tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73823840184776498222009-11-21T20:28:47.117-06:00A blog about books, technology, and sundry.Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-85112873471529118332008-12-22T09:11:00.002-06:002008-12-22T09:20:06.566-06:00

As anyone on Autocat knows, there's been a bunch of posting lately on the difference between bookstores and libraries, and how they organize things. I don't post on autocat much (that's what blogs are for!), so here's what I think:Anyone who says that bookstores do as good a job as libraries of organizing information is clearly insane. I mean, CLEARLY. A comment was made that the reason we

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-84652260228439280582008-11-12T16:47:00.003-06:002008-11-12T17:04:03.553-06:00

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but we had "Symphony" training yesterday. This basically involved just transferring our preferences from Unicorn to Symphony. Everything else is about the same. BUT, I learned that Web Reporter, which previously was just for the Cool Kids who used Horizon, is now available for Symphony (Unicorn), too. Other than that, I didn't see a lot of Horizon in

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-77148387754492516372008-11-07T11:05:00.004-06:002008-11-07T11:27:31.120-06:00

A friend of mine recently said in exasperation, "Librarians are so stupid in their smugness." She was referring to what I call Listserv Divas. Divas is not gender-specific, by the way.This is a real problem with listservs of all kinds, not just library ones, but I think it's particularly irritating in library listservs. Why? Because we are all trained in the same things, and belong to lists that

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-4287428068910838172008-11-04T09:05:00.003-06:002008-11-04T09:08:48.839-06:00

1.If you are in the United States, GO VOTE ALREADY.2.Someone came to this blog yesterday through the google search "Sirsi sucks" (I'm on the first page!). I find this both amusing and comforting. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who gets a little frustrated with Sirsi.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-55542349037644828042008-10-24T15:10:00.004-05:002008-10-24T15:24:40.730-05:00

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this: we're "moving" to Symphony over Christmas. I'd like to revisit what SD calls Symphony:"SirsiDynix Symphony, blending the best of the Unicorn GL3 and Horizon 8/Corinthian systems, offers libraries and consortia the stability, quality, and performance they need to operate productively and efficiently, while equipping them to serve people and entire

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-43417082489999966472008-10-23T16:06:00.003-05:002008-10-24T10:39:46.888-05:00

OCLC had a webinar today. Here's the pitch:"You are invited to attend a special program on innovative, emerging cataloging practices and trends that can help you build next-generation catalogs, expose your library's metadata and make your cataloging workflows more efficient.Your host, Karen Calhoun, Vice President, WorldCat & Metadata Services, will offer insights on how your library can benefit

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-55547871771890948852008-10-17T12:43:00.002-05:002008-10-17T12:50:19.251-05:00

From Autocat this afternoon:"Some staff here are convinced that "youcan't find anything" in our catalog. That it has become an unnecessaryexpense since most patrons browse the collection anyway. If so, is itthe fault of the catalog, or the untrained user? Or both?"What a huge question to just post nonchalantly on a listserv. What amuses me, though, is that this is the question at the heart of

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-59512300919961168222008-10-01T09:03:00.001-05:002008-10-01T09:04:27.548-05:00

I am drowning in original cataloging. I may not survive. If I'm not back in a week, just assume that the LCSH has finally taken me to the Big Library in the Sky.Save yourselves!

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-80877219746964381482008-09-25T15:25:00.005-05:002008-09-25T15:34:00.995-05:00

Sometimes, when I tell people that I catalog books in Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Russian and occasionally English....I think that they think I am bragging. I want to be clear on this, but probably, it will only ruin my credibility. Here goes, anyway:I don't speak any of those languages. Except for English.I read all five somewhat poorly. I know enough to know that I need a dictionary, and

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-2796672408754035512008-09-23T11:50:00.004-05:002008-09-23T11:56:13.956-05:00

Some kind, loving soul posted to the autocat list today, and said (I quote):"...like AIG, libraries are too important to let fail!"Um. Libraries obviously aren't. They fail all the time. They have failed throughout history. People willingly destroy them, or neglect them, or just plain set them on fire.Libraries are certainly valuable. I believe that libraries are valuable. Are libraries "too

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-49378476065124018342008-09-22T08:59:00.002-05:002008-09-22T09:06:01.157-05:00

So, I'm way behind the times, and I know it, but I started reading the drafts of RDA last week. I'm not really that far in, and I know that it's only rough drafts, but I figured I might as well start, since at some point this is going to be a Big Deal.Want to know what I've found so far? I may be simplifying (God knows I'm good at doing that), but I didn't find much that was earth-shattering or

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-22069675336534372282008-09-09T13:29:00.003-05:002008-09-09T13:37:58.992-05:00

You strike again, SD. Our serials cataloger pointed out that when working in Sirsi's Java Workflows, you cannot always get the html links in a marc record to take you to a browser. The link simply will not work. They are speculating that this has to do with links that include special characters, like an ampersand.Our IT guy says, and I quote: "This is a bug at our current Unicorn patch level. it

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-71753745852617332912008-09-05T09:09:00.002-05:002008-09-05T09:16:55.463-05:00

It's been a long time, blog. No, really, like 2.5 weeks! In my defense, I'm coming up on 4 months pregnant and have been feeling "under the weather" (an understatement) for some time. It's hard to think about libraries and metadata and whatnot when I want to throw up all the time.ANYWAY.One of my reference librarian peeps introduced me to a website the other day: Mindomo. It's a way to map

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-91647552008876793552008-08-19T15:31:00.002-05:002008-08-19T15:44:02.319-05:00

I just came back from a meeting about how to implement PREMIS in our institutional repository. We've been working on how to implement PREMIS for months. The result of this meeting was: we don't need PREMIS.So was this the best or worst meeting in history?The case for "best meeting":We came to the conclusion that while PREMIS is probably very good for some things, in this case it wouldn't be

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-2943486162335321172008-08-18T15:33:00.003-05:002008-08-18T15:37:25.056-05:00

I have been cataloging a lot of books by Indian authors lately. So many in fact that I now know the cutter code for the last name Singh by heart. BY HEART, PEOPLE.Luckily I am in the home stretch, the last two books of the 40-odd that I have been set to original-catalog.It says something about the things I get assigned to catalog that I do not know the cutter code for Smith or Johnson or Baker.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-9409730842035148642008-08-14T14:43:00.004-05:002008-08-14T14:57:37.315-05:00

And now let us examine the OTHER side of being forced to learn a new ILS. This is the group of people who shut themselves down in the face of learning a new system. These also tend to be the people who constantly claim that "the computer" made a mistake without them having anything to do with it. I like to call these people "superstitious." As in, they think that computers are imbued with evil

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-47855984008412775992008-08-13T14:15:00.003-05:002008-08-13T14:22:22.020-05:00

We're moving to the java client version of Sirsi Workflows. This means that we're going to trainings and such.Now, personally, I am totally IN LOVE with the java client, because it is so much more intuitive than the C client was. Like, there are actual words instead of small, random pictures to represent things.There are drawbacks, too, like not being able to pull up a true browse list when you

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-79241737658196420752008-08-11T12:21:00.003-05:002008-08-11T12:32:49.169-05:00

Have you ever noticed how the paper card catalog has become a kind of badge of honor among librarians? "When I worked with paper card catalogs" is like a golden stamp that means you are intellectually untouchable. You know All.When I was in library school, all the professors assumed none of us had ever worked with paper catalogs. Sure, we'd used them until we were 15 or so, but we'd never really

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-64353264940425343482008-08-08T14:32:00.000-05:002008-08-08T14:33:23.122-05:00

Sometimes I come across books that make me very painfully aware of how little I know about archival theory. Today, that lesson was hit home when I had a book called "Records, Rules, and Speech Acts" come across my desk. It's by a Finnish archivist, Pekka Henttonen (a guy, by the way, for all of you Indo-European speakers who think that girls' names end in A).The introduction was worth my reading

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-4518020033918788272008-08-06T14:07:00.002-05:002008-08-06T14:09:59.345-05:00

A person (who is very nice, I'm sure) just posted on Autocat asking what skills one must possess so that one might be proficient in "installing, developing, customizing, adding records, and maintaining" Greenstone or Dspace.I just sat here for about 20 seconds, staring at her request. Um....the skill of Knowing Perl? The skill of being able to work around the 1,000 minute details that each of

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-80108367027230538432008-08-01T11:54:00.004-05:002008-08-01T11:58:21.641-05:00

I'm mostly a cataloger, and sometimes I'm an archivist, and I'm always into structuring organization. And now, let's add to the list: marketing/training.What?Yes. I've been put on a team to write manuals, set up trainings on new search tools, and set up usability testing. We're getting one of those new-fangled research discovery tools and I'm apparently going to be part of the implementation,

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-58558604742442860312008-07-21T09:59:00.004-05:002008-07-21T10:03:10.788-05:00

This is just a short post, to give us all something to think about. I don't know if this is true, but when Joel Hahn tells me something over Autocat, I believe him. Silly of me, I know. Anyway, there's this huge discussion going on about how they're getting rid of the 440 series field, and Joel says (and I quote):"...given the programming headaches using the 440 for both transcription and

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-34178446512187238382008-07-18T14:14:00.002-05:002008-07-18T14:33:11.323-05:00

I read The Impact of Digitizing Special Collections on Teaching and Scholarship by Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner. It was good, I recommend anyone interested in the connections between special collections and users check it out. But it has this fatal flaw that made me, at the end of the article, just sigh. Why is it always the librarian's fault that faculty don't care about teaching

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-84138320601073482282008-07-16T15:49:00.002-05:002008-07-16T15:53:42.116-05:00

The University of Texas got a cool grant to give scholarships to four people who want to do a doctoral program in digital librarianship. That isn't particularly up my alley, but it sounds really cool, nonetheless. It got me thinking about where were the best programs for learning about the theory of organization as it's applied to libraries, and metadata more generally. This is shockingly hard to

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7382384018477649822.post-33584624405024680512008-07-10T12:49:00.002-05:002008-07-10T13:09:37.682-05:00

One of my colleagues was at ALA, and sat in on a session sponsored by LITA called "There's no catalog like no catalog," or something like that. She said that she was in a minority by being a cataloger at this session, but that it was the attitude of the presenters that made her the most uncomfortable. She said that catalogers were portrayed as being inflexible, reactionary, and backward-thinking.

Scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02857009116761816327noreply@blogger.com1