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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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Why I love Oldies

Adam's Record Collection
Image by Adam Melancon via Flickr

I love Oldies, and I don’t appreciate most music made after 1970. Recently, I contemplated how that could have happened. I’m under 30. I wasn’t even born in 1970.

It all starts in 1985. The movie Back to the Future came out, which contained a number of classic 50s songs. This was one of my favorite movies. For those of you who haven’t seen it, in it, a 1985 Teenager goes back to when his parents were the same age, in 1955. It was in this movie I first got introduced to songs by the Penguins and Chuck Berry.

This is where my love of 50s music came from, especially doowop. It didn’t come from my parents. Their music era was the 60s, and era I also love.  My mother exposed me to a little of that, but my brother introduced me to the Beatles, among others, and I branched outward to enjoy other classic rock.

I realized a few years ago, when I was giving a lift on behalf of a college club to a guest, knowledgeably discussing Leiber and Stoller, and answering trivia questions lobbed at me about the Diablos, that the community for classic media is still alive, and includes people of all ages. More recently, the popularity around the remastered release of the Beatles catalog proves it as well.

So, when people talk about more modern music, I am the one who doesn’t know as much. But I can live with that.

I’ve Joined the Indieweb Movement

Those of you following me on various networks may have noticed a flurry of different types of posts coming through. Taking a moment to explain this.

I recently learned about the Indieweb movement. Their philosophy is based on the idea that you publish on your own site and syndicate elsewhere. This matches up with the philosophy I currently have.

This site, david.shanske.com, has been here for a while, not doing much, and I’ve decided to try and adopt the Indieweb concept and use it as a place to distribute to all of the various social networks. I also want to get into sharing more, and am making an effort to add content/value.

I’m still working on the formatting a bit. So, there will be some changes to site appearance as I play with the site appearance and organization.

The site currently offers multiple different types of content:

  • Articles – longer form content
  • Notes – Notes are short content, and I’ve divided them into some types.
    • Status Updates – much like what you would expect on Facebook/Twitter
    • Photos/Images – Sharing photos
    • Links – sharing a link to a website/story

I am thinking about adding some more types as needed. The types are designed to have different display formats, which is why you would see some experimenting each time I post something, as I’m still trying to get it right. I do like to tinker and changes may come.

So, please pardon our appearance. Under Construction…permanently.