 |
 |
A bit circular or hyperbolic? You can't have both. C On Sep 12, 2014, at 12:04 PM, Galen Charlton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi, > > On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Terry Reese <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> You are right Galen, many care. They shouldn't, but they do. A substantial >> set of my research time right now is being spent looking at practical >> applications with bibframe, linked data, and a world without MARC in >> general -- and I can guarantee that any information that we think we are >> creating by carefully ordering fields within our record for display purposes >> isn't going to translation (nor should it). > > I think that's a bit circular. As a perhaps somewhat hyperbolic > statement, in the case of subject headings, catalogers shouldn't care > about field order because any information about degree of "aboutness" > that's implicitly encoded via the order of headings will not > transition to $FUTURE_METADATA because, in part, existing tools either > mangle field order or have done nothing useful with it because ILS > designers haven't cared about it. > > And thus a pattern of fingerpointing can continue! > > Now, there's a slew of assumptions to unpack here and probably little > testing to back up most /any/ view on the matter (though I would be > very happy to be corrected on that point): > > - It is possible to somehow quantify the degree to which a concept > applies to a bibliographic entity > - Such quantification can be done consistently enough by human beings > (or textual analysis? strong AIs?) to be reasonably actionable > - Software exists or can be economically written that does something > with that data. E.g., tweak relevancy ranking? Feed into a > recommendation mill?Something else? > - Whatever gets done with that data can provide a reasonably concrete > benefit to expert users. > - ... to naive users. > - ... to other information systems that have reason to consume library metadata. > - Even if there is no useful way that aboutness-qualification can be > used for search, it is useful for displays. > - Existing MARC data exists of sufficiently quality where > aboutness-qualification can be usefully extracted. > - There exists any way to identify such MARC records. (Of course, > there's no way to tell just by looking at a given MARC record; the > only criteria that immediately comes to mind to identify such records > is possibly who cataloged them). > - There exist people willing and able to test any of these assumptions... > - ... who will be paid or otherwise appropriately compensated. > >> There are big and exciting things around what we can do with library >> metadata and lately I've been feeling like the time and effort we spend on >> this level of insanity as akin to tilting at windmills. > > Channeling my AUTOCAT side, I can imagine a rejoinder to the effect > that there are big and exciting things that could have been done with > MARC data that software developers never acted on. > > My Code4Lib side immediately jumps in and says: "but you catalogers > never clearly articulated what you were up to with your long lists of > cataloging rules in a way that made sense to us developers". > > Let's just say my internal debates can be fun. :) > > Seriously, I don't disagree that that there are bigger metadata fish > to fry than what's represented by the MARC field order question, and I > certainly agree that there big and exciting things that we can be > doing. > > However, I think there's also a history of bad communication between > catalogers and programmers that is getting in the way of moving > forward (and don't get me wrong, Terry - your efforts have been HUGE > in keeping conversation going). > > Regards, > > Galen > -- > Galen Charlton > Manager of Implementation > Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts > email: [log in to unmask] > direct: +1 770-709-5581 > cell: +1 404-984-4366 > skype: gmcharlt > web: http://www.esilibrary.com/ > Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org & > http://evergreen-ils.org