Just in time to be the perfect Christmas stocking stuffer, the first print-on-demand books from McMaster University Library’s mass digitization program became available on Monday!

Book lovers can choose between an illustrated first-edition of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol or a first edition of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine signed by the author. You can read the official press release here.

This is the beginning of a joint venture between the Library and Titles, the campus bookstore, which recently purchased an Espresso Book Machine. In the new year we’ll be sending files for all of the books digitized from our collection to Titles along with our other print-on-demand partners. Proceeds will benefit both library and student services at McMaster, and having a print-on-demand partner on campus means local customers can get their books very quickly.

Titles also has an online sales site, so if you’d like copies of our books but can’t make it to the Bookstore, look for them here. A title search will pull each of them up (look for the “replica edition”).

Happy Holidays!

If you went to library school at the height of the internet boom of the late 1990s, you probably heard (repeatedly) as I did that “library as place” was a dead concept. Ten years on, walk into an academic library and you’re likely to notice two things: 1) it’s crowded; 2) it’s noisy. What’s died is not the need for library space but the traditional notion of what library spaces should be. Libraries have gone from bastions of silent, individual labors to more social spaces for group work. (And as someone who avoided as much as possible sitting at a little study carrel in a windowless room listening to the fluorescent lights hum above my head, I’m all in favor.) We’ve built learning/information commons to bring services like writing support and peer tutoring into the library, torn down–or at least lowered–the silos, and added things like laptop-friendly rooms and cafes. This isn’t your father’s library…

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the More than Mortar conference at Wilfrid Laurier University. It was a great day of speakers describing their experiences transforming libraries into spaces for 21st century learners. In her session, Wendie McHenry from the University of Victoria Library talked about the renovation and expansion undertaken on their original 1960s facility (and how many of us wouldn’t like to do that). In discussing future plans, Wendie mentioned that they were looking into creating a “graduate commons”; like a learning commons, but with services geared to graduate students.

It’s a brilliant idea. Much as I like the bustle of the modern academic library and the demise of the shushing librarian, I think we have to admit that many of the new services and transformations we’ve implemented are aimed at a particular clientele: undergraduates. Undergraduates, to be sure, make up the largest single demographic for most academic libraries, and supporting their needs is vital. But it’s also important to remember that they’re not our only user group.

Have we gone so far in turning libraries into undergrad-friendly social spaces that we’re driving out other users? I hope not, but I’m not sure we know the answer to that question. At McMaster, one of the most frequent comments in our Library’s online suggestion box is a request for more silent study space, and we’re identifying ways to address that. We’ve also heard from our Provost in her State of the Academy reports that boosting graduate enrollment is a strategic priority for the University. I suspect McMaster is not unique in either of these. Perhaps the graduate commons is the next step in transforming the academic library. Not a return to the shushing (or the soothing hum of fluorescent tubes) but a space that graduate students can call their own.

If you haven’t yet read Janet Swan Hill’s guest editorial in the latest issue of Library Resources & Technical Services, it’s well worth the time (and yes, that goes for all you non-technical services folks, too).

In it, she traces a path from the “Old Universe” of libraries, where funding and staffing levels were more robust and libraries generally seen as a public good in and of themselves, to the “Alternate Universe” in which we find ourselves today. Janet is a frequent and well-regarded commentator on cataloguing and technical services issues, and makes a number of good points in her commentary. One of the reality-shifts that I think she correctly identifies is a new focus on the “weird”–rare books, archives and manuscripts, audio-visual materials–the unique things that our libraries hold. The irony, as she notes, is the timing:

As the amount of copy [pre-existing catalogue records] we could find through bibliographic networks or other sources increased from 50 percent to 70 percent to 90 percent and above, we decreased our local workforce, and leaned on LC and on the other members of our networks. Maybe we should have taken the staff we saved by using copy, and put it to handling materials that we had not paid much attention to before–such as government publications, maps, special collections, scores, audio recordings, and archives, but for the most part we did not. The realization that we should have done so has come a few decades too late.

Though our staffing and funding levels in technical services areas are not what they once were, the availability of cataloguing copy and vendor services for mainstream materials should have us thinking about the place of our rare and unique materials in the cataloguing workflow. Believe me, I know this is easier said than done… If you’ve followed my blog or those of my colleagues, you know McMaster’s libraries have been in a significant change process for the last couple of years. But even after all this time, I still find myself banging my head against this question. It’s not because I think we need to craft the perfect MARC record for everything (though I do think we should maintain some basic quality standards) or that rare books and archives aren’t important (my background, after all, is special collections). Rather, it’s finding the right balance of time (i.e., people), skills, and services to do both the “weird” and the routine. With the WoGroFuBiCo report’s call for greater emphasis on special and “hidden” resources, I hope this is something the larger cataloguing community can figure out together.

Hill, Janet Swan. “Entering an alternate universe: some consequences of implementing recommendations of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.” Library Resources & Technical Services 52.4 (Oct 2008): 218(9). Available online in Gale Academic OneFile.

We’ve recently loaded McMaster’s Popular Reading Collection on LibraryThing. You can read the official announcement on the Library News blog. Or you can surf your way over to LibraryThing and browse our virtual collection.

Putting the PR collection up on LibraryThing is an effort to be where our users are (or at least where they could be). It’s also another route to evaluative content (ratings, book reviews, tagging, and comments) and recommendations to help them find more books they might enjoy.

This truly is an experiment, which this small, discrete piece of our holdings is well-suited for. I’m curious to see what comments or other feedback we get from the Library’s users.

With three conferences, a vacation, and a visit from the family, it’s been a busy summer. Fortunately, it’s also been quiet the last few weeks, with lots of folks off on vacations of their own, and I’m finding some time to catch up on things.

One of the items that’s been on the back burner for a while is working with OCLC’s Bibliographic Record Notification Service. BRNS, which is included in OCLC’s subscription pricing, supplies a daily file of MARC records with the Library’s holding symbol attached that were updated during the previous day. OCLC provides a variety of options for how inclusive the files should be. Ours at McMaster are limited to monographic items (serials and other continuing resources just get way too complicated, and our e-resources Librarian is also working on the MARCit service, so we don’t want competing record loads…), but is otherwise pretty open. We could limit it to certain kinds of updates, but before doing that I wanted to see what we would get if they just sent everything.

Having now worked with several hundred of these records over the past few weeks, some patterns are emerging:

Changes to basic descriptive elements are fairly rare–Perhaps not surprising. The title is the title, after all, unless there was a typo or other error in the original record (which hopefully someone caught when it was loaded). I am occasionally seeing more complete pagination information in the new record, sometimes the publisher’s name is slightly fuller, or maybe they’ve added another publisher location but, by-and-large, nothing major.

Many of our older records are missing the item dimensions, and this addition has been more frequent. Omitting the dimensions wasn’t really considered significant until we recently tried using the data to support our mass digitization program. Oops. Just one more reminder that what seems trivial today may turn out to be important later.

More extensive subject headings and notes, and the addition of ISBNs and classification numbers are among the other enhancements to our older records.

Indicators, subfields, and 00x coding–Changes here have been more frequent simply because we have so many records with now-obsolete coding in the catalogue. Again, this is one that’s easy to initially dismiss as trivial. For years our OPACs have largely ignored subfields, indicators, and such, passively displaying the contents of catalogue records with little regard for how the information is coded. With Endeca powering our front-facing catalogue at McMaster, we’re now using subfield codes, as well as codes in the 00x fields and a variety of others, to drive faceted browsing. Getting updated records into the system therefore has a direct impact on the user experience by improving the consistency and completeness of the facets.

On the other hand–Sometimes the change IS dramatic. I’ve seen a number of records like this,

LDR 00777Cam 22001817? 45
003 BIBL
005 19940517000000.0
008 940405s ||||onc|||||b|||||||||||eng|d
050 14 $a LB
110 10 $a ONTARIO. $b MINISTRY OF EDUCATION. $b RESEARCH AND EVALUATION BRANCH
245 10 $a SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND NON-ATTENDANCE IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES:
          CL ASSIFICATION OF MALE YOUNG OFFENDERS WITH SCHOOL ATTENDANCE PROBLEMS.
265 $a (7)
300 $a Microfiche
440  0 $a ONTARIO MINISTRY OF EDUCATION RESEARCH AND EVALUATION BRANCH RESEARCH REPORTS. $v 4702
700 10 $a PAUKER, J.D.

which have also been sitting in our catalogue for years, transition instantly to full cataloguing, complete with subject headings and an LC class number in the 050 (again, used for browsing in Endeca).

Content is king–By far the most common update is the addition of contents notes. Even records for items published in the early 20th century are getting this treatment. Certainly not information we would get but for someone at another library deciding it was important for their users and being willing to share with the rest of us. Having the contents listed in the MARC record itself also has the benefit of making them searchable.

It’s relatively painless–Records with OCLC numbers overlay seamlessly with no intervention. Our standard record loader protects certain fields (local notes and such), maintaining them in the updated record. Older records added to the catalogue before we joined OCLC frequently have to be manually merged with the incoming record. But, as these are generally the records most in need of updating, it’s a worthwhile exercise. It’s also not as time-consuming as it might at first appear. I’ve found that I can process a week’s worth of files in a couple of hours, frequently less.

Overall, I’ve found BRNS to be a useful tool for improving the catalogue. We’re not touching every record for every item, just those where an improvement is available. The changes being made to existing records are not undoing or redoing the work of our cataloguers, but adding to it. And finally, most of the updates are not “things only a cataloguer could love” (and I say that as someone who appreciates the nuances of cataloguing), but have direct benefits to the user’s experience.

So, last week we finally finished a project that’s been underway since last summer. Definitely longer than I’d hoped, but it’s the first time we’ve tried this…

We’ve now added records to library catalogue for a collection of books held outside the McMaster library system. The first group to go live in this new venture is the Student Health Education Centre (SHEC), one of McMaster’s student organizations. Read the official announcement here.

Working from a spreadsheet listing basic bibliographic information and ISBNs and using the batch searching feature of OCLC Connexion, we loaded nearly 600 records into the catalogue for SHEC’s lending library. We’re not physically relocating the books to the Library; they’ll stay with the organization, which will be responsible for notifying us of any additions to or removals from the collection and taking care of their own circulation. Links in the public catalogue guide users to SHEC’s website for contact information, location, and opening hours. We’re working with a few other groups at the moment, and with some experience under our belts it shouldn’t take quite so long to get records for their collections loaded.

Why do this, you may be asking.

Most of the books found in SHEC’s collection are titles that the library doesn’t own and is unlikely to buy, so it’s filling a gap in the resources available to our users. It also gives the collection broader exposure, meaning users who didn’t know about SHEC beforehand can still find and use their resources. And, well, just because we should. The Library should be a hub for the information resources available on campus, not just those within its four walls.

We have a great new website for the Popular Reading Collection at McMaster!

The page incorporates a nifty cover art browse feature, which we used to link visitors back to the catalogue record for details about the book and availability. We’ve also included a space for users to recommend books and to write reviews of their favorite (or least favorite) titles. Vivian Lewis, our AUL for Teaching, Learning, and Research, and I will be presenting on the Popular Reading collection at the CLA Annual Conference in May, so watch for more details to come.

Last week, McMaster welcomed a co-op student from the Library Techniques program at Mohawk College.

Nothing unusual about that, we routinely have several co-ops from the MLIS stream at Western. What’s different, though, is that our Mohawk student wanted to learn about cataloguing. We hear frequently about the lack of interest in cataloguing among library students, so it was nice to find one that is. She’ll be with us through the end of May, working with the cataloguers on a variety of different resources as well as spending some time with e-resources and acquisitions.

Welcome, Susan!

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.

So, it’s been two months since I’ve posted anything. I didn’t really intend to be silent all this time, and it’s not for lack of things going on:

Books are here!
We’re in the busiest time of the year, and the New Books shelves are full again! I’m always happy to see the next shipment of books arrive. Both of our major vendors are now delivering pre-processed books, with our barcodes, property stickers, and security strips attached. There’s still a kink we’re trying to work out, and have had to make some inconvenient workflow changes to get around it for now, but overall it’s been very successful.

In the catalogue
We’ve made great progress on a collection of books and pamphlets documenting the Spanish Civil War held by the Division of Archives and Research Collections. The current cataloguing has been sorted and relocated, and we’re trying to keep focused on those books that can benefit from a cataloguer’s attention. We’re getting the gov pubs sorted out, too. A portion of them are still being CODOCed and need to be separated from the LCC cataloguing.

I’ve also recently signed us up for OCLC’s Bibliographic Notification Service. BNS provides files containing records with our holdings attached that have been updated in OCLC. I like the idea of BNS–that we’re putting our time toward improvement by loading fuller or corrected records into the catalogue. We’ve only received a couple of files, though, and I’m still evaluating what we’re getting, how much work it will be, and if it’s worth continuing. One nice thing is the cost: free with our regular OCLC subscription.

Amazon Associates
The Amazon Associates links in the catalogue continue to be heavily used and we’ve just received our first giftcard from the program (which I need to spend).

Popular Reading
I’m working with Vivian Lewis, our AUL for Teaching, Learning, and Research, on a presentation for the 2008 CLA conference about our new popular reading collection. We’ve been looking at circulation statistics for these books, and the amount of use they’re getting is astounding. Watch for new books to be added in the new year.

I have a lovely two weeks off around the holidays, during which I hope to get some reading (and posting?) done. Wish me luck.