The Library of Congress recently announced “that it will cease to provide controlled series access in the bibliographic records that its catalogers produce.” This has created quite a tizzy in some circles, with most of the tizzying on the order of:
* But series work is important!
* LC is supposed to provide it for us!
* LC didn’t ask us ahead of time what we thought of this idea!
Some librarians on the Council list have even suggested that librarians talk to their legislators about this on Legislative Day (exactly how, or why, no one could say–can you see series cataloging making its way to the Supreme Court, with library lawyers arguing in Biblish about controlled fields?). There is even a petition–you’ll have to find it on your own.
* But series work is important!
After a few days of this, I asked what I thought was a reasonable question: how important is series work? Where’s the real evidence that series work improves access to users? I heard a lot of anecdotal testimonials, but not much else. Then a cataloger pointed me to this report on access, and its appendix.
However–and correct me if you read this report differently–the main body of the report provides anecdotal support for series work, while the appendix demonstrates that hardly anyone ever uses it. When I pointed this out, I was told that things had changed so much since the report was done that series report was indeed very valuable now for users. When I read that, I could feel my eyebrows hit the top of my forehead.
Is that the best evidence we can gin up for the value of series work? If so, then perhaps LC is right after all–it’s not needed. I’m not sure of that, but I would need better evidence of user behavior and search outcomes before I concluded that series work added value to the records commensurate with the work (read: expense) required to provide it.
* LC is supposed to provide it for us!
The Library of Congress had not outlawed series work (surely THAT case would make it to the Supreme Court); they just said they, LC, wouldn’t do it any more–which created a firestorm of indignation. But no one has explained to me why this is LC’s job in the first place.
Sometimes we treat the Library of Congress as if it were the de facto national library, but it isn’t funded anywhere near that level. Personnel costs are rising all over. And cataloging is expensive work, at least as we do it now, in this first decade of the 21st century. I believe in metadata and structure; truly I do. But traditional cataloging has turned into an ornate behemoth far too cumbersome and expensive for the outcomes it provides, particularly in the world of finite results. (Peter Murray’s comments on my earlier post sum up these issues better than I can.)
I’m inclined to give LC the benefit of the doubt that it alone best knows where the sucking money holes are, and where the cuts will do the least damage. Libraries that want to do this work: don’t let anyone stand in your way.
* LC didn’t ask us ahead of time what we thought of this idea!
Well, of course they didn’t do that. This was an internal fiscal decision. Not only that, I’m sure (and I’m sure they were sure) that the answer would be “we want series work.” (I can just see the committees and the subcommittees and the task forces, each one meeting face to face at ALA for the next three years, finally reporting out that–while its value to the user couldn’t actually be proved–series work was important, and LC should keep doing it.)
This year’s MPOW survey exercised a modest amount of “radical trust” in asking users their opinions about budget-plumping ideas such as online advertising (which a surprising number of people endorsed). But if a fiscal option wasn’t really on the table, I didn’t offer it. The survey offered several opportunities for free-form comments, and you might or might not be discouraged to learn that some working librarians felt that in lieu of even something as mild as Google Adsense ads on search results, MPOW should do all of its work with volunteers, fire that overpriced and unneeded director, let the team shrink due to “attrition” (as if a 50% budget cut wasn’t attrition enough), use donated server space (been there, done that, and I can tell you how expensive “free” is), and, my favorite–and mentioned by a handful–charge fees to websites to be added to MPOW. I can see the tagline now: “Websites we have strongarmed.”
I am willing to be persuaded that LC’s decision will hurt the user, but even if that is the case, what else should LC give up? Maybe they can recruit volunteers to do series work; maybe they could turn off the air conditioning. I’m sure a survey would yield creative results. But in the end, perhaps they are making a decision we should all learn to live with.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Saison du Mont, Again (Dave II) - 2009
- SEFLIN Presentation, Links and all that - 2007
- Journalist hearts librarian; and, new feeds - 2007
- Why School Is Good For Me - 2005
- FRL Spotlight Review: O.k., o.k., I Like Wolfe - 2005
As a career cataloger who has now ended up in systems work, I was probably a latecomer to the news about LC dropping SARS (sounds like a disease when put that way, doesn’t it?). I know that the whole 440 vs. 490/8XX debate has driven copy catalogers, students, and many professionals nuts for years. However, I do see a lot of merit in series authority, and I’m a bit disappointed that LC is going to drop this.
First–I should mention that LC has been known to “cut” things from catalog records when they are overwhelmed. Usually, the juvenile records get their annotations cut when the backlog gets too big. While I’m not fond of dropping information from records, these annotations are really a nicety that are not critical to record retrieval.
However–series authority is something else. It is a means of collocating all works within a series under a single heading. I’m not sure I understand why series is not considered important. Maybe it depends on the type of library we’re dealing with. Certainly Children and Young Adult/Teen librarians will be impacted by this, as well as most librarians doing reader’s advisory. Given all of the series authority work that I’ve done, I would wager that most YA non-fiction, many juvenile and YA fiction, and a lot of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery books are part of “authoritative” series. I have also spent my time on both the reader’s advisory AND children’s desk. I would bet that at least twice during each of my shifts, someone would ask for the latest book in a popular series, or only be able to identify the book by the series name. When students come in looking for research paper material on social issues, it is helpful to know what YA series books cover those issues (Opposing viewpoints, for example).
Perhaps this is just more anecdotal evidence. But I’m not sure what kind of justification you are looking for. As a cataloger, I have always believed in providing information that is going to help the patron find the item. And authority work is important, because it keeps you from having to guess exactly how a particular cataloger decided to enter that series name–it should all be in one place, with cross references. I’ve heard some argue that there is keyword searching, but that can easily put us back into the land of too much vs. too little in terms of search results.
On the issue of authority work, and LC as a national library: as far as catalogers are concerned, LC IS the national library of the United States. It may not be well funded, but it’s what we’ve got. Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to do things exactly the way LC does–after all, LC catalogs for LC primarily. In fact, the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations tell us explicitly that we DON’T have to follow their rules, at least as far as AACR2 interpretation goes. But LC does sponsor the name authority and subject authority programs (NACO and SACO) for the United States. LC is not the only one entering authorities–they train catalogers from sites that are likely to enter a large amount of original headings (the number is at least 50 or 100 new headings per year, I can’t remember which it is–as you may guess, our library is not one of these sites). You probably know that already. But the point is that LC is not the only ones doing authority work, although they do oversee it.
If LC is overwhelmed with series authority work, maybe they should consider farming that out as well? I would guess that this is a NACO function, but most NACO sites are academic libraries. They are not going to handle things like YA and Juvenile materials. It might be worth their while to train some public library catalogers in NACO, to handle popular series work. I don’t know enough about how this is handled by LC and it’s cooperative programs, so I could be off base here. But it is a thought.
In short, I am uneasy with LC’s decisions. Decisions to cut content, which look good in the short term, end up coming back to bite us in the long term. The changes to AACR that are supposed to incorporate the FRBR model are a good example of this. I’m speaking specifically of uniform titles. Many of our libraries hate them–who the heck will look for the Diary of Anne Frank under “Achterhuis” in a public library anyway? So, many libraries just deleted these. But now, we have learned that the collocation of multiple “manifestations” of a “work” are supposed to be done by uniform title. So, this is going to make a lot more work for us if we want a FRBR-model catalog in the future (and many public libraries want it desperately–no one wants to go through 12 pages of bib records looking for an available copy of Moby Dick). Who knew?
Before her passing in the late nineties, Susan Swartzburg, the great Preservation Librarian at Rutgers, told me that more materials are lost through bad and/or incomplete cataloging. She was referring to rare books and manuscripts, but I think it has a broader application.
Just my two cents–
Brigid Burke
Application Librarian
Morris County (N.J.) Office of Library Information Systems
AND
Part-Time Lecturer in Cataloging and Classification at Rutgers University
brigid.burke@mainlib.org
“Perhaps this is just more anecdotal evidence. But I’m not sure what kind of justification you are looking for.”
In part, I’m looking for rigorous analysis of catalog search logs. Without that, we’re just guessing.
I’d love to see some good research on use of series, by staff as well as users, but I don’t think it really the issue.
It seems to me that what is the real issue is how the decision was made, and what LC’s role should be in managing and making available the name, series, subject and classification files that were created partially by LC, but also by librarians at many other institutions. Some years ago, when I was Cornell’s Authorities Librarian, our statistics showed that something like 20% of the series contributions outside of LC were made by Cornell. Shouldn’t Cornell and other NACO libraries with heavy investments in these files, be consulted at some point?
I think the case could be made that these files do not belong to LC, but to all the participating institutions in the programs that invested in creating and maintaining them.
Unfortunately, there has been little discussion about the future of these files, and how decisions about them will be made to support not just traditional cataloging, but other forms of metadata creation libraries are exploring.
I believe that the question is only peripherally whether LC will continue to contribute, and on what basis. Right now, access to these files are limited pretty much to those who buy them from CDS, or use them as part of bespoke vendor applications of one sort or another. What happens as libraries move into the metadata world? These files are not currently accessible to web applications, though they’re fully encoded and the potential is clearly there to do it. What is clear is that if anything good is to happen, LC needs to take a true leadership position, not a “we can’t afford it” position.
These files are a community resource, and should be managed as such. The unilateral, no-discussion decision that LC made about discontinuing their contributions to series authorities bodes ill for continuation of the important agreements around community standards and shared effort that has so far been one of the great strengths of libraryland. When this spirit of cooperation is replaced by “every library for itself” just as enormous challenges loom for every one of those libraries, is it any wonder that lots of fear and trepidation is expressed?
So, let’s see if we can shift the discussion a bit, and figure out how to avoid losing these common assets!
“I’d love to see some good research on use of series, by staff as well as users, but I don’t think it really [is] the issue. It seems to me that what is the real issue is how the decision was made, and what LC’s role should be in managing and making available the name, series, subject and classification files that were created partially by LC, but also by librarians at many other institutions.”
—
How valuable this work is plays very strongly into this issue. The only evidence-driven data I’ve seen on use of series indicates it plays a trivial role at best in the user experience. If it can’t be proved to be used, or useful, then in the abstract, series work would seem to be very low priority, and in the concrete, LC’s decision makes sense.
Let’s set out the distinctions among LC’s new approach to series work. LC isn’t going to REMOVE any series work. But it isn’t going to PROVIDE new series work or MAINTAIN existing series work.
Has anyone asked LC for these files? Maybe they don’t want them at all. Perhaps the libraries that feel these files improve the search experience (and I emphasize the word “feel,” because so far all the arguments for series work have been entirely faith-based) can agree to take them over as a cooperative effort.
I also disagree on who gets consulted in this decision. The term “consult” in this context seems to mean allowing other institutions to defer or prevent LC’s own financially-driven decisions.
Cataloging is in crisis. It needs to prove its worth even as it rapidly becomes more expensive, more intricate, and less significant to user outcomes (yes, including “staff”). If you think cataloging is important, I suggest a different tactic: prove its worth.
This is an interesting discussion. The reaction I’ve heard from most catalogers runs along the following lines: LC needs to do whatever LC needs to do; however, this decision has far wider-ranging implications than what happens in LC’s individual catalog because of how the bibliographic utilities treat LC bibliographic records. There was no advance discussion of how this decision would actually be implemented from a technical perspective in the bibliographic utilities.
LC made the decision to discontinue series authority work without considering the technical implications of doing so in a supposedly cooperative cataloging environment. It’s fine for LC to stop doing series authority work if that’s what they need to do. But to stop doing series authority work without giving the utilities warning that they’ll need to rewrite load profiles and without giving the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) time to discuss and decide how we need to change our use of and approach to LC records in the shared national database is not exactly the action of a ‘cooperative’ library, in my opinion.
Tina, true. My guess is they didn’t want to tip their hand. As it stands, the utilities… ah, utility? 😉 … can take advantage of LC’s decision to wait until July 1 to implement the change. That’s not much time, at least in LibraryLand, but it’s better than a hole in the head…
I had a couple of comments on this issue, primarily for K.G. Schneider. It’s possible someone might show convincing evidence, based on transaction logs or other things, that continuing series authority work isn’t worth the trouble. But I do object to your making light of the petition to Congress requesting that the issue be discussed further. LC is Congress’s library: how could congressional oversight of this matter do any harm?
I won’t rehash all the points I made at such length on the thread about Gorman’s statement on education (accessible above under Karen’s “on my earlier post” link). Read them there if you are interested. It may really be that we, or especially LC, have reached a place where we can’t afford to do all the things we’ve been doing. But the main thing I want to emphasize is that if that’s so, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we don’t NEED them anymore, as the Calhoun and California reports claim. Anecdotal or not, there’s plenty of evidence that providing series authority control is good IF YOU CAN DO IT. If we fool ourselves into thinking that digitization and keyword searches are going to do everything we need, then we’re not facing the reality.
You spoke above about arguments being based too much on hope rather than evidence. Well, I would argue the same is true of Calhoun and the California report. And as I said on that other thread, one of the dangers of putting so much emphasis on statistics, such as transaction logs, is that the real underlying issues get lost in the details sometimes.
Perhaps we need to make an all-out campaign for better funding. I’ll admit, I’m not a grant writer or, in general, a person who is good at getting others to give up any of their money for my causes. But at least facing the economic basis of this crisis helps us to focus on reality. There are others in the library world with more talent in the area of fundraising.
And that is something you have to give Calhoun credit for: she urges that all librarians get proficient in grant writing. Her report is very good on economic aspects of cataloging, as opposed to content aspects. Now, personally, I think it’s probably a mistake to expect all librarians to be grant writers or fund raisers, and I think that manifests once again the narrowing of libraries’ prospects that she envisions. Basically, the sense in her report is that libraries are about to go out of existence and have to struggle to stay relevant. I think that’s a real premature judgment, for the reasons I expressed on the other thread. I think we’ve got “lots of life in us,” and there’s plenty of room for librarians to have different kinds of talents and strengths. But you have to give her credit for recognizing the place of economics.