The first thing that caught my attention in the Witten readings is that he mentions that retrieval in brick and mortar libraries is more powerful than in virtual ones, thanks in no small part to the physical organization of books, which is often by call number or author (47). But then again, he also mentions (55) that digital libraries have no need to “shelve” based on subject. The discussion of what goes into a bibliographic structure and a bibliography is useful.
Much of chapter five strikes me as a rehash of things that were discussed in LIS2001 – Organizing Information, but it’s always good to read them again, and since that course has now merged with 2002 – Retrieving Information, perhaps this course becomes the one with the best overview of MARC and Dublin Core. As is the case with other readings,
As a cataloger, I found Gilland a little frustrating. The point of a catalog is to help users find something, but she seems to reinterpret metadata from “data about data” to “data for the sake of data” throughout the article. Anybody else get that impression?
Nonetheless, Tables 2 and 3 concerning the types of metadata and their uses are excellent resources I’ll be referring to for a long time. She’s also got a great quote towards the end of the article: “Metadata is like interest: it accrues over time. To stretch the metaphor further, wise investments generate the best return on intellectual capital. Carefully crafted metadata results in the best information management—and the best end-user access—in both the short and the long term.”
Finally, none of this week’s readings problematized Library of Congress Subject Headings, instead taking them at face vlaue. Anyone who catalogs, tags, or adds metadata to an item/object should definitely take a look at these resources, which do an excellent job of exposing some of the biases behind LCSHs.
No comments:
Post a Comment