LC has now released the final version of the Working Group’s report, so I suppose it’s fitting that I’m finally getting my thoughts on the draft posted. Some day I’ll be caught up. Probably when I’m retired…

Karen Schneider has described the report as a document “at war with itself.” I tend to agree with her that it’s a bit of the old, a bit of the new, and some ‘let’s wait and see,’ but I think that’s reflective of where cataloguing in general is at the moment. Certainly, I find myself firmly in the middle. I don’t think it’s sustainable (or necessary) for every library to check every record that comes into the catalogue. But I’m also not convinced that abandoning all authorities and controlled vocabulary and turning our catalogues into a Google-esque keyword free-for-all is the best way to serve our users.

So what’s to like about this report?

Spread the Work Around

Just accept it
Many of us in cataloguing management roles have already decided that the old paradigm of “LC records are good, everyone else’s records are suspect” is no longer applicable. We need to rely less on LC and trust each other more. The PCC libraries, to name just one example, produce great amounts of high quality cataloguing. If we all stopped proofing PCC cataloguing and just accepted it as accurate, how much time would we free up for areas that really need our attention?

Make collaboration easier
For those records that we do verify, make it easier to share the corrections or upgraded cataloguing with the whole community. OCLC has a major role to play here as our biggest bibliographic utility. Many of us, my own unit at McMaster included, are not Enhance libraries. We make corrections or updates when necessary in our local catalogue but sending them to OCLC requires a cumbersome correction form, often followed by verification. Care to guess how often we send those reports? Much as I would like us to contribute more, the process just takes too long.

Look outside the library
One of the report’s major recommendations is to capture and reuse as much bibliographic data as early in the process as possible. Specifically, they advocate getting data from publishers. I like it, but I also see potential problems. For this to survive in practice, we need to work with publishers to standardize data. Does that mean that we try to push them away from BISAC or BIC subject codes and into LCSH? No. It does potentially mean creating crosswalks between those thesauri so that resources can be collocated. It also means convincing them that supplying a record where, for example, the title data doesn’t match the actual resource really isn’t useful. Neither is having five or six (or even two) different forms of the creator’s name.

A roadblock I see here is that we’re already getting off on the wrong foot with this approach. Anyone who has followed the discussion of all the Encoding Level 3 records being dumped into WorldCat will need no further explanation. For those of you not familiar with this particular brouhaha, suffice it to say they generally make starting with a blank workform look attractive.

There is no “typical user”

Hallelujah! After seeing many a future of cataloguing/libraries report describe “the user’s” needs, I’m glad to see WoGroFuBiCo state explicitly that there is more than one category. “The User” in these reports seems always to be Jane Doe undergraduate for whom anything remotely relevant is good enough as long as it’s online. My own experience on our Reference desk is that this simply isn’t the case. Undergraduates often have very specific topics in mind and are even willing to use real books. And certainly faculty and graduate students have in-depth and specific research needs that libraries must be able to meet.

A few stumbles:

Impact of increased efficiency

The report postulates that “greater efficiencies will enable libraries to redirect effort from enhancing the cataloging of mainstream materials to other activities that contribute to bibliographic control.” Specifically, they cite more authority work and special collections cataloguing. Omitted is what seems to me another likely outcome–reductions in technical services staffing and resources. No, I’m not suggesting we go back to typing and filing cards in order to boost our numbers, but their read of the impact is definitely the optimistic one. Greater efficiencies in routine cataloguing won’t produce greater amounts of original cataloguing unless library leaders support that goal.

What to do with LCSH?

Yet again we’re tackling this one. The usual grumbles about LCSH are all here: it’s big (yes, it’s a large, multidisciplinary thesaurus); vocabulary often doesn’t match common usage (honest question: how many thesauri do completely match common terminology?); it takes time to apply (true enough); “novice users” don’t understand it (again, true enough, but how many novice users do LCSH searching and is this sufficient reason to take it away from expert users?).

What I find curious here is that the report seems to shy away from authority records after supporting them up to this point. Authority records are fine to disambiguate an author’s name but not to guide users from common terms to LCSH terms? And since we’re talking about less reliance on LC anyway, can’t the rest of us add the references necessary to accomplish this to authority records?

The desired outcome of making LCSH terminology “more current and consistent” is a good one. It assumes, though, that we will all retrospectively apply the changes to existing bibligraphic records. Failing to make retrospective changes will produce a catalogue that is anything but “current and consistent.” Indeed, the results of subject searching would be misleading as to the library’s resources if vocabulary changes are made without modifying older records or guiding users between terms via authority control.

And then there’s RDA. I confess, I haven’t read the RDA drafts in a while. Ultimately, my fear is that the division over RDA will result in less standardization of description, not more. After all, the JSC can write it but can’t compel anyone to use it. Here’s hoping that further discussion will produce a standard we can accept, if not one that we love.