, but it was interesting to see the organization of information truly come into play on this one.

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