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About ReadWriteLib

Metadata and ETD Coordinator at OhioLINK. UM SI grad. Loves librarianship, technology, and creativity. Enjoys cooking, traveling, reading, and knitting.

Rolling out RDA today: Keep calm and ask a librarian!

01 Apr

If it’s April 1st, it’s officially RDA cataloging rules day! At least for LC and OCLC, but don’t worry because AACR2 is still allowed and hybrid records can begin and live on for a little while. Users probably won’t notice the switch yet if they are anyone else, including other librarians, freak out just remember to Keep Calm and Ask a Librarian who knows. 😀 This Spring poster is from the awesome Online Northwest Conference at OSU in Corvallis, OR, back in February. Maybe they will have more at annual…I’m just glad I have one. (It’s hanging in my cube behind my computer so this was the best picture I could get for now.)

Springer librarian poster

 
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Posted by on April 1, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

There’s a Subject Heading for That!?: Coenobita clypeatus as pets

25 Mar

I stumbled upon this subject heading while cataloging animal drawing books, which I’ve seen more than I care to count recently. Okay, this exact sub. head. wasn’t used but the pattern was in the record. Thankfully the LC Authority File explains that Coenobita clypeatus (row 87 in the screenshot) is the hermit crab that most stores sell. My sister and I had a few–one to latched onto my palm, though didn’t do any actual damage; that’s about my only memory of those things.

LC Authority File search results (portion!)

The subject heading pattern, as you can tell, is “_____ as pets”. Sounds straight forward and your mind is probably generating a few as you read this. Here’s the fascinating part…there are currently 454 unique headings, with several variants that aren’t authorized headings. Log on to the LC Authority FIle to see the full range by typing “as pets” in the search box and selecting “Keyword Authorities (All)” before clicking “Begin Search”. This is a new way to search for me that I will keep at the ready for pesky topics in the future!

LC Authority File search box

From African bullfrogs as pets to Worms as pets bookend the rather intriguing list, though they sound like they could be pets compared to others. Preceding worms is Wood lice (Crustaceans) as pets that look eerily similar to cockroaches. Cephalopoda, cheetahs, Grant’s rhinoceros beetles, kinkajous, boas and pythons of various types, all sorts of lizards including the Hydrosaurus, and there’s even a catch-all for insects besides some specific ones with their own headings.

My favorite is Basilisks (Reptiles) as pets since all that I could think of was Harry Potter and the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Seriously, typing in basilisk into Wikipedia brings up the mythological creature by default, and offers up a tiny disambiguation link at the very top of the entry. This showcases another inconsistency within LC subject headings: common names and scientific names are randomly used when setting up a heading rather than preferring one over the other and making a reference to the other in the heading.

LC Authority File Basilisks (reptiles) as pets

Oddly enough, skunks as pets doesn’t shock me because I have looked after a pet skunk, holding it like a kitten as it squirmed to in attempts to escape and run around. Much like ferrets, some of her glands had been removed. Actually very cute, especially since she was still young and thus small.

Now before the kids, or adults, in the library get very excited about all of these new subject headings that you can show them to use, obviously not all are real pets. The easiest example from this list is the classic dinosaurs as pets, made famous by the 1958 book listed in the record.

LC Authority File Dinosaurs as petsI hate to disappoint but sometimes life is like that. That heading is only used in fiction, at least as of 2013. However, can I interest you in a degu?

 
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Posted by on March 25, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Online Northwest Conference 2013

19 Feb

IMG_0059

Seattle almost four weekends ago and Corvallis/Portland almost two weekends ago! 2013 is already becoming the year of libraries conferences in the Flynn house. Steve presented on screencasts, and there were lots of interesting sessions for me to attended so we both attended Online Northwest this year.

I doubt I’ll ever do conferences so close together again–one weekend at home in between then gone again. It’s a bit more frantic, and number of flights back-to-back than I prefer. But, never say never I suppose.

Online Northwest Conference offers regional librarians from any type of library a small yet robust conference to attend or contribute as a speaker, either a longer session or a lightening talk. Also, a handful of vendors were there as well, including Springer who gave away “Keep calm and ask a librarian” posters! (I’ll take a picture soon of mine and add it here!)

Though only a one-day event, it was jam-packed! The day began with a light breakfast and registration, then keynote followed by three sessions with short breaks in between, lunch, another session then lightening talks. Each session time had four different choices with a good variety of topics. Though no overall theme, one yearly attendee said there is an change of focus each year depending on what is submitted, so watching the program ahead of time lets you know what will be covered. If we lived closer, this would be a fun one to go to regularly, with about 200 people or so attending.

Let me give you a quick run-down of how my day went:

Keynote speaker: Virginia Eubanks, professor of women’s studies, University at Albany SUNY
Eubanks works with women in poverty to foster social justice and empowerment. She focuses on social justice activism in the everyday of the women as well as the movement beginning in the United States, having seen it take over in other countries. Though not a librarian, she struck a cord with her call to action for us as a society to help better people’s lives by meeting them at their needs, interest, and abilities.

Session 1: Accounting for Taste: An eTextbook Experiment – Cheryl Cuillier and 
Jason Dewland, University of Arizona Libraries
Cuillier and Dewland walked through their part in the integration of an etextbook in an economics course. The library, in general, has a hard time finding its place in providing ebooks and access, especially in the classroom. However, these librarians worked to incorporate the etextbook in the course management system in addition to providing reference and research services. They analyzed the use and effectiveness of the etextbook based on the stats at the end of the course.

Session 2: Science is a Moving Target: eScience, Team Science, The Data Deluge and More – Jackie Wirz, Oregon Health & Science Univ.
Amanda Whitmire, Oregon State University
Wirz and Whitmire, PhD students, discussed the science research cycle and how librarians should approach and help scientists in their research at all steps. Basically, the ebb and flow of the whole process is more malleable than most of us realize. Rather than just the typical research places in which librarians usually help out, they argue that data management and even very simple authority control and concepts are valuable offerings that scientist don’t realize we can offer. Also, librarians could help some scientists with finding and writing/preparing grants.

Session 3: Building Oregon: Leveraging Mobile Technologies to Present Digital Collections – Evviva Weinraub and Laurie Bridges, Oregon State University Libraries
Weinraub and Bridges shared their insights in the struggles and setbacks with the creation of a mobile website using the Building Oregon historical photo collection. Though still in the pre-production phase due to funding hold-ups, a previous campus walking tour app they made helps inform their plans for this project. I will definitely watch for the release, and any progress beforehand, of this mobile website.

Session 4 : Ditching Textbooks: The OER Faculty Fellowship at Lane Community College –
Jen Klaudinyi, Lane Community College
Klaudinyi covered online educational resources replacing physical textbooks at her community college. In order to save the students money and encourage the faculty to use open access and electronic resources, the library set up a program to help faculty take their courses completely online. As tangible incentives, the faculty earned iPads when they switched to using OER for their courses.

Lightening talks
These five-minute presentations packed lots of information and ideas into engaging, brief lessons and takeaways.

From 3×5 to LCD: Considerations and How-tos for Conducting Online Card Sort Studies
 – Emily Ford, Portland State University
Ford described how she used the Internet for a card sort activity with part-time, distance students.

Flipping the Distance Classroom 
- Amy Hofer, Portland State University
Hofer offered her suggestions for providing a flipped classroom, by fronting the lessons and homework before lecture, from her experience high school students.

We Ditched our Kindles and You Can, Too!
 – Uta Hussong-Christian, Oregon State University
Hussong-Christian shared the challenges faced and new plan moving forward at their library in using other tablets and apps for check-out to users.

TechShowcase: A Case Study of eReaders on Display – Nate Pedersen, Deschutes Public Library
Pedersen talked about the technology petting zoo on wheels at his library that allows users to test out multiple tablets and ask questions.

All About Word Stemming and Why You Should Care – Caleb Tucker-Raymond, (affiliation not listed)
Tucker-Raymond called attention to stemming in search terms, honing in on something most of us know intuitively, and encouraged more use and teaching of stemming.

Assessing a Library Situation: Using Google Forms Surveys to Assess What People Think, What They Want, What They Know, and What They Think They Know
 – Kim Read, Clark College
Read showed her use of Google Forms to gather and analyze feedback from students before, during, and after instruction sessions.

The Dog & Pony Show (AKA Demonstrating the Value of Your Library)
 – Lorie Vik, Eugene Public Library
Vik described her work in incorporating their public library into the greater community by reaching out to local businesses to help with their research needs by using the library’s resources and librarian’s skills and knowledge.

 

The hashtag #onc13 was well used throughout the day, if you want to search Twitter and see what’s out there. I re-Tweeted some presentation slides from the last session since the infographics room filled up early! ONC has there own handle as well, @OnlineNW, so follow them and be prepared for next year!

After the conference, we spent the weekend hanging out in Portland, which has a different feel than Seattle but also great. Of course, a couple of hours in Powell’s was a must and I kept myself from bringing home any more than one book. (Phew!)

Perhaps by June I’ll be well-rested to take on ALA Annual in Chicago. Let’s not think that far ahead right now, though. Sadly, it’s very much winter still as Ann Arbor got a dusting of snow today and blustery winds. End of June in Chicago, huh…

 
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Posted by on February 19, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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There’s a subject heading for that!?: exquisite corpse (game)

05 Feb

First of all, exquisite corpse (game) is an amazing subject heading in so many ways. It is beautiful, eerie, horrific, bizarre, but most of all intriguing.

I stumbled upon this gem while verifying an author name in the LC catalog. Initially, because of its qualifier “(game)”, a childhood game from playground days called (Light as a Feather) Stiff as a Board popped into my mind. That game is played in the movie The Craft, which is likely where everyone picked it up from. This made me think of other odd games we played, including Sandman (in this article), Bloody Mary, and a phantom limb game–all of which are explained quite well in this Cracked.com article. Takes me back! That’s what we did before computers and cellphones.

So what is the exquisite corpse (game)? It’s a parlor game that was not scary, believe-it-or-not:

LC Authorities record for exquisite corpse (game)

LC Authorities record for exquisite corpse (game)

As the Authorities scope note explains, this is a written or drawn game in which a single sheet of paper is passed around and everyone contributes a portion without seeing what the previous people did. After reading that, I realized that I had played this game in college with my writers’ group, and a llama played a major role in that shared story we created. The broader sub. head. is surrealist games, which unfortunately has no other narrower terms besides this one, and not much description itself.

Since the game was created and originally played in Paris, cadavre exquis (game) is noted as a 450. Two citations in the Wikipedia page explain the origin of the game’s name: “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine” was the first sentence from the game, of course written in French. Now the llama in the story from my game doesn’t seem as silly. In 2012, a film called The Exquisite Corpse Project takes this game into movie making and is a collaboration of five people. I’m interested in seeing it now.

Let’s check the LC Catalog for use figures:

LC Catalog subject browse search for exquisite corpse

LC Catalog subject browse search for exquisite corpse

Quite readily, we see that there isn’t much use nor many derivatives of the sub. head. with delimiters. There are four total hits–two with the plain heading and two with exhibitions tacked on as the descriptor. But this makes sense, since the game has physical products made and could be put up for display. It would be cool to revive this parlor game and then create our own exhibition. Think of what could be written or drawn with all the mobile phones out there! It’s Draw Something plus texting, and then put on display–or not. I bet a lot of NSFW creations would arise, though the Wikipedia article already chose a great drawing to display for that. Someone could have at least included a written example or two as well.

Have you ever played this game, with or without knowing its true name? Any other bizarre kids games that I didn’t mention here already? Want to start the new exquisite corpse craze with me? We could take over Twitter! I’m @ReadWriteLib, if you are wondering.

 
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Posted by on February 5, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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ALA MidWinter 2013 Movement Monday

29 Jan

Today was about moving forward and ensuring that the future is better and more useful and effective than anything now or in the past. A refinement, if you will.

That said, my day began early with the 8:30 session PVLR (Publisher/Vendor/Library Relations) Interest Group Forum that focused on the topic of enhance ebooks. This is of great interest to me since I catalog ebooks, and have seen a few “enhanced” with links out to other material but that’s it as far as enhanced. Jake Zarnegar from Silverchair Information Systems gave the most comprehensive explanation of the myriad of different types and levels of ebooks, along with the some challenges and benefits. Susie Stroud from Credo Reference demoed their enhanced ebooks, which are more like interactive websites with immediately playable embedded videos and interlinking to other relevant articles and research materials. It’s a great way to think about content and the learners, meeting them where they are and chunking the information up (you’ll see the next tie-in shortly!). Nancy Gibbs from Duke University Library focused on the challenges of faculty by-in and how hard it is to get the library involved. On her campus, different professors created one-off ebooks solely for a class. One professor had the grad students create the content to be bundled at the end as an ebook but then the professor merely deleted it at the end of the semester, finding no future value in it and wanting the next year to do their own, possibly on a different topic. Even for just preservation reasons if nothing else, how can they convince a faculty member to involve the library to save a copy if the professor himself doesn’t value the end result of the students creating an enhanced ebook? It’s tragic but if they create the project on their own and don’t include the library, it’s a huge hurdle to get involved later on in the process, or at the end; this is something to work on. Andrea Twiss-Brooks from the University of Chicago science libraries discussed more of the hurdles with enhanced ebooks, concerning use, pricing, and support. Ebook apps, while a great idea and cool, aren’t sustainable for libraries and check-out or reserve shelf, etc. Questions around ILL, upkeep, cataloging, and acquisitions were also discussed. While it brought up more thinking points than it resolved, this session truly stimulated the room and myself into considering what is out there, what’s to come, and what do we do about it?

My final session of ALA was Taking a New Look at Training and Learning that centered around small group discussion that filtered back into the larger group. People from Web Junction facilitated the event and kept an agenda and plan going to keep us in the time limits. But with all the great ideas and comments, the time literally flew by, with most of us wanting to continue on talking. What do learners need? What motivates people? How do we apply these lessons to training to better serve the learners? Despite not teaching or supervising in my cataloging role, I have taken webinars for software and helped teach my grandparents and parents about the iPad, and my uncle about his Windows laptop. From these experiences, I could relate and project these take aways into future situations to ensure the best learning environment for me or others. I dropped into this session last minute and loved it, learning a lot too. That’s what ALA is great for an can be really fun–stepping outside your usual bounds and seeing what you can learn and apply later. Ideas abound!

Lastly, I walked the exhibit hall one last time. Besides following Steve around on his booth business, I peeled away to explore on my own. One of the best stops was at the LC booth. At the RDA update, Beecher Wiggins discussed the training that they are wrapping up for all of their staff, including overseas. At the Learning session, one lady asked me about assessment tools for those RDA modules online–yes, she was a cataloger too! I didn’t know but thought it a great questions so I headed over to LC to get an answer. No one there could give me one at that point so they put me in touch with a couple of people in their training office, so hopefully in the next week or so I’ll hear back from them. Being able to talk in person can really get the ball rolling, if not work things out.

And since I avoided all of the swag, I just couldn’t resist those darn cute mini read tote bags and a call number tea mug!

ALA tote and mug

And, of course, our shot glass for each new city that we visit.

Seattle shot glass

 
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Posted by on January 29, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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ALA MW 2013 Successful Sunday

28 Jan

What a day! So much for taking it easy and not having so much on my list to do today. I ended conferencing for 12 hours, staying busy and engaged nearing the whole time. My plan was to be finished at 4 but things fall into place that you have to roll with sometimes!

This morning began with a change of pace. My mother-in-law @Lorna_Librarian works ILL at the College of Wooster so Steve (@sxflynn) and I went to meet Rapid ILL to find out information for her. They were at a hotel as their home base rather than being on the exhibit floor since they are so specialized, serving only academic librarians. The service and support that they is amazing. Their goal is to provide ILL within 24 hours, and their current average was 13 hours! Most of that is due to electronic resources that some are nearly instantly filled but even print versions usually have a quick turn around. Though they are a small organization that is inside of the Colorado State University library, this is their benefit because they work with their users everyday and are bettering the software and know it inside and out because it what they use. Originally, they created the program after a flood when they lost all of their bound widths and half of their monographs and since then it continues to grow and expand. Very cool!

Luckily, I made it back to the conference center in time for the LC New Bibliographic Framework Update. Roberta Schaffer introduced the session and speakers and said that the session was being recorded. It will be on up YouTube shortly and on the LC website after 6-8 weeks once they have closed captioned it. Beecher Wiggins gave an overview on what has happened since ALA Annual in Anaheim as far as committee work and moving forward. Reinhold Heuvelmann from the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek discussed their trial of Bibframe, touching on the difficulties, what they recommend for improvements, where they see this potentially going and its benefit, and how they are proceeding now to prepare for a linked data Bibframe future. Ted Fons, a Tech Evangelist at OCLC, then also gave his examples of what OCLC has done with linked data and Bibframe, and how a shift is taking place to a more agile, iterative system to get software out sooner and with continual revisions and releases. Part of the push to ensure that this is a long term standard is to use schema.org to utalize the web and linked data, gaining more clout in libraries and use of the resources that we already have by making them more findable in the internet. The purpose is the expose library data. At this point, I left for my lunch plans, knowing that the rest I can catch recorded. The three remaining speakers were Eric Miller, Sally McCallum, and Kevin Ford. However, with leaving early, I missed the official unveiling of http://www.bibframe.org but I caught it on Twitter. This is when Twitter and hashtags truly rock!

After lunch, I hit the exhibit floor and ran into friends and people who know my co-workers. That is part of the beauty of attending a conference, you never know who you will see and catch up with. Or who you will meet! And now, I am recognizing people from past conferences and they are becoming conference friends. Plus, it’s always fun to meet those librarians who work with Safari MARC records that I create. They love meeting me and putting a face to the who is behind the product and making it run. One guy came up and said hi at another session later, already making a point to build our connection–awesome!

Next was the all important RDA Update Forum that had huge attendance, over 200. This one wasn’t recorded and if I had planned ahead I would have brought my laptop to record audio since it was very detailed. That is one issue with sessions, you never know if it will be practical or theoretical, and even then if it’s actionable information or just informative; this was practical and actionable, and I wish I’d had my laptop. Sure I could have used the iPad but it would have been as good from the back of the room–this is my assumption since I’ve not tested iPad Mini recording against a laptop’s. Again, Beecher Wiggins gave the RDA update since last Annual. The final RDA update rewording/rewrite is wrapping up after a few chapters were reviewed and okayed. He also mentioned the http://www.bibframe.org launch. LC have 150 training resource available online for use, just give credit to them. All their staff training will wrap up around March. Next, Troy Linker from ALA Publishing talked specifically about RDA revisions and publishing a new version. RDA Toolkit’s latest improvements was a main portion, pointing out in particular RDA MARC mappings, auto sync table of contents, global and local workflows, videos and tutorials (part of the free section on the toolkit), their blog with first Tue of the month announcing change and second Tue implementing it, and a new print edition out around mid 2013, among other things. Also, there is an Essential RDA in the works, similar to Concise AACR2, that’s meant to be a practical guide and live outside of the toolkit. John Attig from the JSC gave his updates. He walked through the revision process that they did in November at their meeting. CC:DA and JSC websites discuss the changes for RDA and Fast Track keeps a history of all of those changes. Phillip Schruer, a PCC chair, covered PCC and RDA, talking about RDA BIBCO Standard Record, different task groups that have progressed to reviewing recommendations and comments on their reports to create a final version and guidelines. Three in particular focused on hybrid records, access points for expressions, and relationship designators and will be out in a few months. Undifferentiated names are a new focus now but they are still working on it. He also mentioned RDA PCC decision tables. Finally, Cynthia Whitacre from OCLC gave a brief summary of the new RDA policy and how records will be treated in OCLC. They plan to be very open and informative about when they make global changes, doing it piece by piece rather than whole records. In the Q&A, new to me, she mentioned OCLC working on a new bib notification that is very customizable and based on your holdings–no name at this time. I need to find the slides because of all the information convey, especially the very detailed field and subfields changes that are difficult to type everything out. There was a lot of great, useful information provided; a lot to take in!

Surprisingly, RDA ended early. I guess they expected a hour of questions but not many people asked. So with time to spare, I headed over to the Collection Management and Electronic Resources IG. Since it is newish and their leadership fell through, it ended up being an open discussion about ERMs. Very fascinating, not having dealt with them. Apparently there isn’t one perfect software to do everything so based on your institutions needs, and funding, there are multiple things necessary to management the data and other documents for electronic resources. Part of the initial challenge is gather the info but a major hurdle can be all of the data entry. There was a lot of interest in the group and they are look for a chair and vice chair so let me know if you are interested because I have their contact info!

Not having had enough fun for the day, I hit up on last session to satiate my curiosity–the Digital Humanities Discussion Group. This had huge turn out for what the organizers originally planned. This began only at Annual Anaheim last summer and now they are trying to make it an IG due to the interest and growing area and need for it. The session was, similar to my previous, an open discussion about several topics: data and alt-metrics, retraining, digital humanities space. Many people talked about their work and projects, or the challenges faced with beginning, as well as how to proceed as professional librarians. Do we need to change the perception of us as specialists, experts, and end points to being experimenters and explorers along side faculty members? Does buy-in need to come from tenured faculty, newly hired, newly tenured, grad students, or those already using tech, OA, and DH who might be more receptive and interested? Though provoking stuff! Can’t wait to see what these librarians put together for Annual in Chicago! They have a blog and a Twitter @DHandLib–they live tweeted so you can follow the gist of the meeting.

By now, at 5:30, my day was definitely going to end. Plans were to eat chowder, walk to the Space Needle and take in the Chihuly Garden and Glass. However, as things present themselves…

While eating said chowder, we noticed a Thompson Reuters Customer Reception going on next door. And librarians were still going in! So we headed over, Steve being a customer himself, and met some great people, had drinks, food, and collected our first tile. Apparently this is a big thing, and some have attended for 20 years so they have quite a collection! Who knew!?

By 9 p.m., we were back to our place. So much for my plan to not do as much. The thing is, once I get to conferences, I always want to do and see what I can. Being curious also keeps me seeking out topics of interest, or speakers that I want to hear. And ALA sure provides a great selection for no matter what type of library you work for or what your role is. If you are willing to do it, there is always something new or more to learn, and people to meet who are just excited (sometimes if not more)! Making connections is always fun. Especially when you run into again at later ALAs. That’s one of the benefits of returning.

Tomorrow I promise myself not to do as much. Maybe.

Seattle 2013 TR tile:

Seattle 2013 Thompson Reuters tile

 
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Posted by on January 28, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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ALA MidWinter 2013: Solidarity Saturday

27 Jan

Sitting in Seattle right now, it is still hard to believe that ALA MidWinter is upon us–even having spent the day conferencing all around the city. Though enjoying seafood and 50 degrees, despite some drizzle, is enjoyable!

This is my first MidWinter but it is just as crazy and bustling as Annual, it seems. As co-vice chair for the Cataloging Norms Interest Group, I helped with our panel this morning and it had 60-some people attend. And that’s for MidWinter. It amazes me that thousands of librarians turn out for this mid-year event, though it shouldn’t because it seems to be gaining in size and clout each year.

Today, I attended four sessions, though two were closely related. That is a lot in one day for a conference. Cataloging Norms IG started off my day with two distinct presentations that dovetailed each other nicely. The first speaker, Harold Thiele, gave an in-depth look into the history and beginnings of cataloging, starting with Mesopotamia and Sumer up through RDA. He discussed how title main entry slow progressed and evolved to the form that we know in AACR2 and how with RDA the approach is more with its lack of main entry as we know it. Maura Valentino discussed the 21st century, focusing on metadata beyond that of description and how it affects workflows and process. Though very different, the two talks paired well together and truly gave a complete picture of how far cataloging and metadata have come.

The Catalog Management Interest Group focused on managing catalog workflows, content, metadata, and prepping for RDA field displays. This ended being a more practical session that I first anticipated. Sherab Chen spoke about his new role as an e-resource manager, focusing on personnel tips and his lessons learned so far. He balanced his talk well between a no-nonsence, realistic approach and having an optimistic, can-do attitude despite all of the work and problems that such a job entails. Next, Jessica Hayden covered demand driven acquisitions within an consortial environment. Not having worked in such a setting, I am fascinated by all of the collaboration and discussions that must go on in order for a consortium to function well, and yet there are myriads of benefits to such a arrangement. Also, the distinction of what is done at the consortial level versus local can create either more roadblocks or paved ways, depending on the situation. Sarah Beth Weeks, however, gave my favorite presentation due to her topic of using Google Refine to clean up data in the catalog. For a cataloger, the chance to provide more access and an easier search for the patron to find what they are looking for is the main goal that we all strive to achieve. At their college, rather than amend specific MARC fields to make them all uniform, they added the most common form of a term as a 9xx field for better access. Finally, Roman Panchyshyn closed off the session with his testing of RDA catalog display and how to best make it work for the patron. The 3xx, no surprise, were the oddest and trickiest to work with of the new fields. Since the 264 has a 2nd indicator to help define it, those were easier to display, as were the 502 field labels after a wording tweak. Next month, he will send of his recommendations, basically what he presented at the session, to Innovative in order to get their ILS to display RDA records and fields how they want them, and ensure that they are included in indexing for search results.

After a great lunch break–ALA plans out 1.5 hours over the lunch hour, thank goodness, for no sessions–a back-to-back linked data two part session began. The first hour was informative. Some of it I had heard in Anaheim at Annual but it was a good refresher and parts of it were new information, or said a different way. Eric Miller, president of Zepheria, discussed linked data, tying git in a little bit to Bibframe. Mainly he covered the underlying structure of linked data and why it is an important task to take on as a library community. If all of our libraries were linked data, search engines would include our books and items in the top results pages, allowing users more access especially if they begin their research in the web. Next, Richard Wallis from OCLC talked about all the different projects that they are a part of concerning linked data–mainly VIAF, FAST, Dewey Classification, and now WorldCat linked data. They hope to create a large, more prominent presence on the internet with library data, and are setting an example for member libraries. It is true that if all of the libraries work together, we could make a huge splash in online metadata and set president for all who are part of the web; we have the specialized knowledge and wonderful data, so we just need to make it accessible openly on the web through links that bring users back to the library websites and catalogs.

During the second part of the linked data session, two librarians showed the small-scale projects that they completed using linked data. Both approached the idea differently and created two unrelated yet amazing projects. Violeta Ilik linked her universities math department in Viewshare, allowing for new connections and analysis to be done on the faculty itself, including gender ratios and research areas. One of the coolest part of her data ended being the PhD. location of all the faculty, which displayed on a map. Jeremy Myntti used Viewshare for an entirely different purpose with a whole other type of data. His institution has an online collection of animal sounds recorded in several states. To get even more out of the data, he loaded certain information into Viewshare and was able to display not only a map of locations for the sound recordings but to show pie charts that broke down the kingdoms and genus. The link to the recordings for each animal was included so that a person could click and follow the link to the website with the player on it. Both Violeta and Jeremy said the from start to finish, their projects took no more than 1 hour to create the linked data. Though these were fairly small scale, the implications and ease of linked data are amazing to consider.

What a day! I love attending sessions that sound interesting and I always yearn to learn more while at a conference. That’s why I am here! However, there gets to be an overload point if you pack too much in, especially if you aren’t used to it. Thankfully MidWinter is slightly shorter in the sense that there aren’t as many sessions, so I can conference a bit harder today and tomorrow knowing that Monday will be fairly sparse and Tuesday I fly out before the crack of dawn.

So far it’s been a great conference. Let’s hope tomorrow can live up to today’s standards! We will see that that huge RDA afternoon session brings…

 
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Posted by on January 27, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Emily’s Tech Talk Episode 5: Mini, iPad Mini (review)

08 Dec

I recently purchased an iPad mini and have created a video review for those of you who are undecided about purchasing one or want to know more!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GlIJICm0uM]
 
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Posted by on December 8, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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There’s a subject heading for that!?: hurricanes

30 Oct

Of course there is a subject heading for “hurricanes”–just stick with me. For the past few days, especially yesterday and today, Hurricane Sandy is the topic of the media and many people’s conversations. It has surpassed the 2012 presidential election, for the time being, and that’s under a week off. In Michigan, we are seeing some of the effects as it is cold and very windy, though nothing compared to New York, New Jersey, and other states. Some Michiganders had snow this morning but only sleet was on my windshield and the rain here has been off and on. Hurricane Sandy, a.k.a. superstorm or frankenstorm, lost some of her gusto when she hits the Canadian cold front so now she is a post-tropical cyclone or, more colloquially, a nor’easter. However, before her name change, I looked up “hurricanes” on LC Online Catalog, since even though LC is closed, their website is still up!

Did you know that named hurricanes have their own subject headings? I don’t catalog works on hurricanes, so this was news to me. It makes perfect sense.

And the list goes on! This is only part was through the Ds, so check out the LC Authorities File Online to see the rest. Besides getting a scope of how many hurricanes are written about individually, the notes in the “hurricanes” authority record are priceless and fascinating–take a look below.

 

And a closer screenshot of the notes that describe hurricanes. Enough to be helpful in knowing what storms are termed hurricanes.

 

 

 

Sandy will likely get a narrower term under hurricanes as well, since she’s been, unfortunately, a massive and in some cases record-setting storm. Not to mention the fact that she way-laid the final week of political campaigns for Romney and Obama. However, her authority file will likely have a scope note that explains her changes in nomenclature, as well as references to her other names. Frankenstorm was the best, by far, considering her timing. This past Saturday at a Halloween party, one guest showed up in jeans and a tee wearing a name tag that read “Frank N. Storm”.

Another fairly recent hurricane that stands out is Hurricane Katrina. Searching subject headings in the LC Online Catalog, there are many topical sub. heads, and some that I never would have guessed. Here are a few of the ones that caught my eye: Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Computer network resources, Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Juvenile sound recordings, Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Prayers and devotions, Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Press coverage, Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Songs and music.

The single most interesting, for me, was Hurricane Katrina, 2005–Comic books, strips, etc. This is cataloging lingo for graphic novels, lately anyway.

 

Graphic novels rooted in history can be amazing and present a different type of entry point into those events. Persepolis, and Maus are two of my favorite books, and I am not a reader of graphic novels. They both were assigned readings in college. So that makes me want to look up these two, particularly since I lived during the time of Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps they will make to it my bookshelf and onto my other blog as reviews.

For now, stay warm and safe, no matter where you live. And keep everyone affected by Sandy in your thoughts!

 

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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There’s NOT a subject heading for that!?: audio crossovers

18 Sep

Fall arrived today even if it is officially a few days off. What better than a chilly, dark, rainy day to get my blogs back up and running! (Readers of my book blog also experienced a hiatus–too nice of an August!)

Usually this segment covers subject headings that I found in the course of my work cataloging e-books and streaming videos. However, as catalogers, we also contend with fitting items into the best places possible when they lack a defined spot. Same goes for sub. heads that we cobble various ones together to represent the topic as best as we can. This was one of those times.

“Audio crossovers” is not a valid sub. head. in LCSH.

For cataloging The design of active crossovers by Douglas Self, I felt that there had to be more LCSH to consider for the record:

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In LC’s Online Catalog (side note: their updated site was having too many problems so they revert back to the previous one and I’ve not had the issues that the new one experienced; it’s an awesome new design if they can get the bugs out!), the item only lists “Electric filters, Active $x Design and construction” for the one sub. head. And merely 7 other records have this same heading, though there are many more variants and lots with just the base heading.

Here’s the LC Authority File record for it:

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At first, this seems inadequate when it comes to the book’s topic. Using Wikipedia, we learn that an audio crossover is a type of electronic filter, so this is a slightly broader category. Yet, looking at the other 7 records in the LC Online Catalog with this exact sub. head., it is clear that those books focus on audio crossovers as well.

While it’s not perfect, it is the best LCSH offers right now. And considering all the variations for this sub. head., to propose a narrower term, or terms, then have someone parse out the items that should be in the boarder term and those into the narrower ones is a lot of work. Would it be worth it, probably, but I don’t know for sure.

The newness of the topic for this item was a challenge for me. That’s the other thing, for people, like me, who don’t know about a topic, the difficulty increases for cataloging it since I must figure out what the item is about then find sub. heads and a classification number.

Cataloging can be straight-forward or a balance between searching out and settling. The second makes for more interesting work but quite easily can lead to frustration or confusion.

Do you know about audio crossovers or electric filters?

 
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Posted by on September 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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