WorldCat and the Future of Bibliographic Control

1
WorldCat and the Future of Bibliographic Control

• Karen Calhoun
• OCLC Vice President
• WorldCat Metadata Services
• Members Council Meeting
• October 22, 2007

2
Top Ten Trends in Librarianship

• Introspection Who are we and what value do we
  bring?
• Budget pressure, accountability for results, and
  rising user expectations
• Growth of consortia and collaborative groups
• High demand for new skills, esp. IT fluency
• Restructuring work and jobs

• Find it and get it (the whole OPACs suck debate
  and more)
• Complex, rapidly changing e-information
  environment
• Aggregation and data/metadata management Where
  do libraries fit?
• Assessment Evidence-based decision making
• Usability and user centered design social
  software participation

3
Over to You!
What are the top three trends in library
technical services?
2 minute exercise
4
My Top Three

• Pressure on technical services budgets, manpower,
  and space
• Changing, complex technical services landscape
• Public, international debate on the future and
  value of bibliographic control

5
My Top Three (1)

• Pressure on technical services budgets, manpower,
  and space
• Cuts and capacity issues
• Retirements and reorganizations
• Impact of e-resources and digital collections
• Outsourcing
• Re-engineering and process redesign
• Moving technical services offsite

6
The Warren Report

• Warren, Jenny. 2007. Directors views on the
  future of cataloguing in Australia/New Zealand,
  2007 a survey. Presented at the Australian
  Committee on Cataloguing annual meeting,
  September 2007. Available from
• http//www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/papers
  2007.html

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Age Demographics Cataloging Retirement Wave
Between 1985 and 2000, the number of new hires
to cataloging positions dropped 45, and new
professionals by 64. Stanley Wilder,
University of Rochester River Campus
Libraries Wilder, Stanley. 2002. New hires in
research libraries demographic trends and
hiring priorities. ARL Bimonthly Report 221.
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There has been discussion in the cataloging
community about a perceived trend of not fully
replacing cataloging staff when incumbents leave,
or of replacing cataloging staff at a lower
salary level. Do you believe this trend exists?

• Yes
• No
• Other

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There has been discussion in the cataloging
community in Australia/New Zealand about a
perceived trend of not fully replacing cataloging
staff when incumbents leave, or of replacing
cataloging staff at a lower salary level. Do you
believe this trend exists?
10
Outsourcing One View
What Well Need to Be There are few jobs left
for the lone cataloger of the past and those
jobs that do remain will be in outsourcing
agencies. Jane Ouderkirk, then head of
cataloging at Harvard. Ouderkirk, Jane Padham.
2000. Staff assignments and workflow
distribution at the end of the 20th century
where we were, where we are, and what well need
to be. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly
302/3, p. 343-55.
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How do you see the trend for the outsourcing of
non-electronic resources cataloging in your
department?

• Increasing
• Decreasing
• Staying the same

12
How do you see the trend for the outsourcing of
non-electronic resources cataloging in your
department?
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How OCLC Can Help with Technical Services Budget
Pressures

• Enable streamlined, re-engineered workflows
  starting with selection and extending to shelf
  ready
• WorldCat Selection
• WorldCat Cataloging Partners
• Catalog for you
• Contract Cataloging (with re-engineered
  workflows)
• Cataloging for Publishers/Vendors
• Language Sets

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My Top Three (2)

• Complex technical services landscape
• Metadata before and after the Web
• New roles for staff need for new skill sets
• Records from many sources
• Metadata re-use and interoperability
• Syndication of library metadata on the Web
• Why do we need metadata at all? Whats the future
  role of metadata?

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Complex Technical Services Landscape
Calhoun, Karen. 2003. Technology, productivity,
and change in library technical Services. Library
Collections, Acquisitions and Technical Services
27, p. 281-9.
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We should Manage acquisitions and catalog data
through batch processes as much as possible,
avoid working one record at a time.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

17
We should Manage acquisitions and catalog data
through batch processes as much as possible,
avoid working one record at a time (Calhoun
report recommendation 4.1.4).
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Metadata Re-Use and Interoperability
Traditional cataloging practice is
problematic because many communities outside
librarianship use metadatametadata that can and
should be reused. Calhoun, Karen. 2007. Being
a librarian metadata and metadata specialists
in the twenty-first century. Library Hi Tech
252, p. 174-196.
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The challenge for cataloging is to emerge from
silos which are already becoming untenable. We
must engage with partners in publishing, commerce
and rights management to realize the
bibliographic continuum so that we can reuse
metadata created by other constituencies.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

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The challenge for cataloging is to emerge from
silos which are already becoming untenable. We
must engage with partners in publishing, commerce
and rights management to realize the
bibliographic continuum so that we can reuse
metadata created by other constituencies.
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Next Generation Cataloging

• Ingest publisher metadata in ONIX
• Crosswalk to MARC (poss. to other formats)
• Enhance publisher metadata by mining WorldCat
• Output MARC records (available early in the
  publishing life-cycle)
• Output enhanced ONIX data to publishers/other
  partners

PILOT PLANNING UNDER WAY
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My Top Three (3)

• Public debate on the future and value of
  bibliographic control
• The question of quality
• Polarization
• Examination of assumptions and mindsets

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The Quality Debate

• Specialists view
• Fullness and detail
• Review every record
• Pragmatists view
• Speed and efficiency
• Users view
• Easy, fast and convenient

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Polarization The Canyon Separating TS
Practitioners (Experts) from TS Leaders
(Pragmatists)
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Assumptions and Mindsets What is Full?
Product Description Purchase Information More
like this Editorial Reviews Author
Info Inside the Book Tags, Ratings Customer Revie
ws Lists More
Bibliographic Information Library
Holdings Details Subjects Editions Reviews
Bibliographic Information Australian Library
Holdings
3 more screens
With thanks to David Lankes http//quartz.syr.ed
u/rdlankes/Presentations/2007/ALCTS.pdf
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Assumptions and Mindsets 2 Where Do Subject-Rich
Index Terms Come From?
LCSH from 3 to 7 wordsper record
Markey, Karen and Calhoun, Karen.1987. Unique
words contributed by MARC records with summary
and/or contents notes. Proceedings of the 50th
ASIS Annual Meeting (Medford NJ Learned
Information), p. 153-162.
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Improving discovery with the DDC

• Dewey number not (just) a shelf locator, but a
  key to a largely untapped resource of
  high-caliber semantic information for end-user
  searching
• The DDC offers
• Vocabulary for multilingual access to topics
• Rich network of relationships
• Backbone for mapped taxonomies and terminologies

End-user browsing at German National Library
Melvil Search
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We should identify local customization (e.g.,
for call numbers) and record editing practices
and eliminate them in favor of accepting as much
cataloging copy as possible without review or
modification.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

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We should identify local customization (e.g.,
for call numbers) and record editing practices
and eliminate them in favor of accepting as much
cataloging copy as possible without review or
modification (Calhoun report recommendation
4.1.5).
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Assumptions and Mindsets 3 Evaluating Local
Customization
Approximately 55 percent of all editing changes
could be identified as cosmetic. --Walter
High, How catalogers really edit OCLC records.
North Carolina Libraries (Fall 1991) 163.
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OCLC Catalogers Editing Practices

• Research conducted at OCLC in 1992
• Data analysis by Carol Denehy, report by Karen
  Calhoun
• Sample of about 7,000 changes
• Objectives
• Determine if archives could be mined to enrich
  OCLC records
• Compare quality of locally-edited records to OCLC
  master records
• Analyze impact of Enhance program

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Record Changes by Type and Source
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Editorial Changes by Type and Source
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Other Editorial Changes

• Well over half of the edits were insignificant
  changes that add nothing to discovery or
  identification of the item
• Punctuation, capitalization, spacing
• Minor editing of title, imprint, collation (no
  impact on retrieval)
• Editing and addition of minor notes
• Minute editing of content notes, changing the
  order of notes, etc.
• Adding notes for data already represented in the
  record

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Conclusions of the OCLC 1992 Study

• OCLC archives could be usefully mined to add call
  numbers to master records
• The difference in quality between locally-edited
  and master OCLC records is a wash
• Enhance is a valuable program these libraries
  enrich records, but they also waste a good deal
  of time tweaking records

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OCLC and Baker and Taylor Partnership

• Benefits
• Records available prior to and at time of order
• OCLC record numbers available at point of order
• New cataloging members (small libraries)

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Challenges and Problems

• Implementation was slow initial dates not met
• Shifting data requirements
• Data of varying quality
• Product file upgrade records incorrectly coded
• Unhappy catalogers in OCLC libraries!

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Solutions

• Significantly reduce loading of duplicates
• Merge existing duplicates (90,000 so far)
• Work with BT to improve records
• Still need to implement batch upgrading
• Communicate better with catalogers and library
  managers

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Conclusion A New Vision for WorldCat Metadata
Management

• Offer new or re-engineered services to help
  libraries capture significant savings in
  selection, acquisitions, and cataloging for
  redeployment to new initiatives to serve their
  communities
• Position OCLC to help with these new initiatives
  too (e.g., e-resource and digital metadata
  management)
• Use WorldCat to help libraries expose their rich
  collections on the network
• Make the world in WorldCat real

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Thank You!

• Discussion, comments, questions?
• What are your top three trends in technical
  services?
• Will existing or planned OCLC metadata services
  meet your future needs?