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Redesign of Library Workflows: Experimental Models for Electronic Resource Description

Calhoun, Karen (2000) Redesign of Library Workflows: Experimental Models for Electronic Resource Description. In Proceedings Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium, Washington.

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Abstract

This paper explores the potential for and progress of a gradual transition from a highly centralized model for cataloging to an iterative, collaborative, and broadly distributed model for electronic resource description. The author's purpose is to alert library managers to some experiments underway and to help them conceptualize new methods for defining, planning, and leading the e-resource description process under moderate to severe time and staffing constraints. To build a coherent library system for discovery and retrieval of networked resources, librarians and technologists are experimenting with team-based efforts and new workflows for metadata creation. In an emerging new service model for e-resource description, metadata can come from selectors, public service librarians, information technology staff, authors, vendors, publishers, and catalogers. Arguing that e-resource description demands a level of cross-functional collaboration and creative problem-solving that is often constrained by libraries' functional organizational structures, the author calls for reuniting functional groups into virtual teams that can integrate the e-resource description process, speed up operations, and provide better service. The paper includes an examination of the traditional division of labor for producing catalogs and bibliographies, a discussion of experiments that deploy a widely distributed e-resource description process (e.g., the use of CORC at Cornell and Brown), and an exploration of the results of a brief study of selected ARL libraries' e-resource discovery systems.

EPrint Type:Conference Paper
Keywords:electronic resource description,metadata,cross-functional collaboration, ARL
Subjects:Management Information Systems
Knowledge Structures
Cataloging
Metadata
Information Science
Knowledge Management
Informetrics
Information Systems
ID Code:591
Deposited On:07 April 2005
Alternative Locations:http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/calhoun_paper.html
Eprint Statistics:View statistics for this eprint
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1. Younger, Jennifer A. and D. Kaye Gapen. 1990. Technical services organization: where we have been and where we are going. In Technical services today and tomorrow, ed. Michael Gorman. 171-83. Englewood CO: Libraries Unlimited.

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4. Younger and Gapen, Technical services organization, 176.

5. Boissonnas, Christian M. 2001. Technical services: the other reader service. portal: libraries and the academy 1. In press.

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7. Ferguson, Chris. 2000. "Shaking the conceptual foundations," too: integrating research and technology support for the next generation of information service. College & research libraries 61, no. 4: 300-11. The title within the article title refers to Jerry Campbell's 1992 article in Reference services review. While Ferguson is discussing the dramatic changes in reference services and calling for dramatic new approaches, the parallels with the history and current environment in technical services are striking. I particularly appreciated Ferguson's insight into the difference between "layering" new services upon old models, versus creating new service models, as well as his use of the phrase "heroic accommodations," which I have borrowed for this article.

8. Buckland, Michael. 1992. Bibliographic access reconsidered. Ch. 4 of Redesigning library services: a manifesto. 24-41. Chicago: American Library Association.

9. For the purpose of this paper, resource description is defined broadly to include the creation of any surrogate of an item whose purpose is to facilitate library users' discovery and retrieval of the item.

10. Buckland, Bibliographic access reconsidered, 29.

11. Lubans, John. 1999. Students & the Internet: spring 1999 survey (study 3). Available at: http://www.lib.duke.edu/lubans/docs/study3.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

12. Calhoun, Karen and Zsuzsa Koltay. 1999. Library gateway focus groups report, January 1999. Available at: http://www.library.cornell.edu/staffweb/GateEval/contents.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

13. Buckland, Redesigning library services, 32-9.

14. Van de Sompel, Herbert and Patrick Hochstenbach. 1999. Reference linking in a hybrid library environment, parts 1 and 2. D-Lib magazine 5, no. 4 (April). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/04contents.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

15. Ercegovac, Zorana. 1997. The interpretations of library use in the age of digital libraries: virtualizing the name. Library & information science research 19, no. 1: 35-51. Table 1 is an adaptation of Ercegovac's table "Toward digital libraries" on page 42.

16. Buckland, Redesigning library services, 32-

17. Neuhauser, Peg. 1988. Characteristics of organizational tribes. Ch. 2 of Tribal warfare in organizations. 15. Cambridge MA: Ballinger Publishing.

18. I chose seventeen titles to look for--ten online databases and seven full text journals. The list below provides the titles and the sources from which they are available. I selected them because (1) they are commonly licensed by large ARLs and thus likely to be accessible to their users; and (2) they present resource description challenges of different types and levels (simple to complex). For example, Callaloo is available in JSTOR, a full text collection with a stable list of titles that are well maintained over time, while American Heritage is part of several large, amorphous vendor aggregations with shifting sets of titles. The seven libraries were Harvard, Yale, UCLA, the University of Illinois at Urbana, the University of Michigan, Columbia, and Cornell.

Titles Examined Source(s)

ABI Inform Ovid, OCLC, Proquest

Avery index RLG

Arts & humanities citation index ISI Web of Science

Congressional Universe CIS

Dissertation abstracts UMI

ERIC ERIC, Ovid, OCLC

INSPEC IEE, Ovid

Academic Universe Lexis Nexis

UnCover CARL

WorldCat OCLC

Harvard business review Full text in Ovid ABI Inform, Proquest ABI Inform,

EBSCO Academic Search Elite, etc.

Time Full text in Ovid ABI Inform, Proquest ABI Inform,

EBSCO Academic Search Elite, OCLC Periodical

Abstracts, etc.

Callaloo Full text in JSTOR, Project Muse, OCLC ECO, etc.

American Heritage Full text in EBSCO Academic Search Elite, OCLC

Periodical Abstracts, Proquest Periodical

Abstracts, etc.

SIAM journal on applied mathematics Full text in JSTOR, SIAM Journals Online, etc.

Wall Street Journal Full text in Proquest Periodical Abstracts Research II,

OCLC

Algorithmica Full text in Springer Link, EBSCO Online, etc.

19. There were cases in which the library did not license the title in question, but these cases were rare. Usually the missing title was licensed, just not findable via the library's catalog or Web site.

20. Hammer, Michael and James Champy. 1993. The new world of work. Ch. 4 of Reengineering the corporation: a manifesto for business revolution. 65. New York: HarperBusiness.

21. Ibid., 66-7.

22. Richardson, John V. Jr. 1999. Understanding the reference transaction: a systems analysis perspective. College & research libraries 60, no. 3: 211-22.

23. For more information about CORC visit http://www.oclc.org/oclc/corc/index.htm. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

24. Caldwell, Ann Dominique Coulombe, Ronald Fark, and Michael Jackson. 2000. Never the twain shall meet? Collaboration between catalogers and reference librarians in the OCLC CORC project at Brown University. Journal of Internet cataloging 4, no. 1. In press.

25. Calhoun, Karen, et al. 1999. CORC at Cornell project: final report. Available at: http://campusgw.library.cornell.edu/corc/. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

26. Sinn, Sally. 2000. Reported in the minutes of the ALCTS Directors of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries meeting, July 7, 2000, and confirmed in e-mail exchange with the author, August 8, 2000.

27. Riemer, John and Karen Calhoun. 2000. PCC Standing Committee on Automation (SCA) Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases: final report, January 2000. Available at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/aggfinal.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

28. Beacom, Matthew. 2000. E-mail exchange with the author, August 8, 2000.

29. Britten, William A., et al. 2000. Access to periodicals holdings information: creating links between databases and the library catalog. Library collections, acquisitions and technical services 24, no. 1. In press.

30. Jiras, Jonathan. 2000. Access to e-journals at RIT. Presentation at Partners in Information and Innovation meeting, February 2, 2000, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

31. Lundgren, Jimmie and Betsy Simpson. 1999. Looking through users' eyes: what do graduate students need to know about Internet resources via the library catalog? Journal of Internet cataloging 1, no. 4: 31-44.

32. Van de Sompel and Hochstenbach, Reference linking, part 1.

33. For example, in a fully interlinked information environment, a user's search for "George Washington" could retrieve images, correspondence and other primary source materials, books, articles in journals, audiovisual materials, etc. How can we provide enough information about where the user's "hits" are coming from to allow him or her to make sense of what has been retrieved and to navigate to what is wanted?

34. Vellucci, Sherry V. 1997. Options for organizing electronic resources: the coexistence of metadata. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science 24, no. 1 (Oct./Nov.).

35. A description of the TAF workshop and the participants' papers may be found at http://research.calacademy.org/taf/proceedings/Proceedings.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

36. Calhoun, Karen. 1998. A bird's eye view of authority control in cataloging. Paper presented at TAF Workshop, June 22-23, 1998, in Washington DC. Available at: http://research.calacademy.org/taf/proceedings/Calhoun.html. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

37. Nelson, Stuart. 1998. The Unified Medical Language System: applicable experiences and observations. Paper presented at TAF Workshop, June 22-23, 1998, in Washington DC. Available at: http://research.calacademy.org/taf/proceedings/nelson/index.htm. Accessed: August 11, 2000.

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