Standards

I find myself talking about "standards" all the time, but meaning it in at least two different ways. The first is to mean recognised international standards in cataloguing and indexing - which, at the moment, in the UK at least, means AACR2, M21 and Dewey. It means following generally accepted rules, best practice, because there is safety in numbers, when we do what everyone else does, and because we believe ourselves to be abiding by principles which the best minds in the business have devised over time, so that we not only gain the undeniable and valuable benefits of interoperability, sharing and cooperation, but that somehow we are also doing "the right thing" and as far as possible future-proofing our data. But that simply isn't the case any more. We may input the data in AACR and M21 and Dewey, but our LMS's hold that data in all sorts of ways, they break it down and fragment it and build it all up again into structures that we have no control over and wouldn't even recognise if we saw it. The people who design our Opacs (not that they even call them Opacs now - the Opac is dead, apparently, and what we have got is a resource discovery tool) are spending their days devising new ways of "mining" and "parsing" the data which we thought we had got into the best possible format in the first place. So much for standards, if they have to be broken and re-made before they can be used.

But I also talk about "standards" when what I really mean is "quality" - keeping high levels of accuracy and consistency so that our records are fit for purpose and can be used as the foundation of an excellent service. These are the standards that we know we mustn't drop, even when we have to cope with reduced resources - instead we must work harder and smarter. But hang on a minute - how are we going to define quality if we don't have anything to measure it against? If we don't any longer have any agreement about what constitutes best practice, if we don't have agreement about shared formats and codes, how can we tell whether our records are any good?

If a language doesn't have a grammar, how do we know whether that language is being used properly? How can we communicate if we don't share meaning and structures? Are we reduced individually just making it up as we go along? Can anyone understand us? Is anyone still listening?

Do more with less? What rot!

I am so sick of being told that we have to "do more with less" - and everyone seeming to think that this is a quite reasonable thing to ask and quite possible to deliver.

Can you do more washing-up with less washing-up liquid? Of course not. It stands to reason - with less washing-up liquid you can only wash fewer dishes, or wash the same number of dishes not so well. Isn't it about time we said so?

Is it too late?

Several comments on the last post referred to the so-called "next generation" Opacs, and they struck a chord with me as I am in the process of implementing one such (which is the reason for my too frequent absences from this blog just lately). I agree that they have an enormous potential for revealing and exploiting the information that we have been putting in bib records for years and which our present Opacs have been unable to make use of - and, hopefully, a better subject search will be one of the benefits.

But I can't help thinking that the timing of these new developments is unfortunate. Yes, a better Opac, a more attractive and engaging and effective Opac, is exactly what we want not just to help our users (which is always the most important thing) but also to show our masters that what we do has a practical value and importance. At last it is obvious why we put all that arcane coding into our records and why we fuss about consistent forms of headings, because at last everyone can see what use it is.

However, at exactly the same time as it suddenly becomes worthwhile to catalogue things "properly", I (and I am sure I am not alone) continue to face a reduction in resources which will mean cutting back even further on full standard cataloguing and the staff who are capable of doing it. For years we have been passing more and more of the bread-and-butter cataloguing to non-professional staff and in the process have necessarily been simplifying what we ask them to do. That means, for example, not bothering overly much about Leader and 008 coding. In the context of our old Opac, which didn't make any use of such things, this made perfect sense - why fuss about something that wasn't being used?

Now I am looking at an Opac which depends on accurate and detailed coding of the fixed length fields in order to express format and form and all sorts of other very useful stuff (all of which I very definitely want my users to see). For a database that contains a fair amount of simplified catalogue records as well as all sorts of gruesome legacy data, that means re-cataloguing stuff. I face a daily struggle to persuade my masters of the case for cataloguing stuff in the first place, never mind re-cataloguing it!

If we had had these wonderful Opacs a few years ago, I could have shown what would happen to the catalogue if we simplified and downgraded our cataloguing. Look, I could have said - if we don't put the detail in, you can't use the catalogue to do this, or this, or that. But what my wonderful new Opac shows is the inadequacy of what we have done and I fear that it is now too late to turn back the clock. I do hope I'm wrong.

Shortcuts or rambles

As both a cataloguer and a catalogue user, I know that I come to the catalogue with a range of different needs and expectations. Sometimes I know exactly what I want - I may even know that it is in stock - so I am using the catalogue to check where I can find it or to make sure that there is a copy on the shelf when I call into the library on the way home. At other times I'm not at all sure what I want.

It seems to me that we cater very well for the person with a clear idea of what they are looking for. If you know the name of the person who created it and the title, you'll probably be able to find it straight off. If you return a number of hits, you'll be able to filter them by date, or by format - if you want the most up-to-date travel guide, or the DVD rather than the Blu-Ray version. Our catalogues are designed to make it as easy as possible to get straight to your destination, and that's great (as I said in the previous post) for people who know what they want.

If I have no idea at all of what I want, even then the catalogue will help, by providing lists of new acquisitions, or links to shortlists or titles of current interest - the "what's new" or "what's hot" kind of lists. These are pretty much the equivalent of library displays - something to catch your eye when you arrive on the site. There is usually scope for doing a lot more of this kind of thing, but at least most catalogues offer something.

However, let's suppose I want some books about Florence, because I am going to be spending a long weekend there and I want to plan my visit. If I were to go into my local library and speak to a real live librarian, then pretty soon we would be having a conversation about my holiday, and what I might like to do while I am there, and with luck I would be steered in the right direction to find a book that satisified me.

But if I go to the catalogue, and type "Florence" in the keyword box - I am going to get a great mass of stuff and very little help in trying to sort it out. First of all, I am going to find that I've got stuff about Florence Nightingale, and whole series of the Magic Roundabout (it might take me a while to work out why), and I have to filter these out, and there is probably no easy or obvious way of doing it. Even if I ignore all these, then there is no helpful guide asking me whether I am going to be spending all my time in galleries, or restaurants, or watching the football - or am I going to be hiring a bicycle and would I like a guide to cycle touring?

Of course there used to be a tool that did just this and it was called a subject index. It collocated distributed relatives - so it was very useful for refining a search (making it possible to define which aspect of a subject you were looking for) but it was also brilliant for reminding you of aspects of a subject you might not have thought of and which the library had in stock. It was the nearest you could get to having a conversation with a friendly and informed librarian.

So why don't any of our wonderful new online catalogues incorporate subject indexes? The most help they offer is a "Did you mean...?" which covers little more than mistyping. Why can't we make it as easy to find and choose between Florentine history and Tuscan cycle tours, as between the 2nd and 3rd edition of a book or between the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of Shrek 2?

Librarians like to search

There has been a lot of talk recently about the effect of the Internet (and new media in general) on reading habits – and the suggestion that people are increasingly disinclined to read a text slowly, thoroughly and attentively, from beginning to end, absorbing and reflecting on it. While I am sure there have always been people who read instruction manuals and others who take the new gizmo out of its box, throw the manual aside and find out what it does by doing it, I suspect that more and more people, because of shortened attention spans, the endless distractions of the online world, less time to do the same number of things or just improved multi-tasking skills, are now hoppers and flitters.

What strikes me about this is that we are still constructing catalogues for the methodical searcher, for the person who will carry out a search and then refine the results by facets, even going so far as to follow a “breadcrumb” trail and re-trace her steps as necessary. Do we still have users who carry out a search this thoughtfully? Or (and old habits die hard, so it may still be the way that old users behave), do we still have as many as we used to have – and is it what new and young searchers do?

I think that people are increasingly inclined to do a search and, if they don’t find what they want, they don’t look at the results and try to analyse where it went wrong, how to put it right. They just try a different search. And they expect to get the answer immediately, not at the end of a sequence of refining and filtering steps. I think (you may or may not agree) that we are wasting our time when we demand or design catalogues with “Advanced Search” functions, with Boolean operators and ranks of facets. We should be concentrating on speed and display instead, before the hoppers and flitters have hopped and flitted off.

Remember the old mantra - Librarians like to search. Everyone else likes to find.

What should we be saying about ourselves?

So, what has brought all this on? Well, having persuaded everyone that it would be a really good idea if we started to promote bib services a bit more, several opportunities have arisen, both in print/online and in person at open evenings and the like. And it has been borne in upon me that it really isn't very easy.

What do we want to tell people about what we do? What images do we use (a picture being worth a thousand words)?

I really don't think that cataloguing is a spectator sport. It is undeniably interesting for the person doing it, but thought processes are invisible and silent. It would be a rare talent who could make the process of cataloguing engaging and, anyway, do the processes actually matter? Demonstrations of cataloguing tend to turn into accounts of which button gets pressed and what the subfield codes ought to be, which is all good stuff but not likely to capture the attention of a passer-by.

People are important and pictures of people invoke human interest or just naked curiosity, but a surprising number flatly refuse to be photographed. Many cataloguers shun the limelight and are not natural performers - and a reluctant performer is worse than no performer at all.

If you rule out cataloguing and cataloguers, it leaves the catalogue itself as the thing being promoted, which is as it ought to be. I think I should be focussing on the catalogue and what it can do for people. Does anyone have a good idea of how to present it? Has anyone produced successful publicity and demonstrably increased catalogue use? I can't be the first person trying to do it...

What do cataloguers think they do?

Following on from my previous post, and leaving aside any natural inclination cataloguers may have to be meek and mild - because people like that get sent to work in Bib Services Departments and once there, perpetuate the type by tending to appoint people like themselves, the loud and proud often seen as "not fitting in here" - is there something about a cataloguing job that makes it difficult for people to understand, let alone promote, the value of what they do?

I am struck that cataloguers tend to describe their job in terms of tasks. They talk about describing and indexing library materials, using standard rules and tools; they talk about the intellectual effort and judgement required to allocate classification and subject headings; and they talk about these things very well and explain what they do and what influences their decisions. But in answer to a question like, "What does your job as a cataloguer consist of? What do you actually do?", the reply is about input not outcomes. They describe what they do, not why they do it. Why don't they reply, "I help people find all the good stuff that is in our library - I help people find what they want"?

I don't know how true this is of other library staff. Do they too see their job in terms of stamping books, or tidying the shelves, or sending out overdues? Or do they see more clearly than cataloguers do where their jobs fit in to the service that the library provides to its users?

In all of this, I don't mean to denigrate cataloguers. I am just genuinely perplexed by how bad they are - or, to be fair, how bad we are, because I am one of them - at talking about their job and its importance. And in my next post I will explain why I am thinking about this, what it is that has brought it on.