Library and Information Science Commons^™

Tape-By-Tape: Digital Practices And Cataloguing Rituals At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This essay will outline the digital collections of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with an emphasis on process and workflow. The paragraphs below will describe the efforts put forth by the all- volunteer collective, and their dedication toward making materials accessible through the use of digital technology to preserve, catalog, and exhibit lesbian herstory. Interviews with Archive Coordinators, called “Archivettes”, Rachel Corbman on the Online Public Access Catalog, Saskia Scheffer on Photos, and Maxine Wolfe on Audio, will provide examples of LHA digital practices in the creation and maintenance of the Photo Collection, OPAC, and Audio Tape Digitization projects. Additional mention …

“Fu Hao”, “Fu Hao”, “Fuhao” Or “Fu Hao”? A Cataloger’S Navigation Of An Ancient Chinese Woman’S Name, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Chinese language catalogers’ work is not only challenged by the revolution in cataloging standards and principles, but also by ancient Chinese names that emerged in archaeological discoveries and Chinese classic texts, which create a significant impact on records description and retrieval in terms of consistency and accuracy. This article takes an example of an ancient Chinese lady’s name that is inconsistently romanized and described in OCLC and attempts to explore the appropriate form in an authority record through the consulting both Western and Eastern scholarly practices. This article has a further investigation of the evolving history of pre-Qin Chinese names …

Tech Services On The Web: Remember The Milk; Http://Www.Rememberthemilk.Com, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Brief review of productivity app and website, Remember the Milk, with focus on tasks of technical services and electronic resources librarians.

Two Tech Services Wikis @ Cuny, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Discovering Jewish Studies Collections In Academic Libraries: A Practical Guide, Izabella Taler

Publications and Research

The U.S. colleges and universities offering non-sectarian educational programs in Jewish Studies rely on the support of their academic libraries for research materials and library services. For college libraries which use Library of Congress Classification scheme, it is a common practice to integrate "studies" resources into their general library collections. Since Jewish Studies sources span a vast number of subjects within all major disciplines, shelving integration leads to the dispersion of all relevant sources and such dispersion in turn leads to a variety of problems for library professionals and library users. For collection development librarians the problems range from lack …

Threesource: Reimagining How We Collect And Share Information About Social Issues, Jen Hoyer, Stephen Macdonald

Publications and Research

This chapter examines management of information about social justice issues through discussion of the development and implementation of an online database, threeSOURCE. Managed by the Edmonton Social Planning Council, threeSOURCE is an online research database and library catalog created to help community organizations in the Canadian province of Alberta retrieve information about local social issues that they work to address. Reflections highlight issues related to creation, design, and implementation of a database, examining new ways to think about information delivery in line with the core values of our profession.

Bibframe, Europeana And Dpla: The Future Of Open Cultural Heritage?, Laura Brown, Ellie Horowitz, Emory Johnson, Meredith Powers, Sarah Quick

Publications and Research

This paper offers an in-depth look at current issues and challenges faced by libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions, including current trends in metadata harvesting, public access, and institutional interoperability to develop a deep understanding of the current practice and way forward for cultural heritage information access.

Transferring Cataloging Legacies Into Descriptive Metadata Creation In Digital Projects: Catalogers’ Perspective, Junli Diao, Mirtha A. Hernández

Publications and Research

With the emergence of digital collections in libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, catalogers are redefining their roles by participating in digital projects, creating, maintaining, and developing non-traditional metadata records. This article provides a discussion on how catalogers are ensuring that the cataloging legacies of quality control, authority control, and creative cataloging become important components in the creation of descriptive metadata for digital projects.

Passion Of A Young Cataloger, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

The article discusses library cataloging from a passionate cataloger's viewpoint. The author mentions that cataloging requires courage, logical thinking and skill learned through education, repetition, and investment of time. He considers cataloging an art of rules based on personal judgment making books easily discoverable and accessible. He also notes that in the Internet age, cataloging has evolved as a tool to synchronize databases for effective information delivery from resources to users.

Searching Mindfully: Are Libraries Up To The Challenge Of Competing With Google Books?, Amrita Dhawan

Publications and Research

Traditional research tools used by libraries, such as encyclopedias and catalogs (OPACs) were created in an age of print and information scarcity. They have not kept up with changes in the information world which assume an abundance of online information in different formats and interdisciplinary topics which attempt to solve ‘real world’ messy problems and not traditional theoretical questions. The traditional tools rest on an unwieldy and somewhat outdated collaboration between OCLC, LOC, private aggregators, librarians and faculty. The search results they deliver offer excessive information with very little guidance on how to systematically sift through them. This makes the …

Positioning Library Data For The Semantic Web: Recent Developments In Resource Description, Kimmy Szeto

Publications and Research

Recent developments in resource description standards and technologies have aimed at moving cataloging practice to the web environment and making library data available for exchange and reuse on the Semantic Web. As the library community looks outward and forward, library standards and technologies are converging with Web practices in three areas: content description, data models, and data exchange. This article captures the essence of the core standards and technologies that underlie the daily work of practitioners of library service, including Resource Description and Access (RDA), Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), the Linked Data environment, Resource Description Framework (RDF), and …

Creating Collections Through Collaboration: An Innovative Digital Library Project In Monteverde, Costa Rica, Laurie Kutner, Cindy Dykes, Stefanie Havelka

Publications and Research

The proposed presentation will focus on a successful cross-cultural and cross-institutional collaborative model, involving four institutions, that was developed to create digital library collections of research-based information generated in the Monteverde Zone in Costa Rica. Addressing a need for the Monteverde community to have easy access to locally-produced research-based information, the digital collections contain unpublished research documents produced by area international study programs focusing on local sustainable community development, community health, and tropical ecology.

Each summer, since 2008, LIS graduate student interns from Syracuse University have spent 5-6 weeks on site at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica, working to …

Nonknowledge: The Bibliographical Organization Of Ignorance, Stupidity, Error, And Unreason: Part Two, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Starting with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom paradigm in information science it is possible to derive a model of the opposite of knowledge having hierarchical qualities. A range of counterpoints to concepts in the knowledge hierarchy can be identified and ascribed the overall term “nonknowledge.” This model creates a conceptual framework for understanding the connections between topics such as error, ignorance, stupidity, folly, popular misconceptions, and unreason by locating them as levels or phases of nonknowledge. The concept of nonknowledge links heretofore disconnected discourses on these individual topics by philosophers, psychologists, historians, sociologists, satirists, and others. Subject headings provide access to the categories …

Nonknowledge: The Bibliographical Organization Of Ignorance, Stupidity, Error, And Unreason: Part One, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Starting with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom paradigm in information science it is possible to derive a model of the opposite of knowledge having hierarchical qualities. A range of counterpoints to concepts in the knowledge hierarchy can be identified and ascribed the overall term “nonknowledge.” This model creates a conceptual framework for understanding the connections between topics such as error, ignorance, stupidity, folly, popular misconceptions, and unreason by locating them as levels or phases of nonknowledge. The concept of nonknowledge links heretofore disconnected discourses on these individual topics by philosophers, psychologists, historians, sociologists, satirists, and others. Subject headings provide access to the categories …

Academic Libraries In Poland University Of Warsaw Library As An Example Of Library Transformation In Post-Communist Poland, Ewa Dzurak

Publications and Research

This article examines the complex changes that have occurred in Polish academic libraries, especially the University of Warsaw Library (UWL), after the fall of communism in 1989.Shortly afterwards, thanks to grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an accelerated transformation in all library practices began. In preparation for automation, the authority file was created, introducing the process of applying international standards in bibliographic description in a new climate of interlibrary cooperation. The Library of Congress classification and access to open stacks were introduced for the first time in Poland in a newly constructed UWL building. A crowning achievement of the …

Cataloging 2.0: Metadata Research & Initiatives At A Community College Library, Kate Lyons, Elisabeth Tappeiner

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Recommender Systems In The Online Catalog: The Cornell Experience, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

A synopsis of a talk by Kornelia Tancheva, Cornell University, on how Cornell created a version of its online catalog that incorporated a recommender service that made the user experience similar to Amazon.com

From The Ubiquitous To The Nonexistent: A Demographic Study Of Oclc Worldcat, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Analysis of a random sample of bibliographic records from OCLC WorldCat finds that the great majority of items in WorldCat are held by very few participating libraries, and that an inverse geometric relationship exists between the number of libraries holding an item and the number of items with a given level of shared holdings. The findings provide a context for interpreting holding levels in WorldCat with regard to the proportion of widely shared items and the characteristics of items at various ranges of holdings. Used with other quantitative and evaluative measures, these findings will assist libraries in assessing their collections.

The Dilemma Of Access: Describing Open Access Journals With Marc And [Other] Metadata Schemes, Monica Berger, Gloria Rohmann

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Inventory At Brooklyn College, 1998–1999: An Original Method, Judith Wild

Publications and Research

This article discusses the development of an inventory project at Brooklyn College that entailed examining the collection and comparing it to the corresponding records in the online catalog. The procedure became necessary in large part due to problems resulting from the migration to a new, integrated cataloging system in 1987. We needed to deal with (a) books in the catalog that were not on the shelves, (b) books on the shelves that were not in the catalog, and (c) books that lacked circulation information (item records). We used the circulation module of our integrated system to discharge every book, thereby …

Bliss: The Man And The Classification, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

This paper discusses the career of Henry Evelyn Bliss, founder of the Bibliographic Classification, which is currently being revised. Dissatisfied with the current classification systems, Bliss devised his own, which was based on a main class order that provided for collocation of related classes. Although not currently used in the United States, the Bibliographic Classification continues to be utilized by approximately 50 libraries in the United Kingdom. Advantages and criticisms are presented for Bliss's system, which is often praised in library science textbooks, yet seldom used as the trend in libraries has been to either the Dewey Decimal or the …

The Lesbian And Gay Past: An Interpretive Battleground, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lesbian and gay past is an interpretive battleground that mainstream archives have refused to enter, assuming few risks in collecting, naming, or identifying archival collections. At the same time, libraries offer up worlds to those who work to unearth the secrets there.

The New York Public Library's 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibit trumpeted The Arrival of lesbian and gay history to New York's cultural mainstream. The NYPL exhibit denies the library's role in secreting lesbian and gay history, and diminished the contributions of community-based archives to the exhibit.

Aids Information In Periodical Indexes: A Problem Of Exclusion, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lack of attention afforded the gay, lesbian, and alternative press in mainstream periodical indexes has a serious, detrimental impact on the nature of AIDS information available to students of the epidemic. Indexers and database search services must end their policy of excluding the gay/lesbian and other community-based periodicals in order to provide adequate coverage of AIDS information.