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I have added your last assignment (yay) to Moodle, along with its dropbox and discussion forum. I also added the second (and last) RSQC2 on the topics discussed in the Camtasia lecture on precoordinate indexing. I would appreciate your getting this done by the end of the week if possible.
The usual choice between 3-to-a-page or 6-to-a-page.
I realize that the campsongs question is a problem, so I will be liberal in considering answers to this one. You can assume that the songs are all in French in both items, and that otherwise they run the gamut of topics that any collection of camp songs would. So my expected answer - "Camping -- [place] -- Songs and music" - is actually not correct, since that would be for songs ABOUT camping, and these songs are not ABOUT camping. If I have misled anyone into thinking that is correct, I apologize. Rethink it.
This week's music comes from Berroguetto, a Galician band (that's in northern Spain). I have seen these guys (and one gal) about ten times, mostly in Glasgow. They are a great live act. Their Web site (http://www.berroguetto.com/) has an English version.
Ted Gemberling posted this response in AUTOCAT as part of a long discussion about the future, generated by Thomas Mann's reaction to the final report of the LC Working Group on Bibliographic Control (read Mann's report here). Ted's post addresses James Weinheimer's response to Mann (here). I thought Ted's comments were wonderful, especially the last one on books.
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:00:35 -0500
From: Ted P Gemberling
Subject: Re: LC Working Group - Thomas Mann review
James, here are some comments on points in your "open reply" to Thomas Mann. The paragraph numbers correspond with the numbers in your paper.
1. You say, "It is practically impossible for a non-specialist to know such subject heading intricacies." But Mann always emphasizes that a certain amount of bibliographic instruction and, often, one-on-one consultation with a reference person is needed to learn the vocabulary. That is inherent in its status as a "controlled" vocabulary. The question is, can we ever create a search system that obviates the need for any "expert" help? I doubt it.
2. You mention that there's no place in the authority files for Weltanschauung. As I'm sure you know, Weltanschauung is a German word, occasionally used in English, and the researcher has to get a sense of how it relates to English terms. It literally means "World view," also not an LC heading. I did a search in LC's catalog, and it often correlates with the LCSH subdivision Philosophy or main headings with the word Philosophy. Sometimes there's no one-on-one correspondence between it and a subject heading, as in Der Deutsche Turnerbund 1889 : seine Entwicklung und Weltanschauung. I'm guessing the cataloger thought the "worldview" of the organization (Turnerbund) was conveyed well by the various main headings: Sports and the state, Nationalism, and Antisemitism. I'm pretty sure anyone who has figured out what Weltanschauung means will have little difficulty with this. The point is that Mann isn't claiming LCSH does a researcher's work for him. It's only a tool for getting closer to the things we're looking for. Keyword searches are another useful tool, and he doesn't deny their value.
3. You say the displays in today's online catalogs are "semi-useless" because they're so long. But as Mann shows, that very length helps people find the variety of resources a library has. And as Martha Yee has shown, it is also possible to create a keyword search for words within heading lists. See http://cinema.library.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search. If you only want things on Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, click on topic and genre/form search and enter those two words. It will take you to a list of just a few headings that contain only those words. But it doesn't require the elimination of precoordination: the result is still a precoordinated browse list. You also mentioned Queen Anne's War as hard to find. But if you do a subject search for those words in LC's catalog, the More info icon will take you directly to the established heading (beginning with United States), without having to scroll through the alphabetical list.
5. You say that your users would have to go through 100 screens to find that Corporate state is a narrower term for Fascism. I don't know about your catalog, but in LC's, if you just do a subject search for Fascism and click on More info, you will see Corporate state listed as a See also. In fact, in that catalog, no amount of scrolling will give you that information if you don't click on the icon.
6. This point is about "information imperialism." It's true that there is some of that. LC undoubtedly does dominate other national cataloging agencies to a considerable degree, and it's appropriate for them to protect their autonomy as much as they can. But the "virtual international authority file" you appear to be speaking of, which would link names and subjects in different languages, need not change the form of headings in any one of the languages. In each of them, subjects will be represented by words understandable to their speakers. The international authority file will create a crosswalk between the different national files, perhaps with each heading equivalency represented by a number, but that need not change the forms of headings themselves.
8. Let's say for the sake of argument that copyright did go away somehow. Everything could be digitized and reused freely. That would still not make keyword access an adequate way of finding information, in isolation from controlled heading searches and browsing classified shelves. Here's a quote from David Bell about the problems with this: "The very nature of the computer presents a different problem. If physical discomfort discourages the reading of texts sequentially, from start to finish, computers make it spectacularly easy to move through texts in other ways--in particular, by searching for particular pieces of information. Reading in this strategic, targeted manner can feel empowering. Instead of surrendering to the organizing logic of the book you are reading, you can approach it with your own questions and glean precisely what you want from it. You are the master, not some dead author. And this is precisely where the greatest dangers lie, because when reading, you should not be the master. Information is not knowledge; searching is not reading; and surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns.
"If my own experience is any guide, "search-driven" reading can make for depressingly sloppy scholarship. Recently, I decided to examine the way in which the radical eighteenth-century thinker d'Holbach discussed warfare. I could have read his book Universal Morality in the rare-book room of my university library, but I decided instead to download a copy (it took about two minutes). And then, faced with a text hundreds of pages long, instead of reading from start to finish, I searched for the words "war" and "peace." I found a great many juicy quotations, which I conveniently cut and pasted directly into my notes. But at the end, I had very little idea of why d'Holbach had written his book in the first place. If I had had to read the physical book, I could still have skimmed, cut, and pasted, but I would have been forced to confront the text as a whole at some basic level. The computer encouraged me to read in exactly the wrong way, leaving me with little but a series of disembodied passages."
Thanks for reading this.
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461
I managed to get the Camtasia lecture into Moodle, so please go there instead. Sorry to redirect, but I really don't like having it on the public Web.
The new slides for this Friday are in eLearning.
Well, after three hours of post-production and Moodling, I have had to put the lecture on the Web. It's at http://web.simmons.edu/~schwartz/cam/419-5.html. I will leave it there until next Tuesday. In the meantime I will be chugging my way through your reports, discussions, and assignments.
Harvard is currently searching for an experienced cataloger/metadata specialist to fill the newly created position at Countway: http://jobs.harvard.edu/jobs/summ_req?in_post_id=36624
I did not delete the vocab quiz from your calendar. It is due today (March 24) according to Moodle, but tomorrow is fine. Shouldn't take long.
I extracted the groups formed through March 20 from the wiki page, assuming that you had already started to work. I wanted to get the filled groups off the wiki so that people signing up late would not add themselves to an already-working group.
Art-1: Jennifer Parker, Jessica Bitely, Jessie Howell, Jestephen Stose (Stephen..to complete the Je group)
Art-2: Shannon Astolfi, Leslie Ward, Aiden Graham, Jeffrey Gallant
Cooking-1: Maria Tina da Rosa, Laura Krier, Kathleen Keleher, Laura O'Brien
Cooking-2: Marcie Walsh-O'Connor, Sam Smallidge, Kim Giedd, Becky Scott
Handicrafts-1: Laurel Ellison Dantas, Elizabeth Meyers, Pamela Fairlie (group of 3)
Music-1: Molly Caple, Ashley Gaunt, Joey Grant, Katie Mullen
Music-2: Molly Tobin, Anna Kresmer, Nichole Gagnon, Jessica Pindell
Sports-1: Tina Chan, Jenn Warner, John Brigham (group of 3)
Travel and tourism-1: Tina King, Mariana Oller, Michele Chapin, Nancy Hickey
Travel and tourism-2: Joyce Myeza, Anna Cook, Paul Baker, Suzanne Harde
I have had a few questions about this, so a reminder that the browsing and bookstores report is due to be posted in the forum by April 4, and the discussion occurs between then and April 11.
Only one member of each biography group should submit the biography in eLearning.
This week's music is jazz great Miles Davis - Kind of Blue.
I have put the next set of slides in eLearning - we will probably get to part of this on Friday. Don't forget - we start in the lab.
Assignment 3 and its dropbox and forum are in Moodle.
I feel that I am nickel and diming you to death with all the little tasks, so I have removed some of them and pushed some due dates forward. I reallocated some points, and am left with 5 unallocated, which is not a problem, as it's all kind of averaged anyway. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Here is what it used to look like:
And this is what it looks like now:
The PDF of the PPT slides for tomorrow is in Moodle.
There is confusion about the due date for the interim report. On the assignments Web page it has said March 18 since the first day of class. In Moodle it says March 18. However, I think I said "which I think is due March 25" in the Camtasia lecture, and on the course outline it says March 25 (which is actually the date from 2007 which I forgot to excise). So the confusion is my fault. In any event, I will expect all reports by the 25th, and will be happy to see any before that.
Tomorrow I will be going up to Montreal to give a talk at McGill, my alma mater for my master's degree. I am quite excited. Of course, I have been going to Montreal a couple of times a year ever since we moved to Boston, but it's been a while since I did anything official at McGill. I was checking out the library school's Web pages today, and I have to say that the curriculum has changed a great deal since 1974 (I would hope so). They have some very cool-sounding courses. I will be back on Monday.
I have put a small "vocabulary quiz" and its dropbox into Moodle - due March 24 (but do it now) and worth 3 points (vocab1-surname.doc).
I have put a dropbox for the interim report into Moodle (interim-surname.doc).
I have added an interim report forum to Moodle, comments to be made after you have turned yours in. It reads: "Apart from choosing the topic, what has been the most difficult thing about your project? Remind us of what you are doing (informally), describe roughly how you are going about it, and tell us what you have found to be the biggest challenge(s). Come back periodically and comment on other people's contributions. Original comments to be posted by March 22. Comments on others' postings to be completed by March 24." Worth 2 points.
I have loaded the Camtasia lecture into eLearning, and also the PPT handouts. I found out how to make the table of contents wider. I didn't do so well in integrating Web and Camtasia. And I was distressed to find out that Epicurious has changed their browsing, so you can ignore the Epicurious link. I make reference in the narrative to the thesaurus software available for free from Tim Craven - it is here.
I also imply that the interim report is due in two weeks. It's actually due March 18. Details will follow.
The times at which we will be meeting in the back of the Tech Lab have changed. On the Friday after break week, we will meet at 9:30 (for the morning session) and 1:00 (for the afternoon). So go to the Lab not the classroom. Also, it would be good for the Lab days if you came to the session in which you are enrolled - it will be very crowded in the lab if 40 people show up in the morning. This affects March 21, April 11, and April 25.
Friday's music is the album Thokozile, by Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens. The style is South African mbaqanga, and the lead singer is Simon 'Mahlathini' Nkabinde, aka "the growler". Mahlathini passed away in 1999, but the Queens carry on. I was lucky enough to see them in the late 80s - an amzing live act. More at Wikipedia.
From Janet Russell:
We have a job opening, and I wonder if you know anyone who would be interested. It was originally listed as Digital Collections Librarian, but now it has been opened up to people outside the library field. The digital collections aspect is fairly important, and the computing support is going to be partly handled by supervising students to do the work. Anyone interested should apply as soon as possible, because we are interviewing now. Normally an application would go to HR, but because of time, it probably should go to:
Dr. Jack Ammerman
Head Librarian
Boston University Theology Library
745 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA 02215
jwa@bu.edu
I would be glad to talk to anyone interested in the job if they want more information, but after today, email is probably going to be the best way to reach me, because I will be out the office a lot in the next week.
Janet Russell
Cataloger
Boston University Theology Library
617-353-1353
janetr@bu.edu
Here is the Job Description.
A second copy of Foskett has arrived and is being added to reserve - so doing the readings should now be easier. Thanks to the Library.
There are two parts to Friday's lecture, so there are four PPT files, one for each part in 3-to-a-page and one for each part in 6-to-a-page. Also Assignment 4 has been loaded. (not due till April 4).
Biography signups are now closed (the deadline for signup was Feb 22). Go ahead and write your biography. Some of you are groups of two. If you are having difficulties contacting your partner(s), first look at the contact sheet that is in eLearning. If that doesn't help, contact me. The deadline is March 21, and there is a dropbox in eLearning.
There is a signup sheet for the Browsing in bookstores and libraries assignment in the wiki, and the instructions for what you will be doing are in the Handout section of eLearning. The deadline for signup is March 14. The deadline for the report (2 points) to be posted in the eLearning dicussion forum is April 4. The deadline for individual response (1 point) in the forum is April 11.
Since tomorrow is Tuesday, I just wanted you to know that I have not forgotten about you. I will be creating a lecture which completes the thesaurus construction section, and will also include thoughts on your interim report. And of course, there is my grading, your online discussion of Assignment 2, and so on. I will not have time to get to much of this until later this week - so work on your projects and watch this space. I am not going to mandate individual meetings about projects during break, but I want to encourage you to come and talk to me about your projects during this time, especially if you are having problems. I will only be out of town on March 14 and 15.