Musings on Library Automation

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I’m still trying to find my voice for writing here. Every project needs an editorial style, and I’m sure it will take me more time to figure out what I want to talk about, and how I want to talk about it.

When I was observing at Cardozo High School in Queens, I was assigned to improve the metadata on books in their OPAC. Many of the MARC records had been brought in from online services, and several were inaccurate, others sparse, and often not directed at the needs of the patrons. Original cataloging is something librarians do less and less of nowadays.

I learned a lot while doing what was a small part of the school library. A patron browsing the shelves of a library may find books casually. But now, many people looking for books use the online catalog the same way they use Google…a keyword search. Having more information to search with, rather than less, increases the possibility that people will find a book, justifying keeping it on the shelf.

When you pull a book off the shelf in a library during the process of weeding(removing books from the collection), you get to see the records indicating the last times it was taken out, as cards inside the book. Some books may not be used often, but they fill in gaps in a collection that it isn’t worth buying new books for. You can’t abandon a book because it is old and not used as much.

Google Books has been providing the service of digitizing out-of-print books, and many libraries are migrating to digital e-books to save on shelf space. But the need remains for proper metadata. The more information, the easier it is to find out.

It is to this end that I indexed my video collection in a open-source program. I have plans to organize the metadata associated with my digital music collection, which serves as use copies(with the original CDs as the archive). And finally, plans to index my entire book collection in LibraryThing, which will allow me not only a complete list, but the opportunity to share parts of my collection with others, as well as get recommendations on new books.

This is a massive project. My video archive took several days of organization, and then only a little to add each new video as acquired and thus maintain the collection. But without it, browsing through the collection is hard. Doing the books is going to be much harder.

More on this to come.

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The Future, it’s in the Metadata (lib.uiowa.edu)