Tag Archives: metadata

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..

[ipaper id=23012699]

Mid-term report card

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It’s always interesting to gauge people’s responses when I tell them I’m (still) in school.  Depending on their disposition (if not my own at the time), the responses can be tinged with either envy or sympathy. Emotional reactions aside, my school-boy days remain for at least another five or six months, so my days right now are often devoted to research and analysis on one subject or another.

Seeing as though it’s November and I need a real break from the deadlines that come along with this research and analysis, I decided to summarize for you some of the projects I’m working on in my classes right now:

  • In my introductory cataloguing class, I’m learning to speak another language.  Oh, MARC21, how I love your $a‘s and second indicators.  I’m not lying.  I’ve come to love cataloguing.  I don’t plan on being a cataloguer, but it would definitely be interesting to get into database management and tech services –  the organization of information its where it’s at in information science today.
  • In my government documents class, I’ve begun research on the Data Liberation Initiative.  I’m hoping to analyze DLI’s original aims and consider how close to (or how far off) the original trajectory we might be today.  My understanding is that DLI was developed in part to not just improve data and micro-data dissemination in Canada but also to promote (micro-)data analysis inside and outside the academy.  As evidence-based social analysis came to the forefront in the 1990s, there was a consensus that more had to be done to improve and increase data analysis skills in Canada and that DLI might help in the long-term as more and more students might graduate with a basic understanding of micro-data and data manipulation.  Most of the scholarly literature on the subject seems to have come from Elizabeth Hamilton (UNB) and Chuck Humphrey (UAlberta), so I have my work cut out for me on this project. But on the other hand, it might be nice to raise another voice (ahem, mine) into the fray.
  • In my systems class, I was going to analyze Evergreen initiatives (and especially the Conifer Project) for academic libraries, but I’ve backed down and will now just consider academic libraries (and the academic institution) as a soft system unto itself.  In some ways I’m raising a white flag on this one, but ultimately I’ve accepted the fact that while I understand code and can hack out some rudimentary lines of script, I am no coding expert and likely never will be.  However, I do know theory and I know it well, so I should be able to work my way around Peter Checkland‘s mountain of systems-thinking scholarship.
  • In light of the first point, I may undertake a directed research course on FRBR and RDF. Although a “dream job” right now would likely deal with data librarianship and data manipulation, I’d also be very happy to get in on the ground floor in information organization; hopefully this theory-based reading course will fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge, if not produce something akin to publishable material.

Are you about to call me out for thinking too much about career opportunities?  Do it – I don’t mind.  I’m keeping my eye on the prize on this one..  See you in April.

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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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