Information resource description and the future of the library catalogue

• 1. Information Resource Description and the Future of the Library Catalogue Philip Hider School of Information Studies Charles Sturt University

2. Outline The three approaches to information resourcedescription Library catalogue trends The extent that the 3 approaches support these trends Prospects for cataloguing services in academic/school libraries (personal crystal ball) 3. The three approaches According to Hider (2012) Information Resource Description.Facet/ALA Editions (1) Content-based retrieval a la the search enginesMetadata-based retrieval (2) socially generated (end-users, authors, publishers) (3) professionally generated (cataloguers, indexers) 4. Content-based retrieval 5. Pros and cons ProsCons Low costs Doesnt cover non-digital material Very scalable IP issues Fast turn-around Less good with AV material Interoperable Doesnt (much) address user needs Supports finding, identifying andor author intentions Doesnt support less well-defined searching & browsing so well Doesnt support navigation so wellobtaining fairly well Supports well-defined and precision searching Relevance ranking can help with selection 6. Social metadata 7. Pros and cons ProsConsLow costs Quite scalable (potentially) Keeps up with linguistic changes Quite interoperable Emphasises user needs and/or author intentions Strong on recall Supports well-defined topical finding fairly well Supports selecting through ratings, reviews, etc. Covers all material potentially (though digital material more) Not so strong on precision Doesnt support less well-defined searching & browsing so well That is, doesnt support navigation 8. Professional description 9. Pros and cons ProsCons Reliable/trusted Potentially, connects user needs High costsand author intentions Quite good balance of precision and recall Supports finding, indentifying, selecting, obtaining and navigating Particularly good for less welldefined searching and browsing Backlogs Not so scalable Can be user-unfriendly More interoperability issues Doesnt support precisionsearching so well 10. The library catalogue in 2013 In Australia, wide range from stand-alone pre-Web interfaces to Google-like next-generation discovery layers (Hider, forthcoming) Single search box (one stop shop) Relevance ranking Visualisation (including FRBRised displays) Faceted navigation Social catalogue (Tarulli, The library catalogue as social space. 2012) Personalisation Mobile catalogues See Catalogue 2.0 : the future of the library catalogue / edited bySally Chambers. Facet, 2013 11. One stop shop More and more cataloguing of e-resources Catalogue joined to other indexes Discovery layer joined to outside information world (e.g.OCLC WorldCat Local) Toward a Linked Data world (e.g. LC Authorities, VIAF) 12. Ultimately Google? Completely open access? If publically funded research? Still a role for collections? To support particular informationseeking/learning in specific environments, such as schools, university courses, etc. Information abundance makes selection of quality/relevanceever more critical 13. Information retrieval in 2023 Finding, identifying & obtaining supported mostly bycontent-based systems Selecting supported by user reviews & professional metadata Navigation supported by controlled vocabularies 14. The library discovery system in 2023 Covers all of the librarys collection Integrated with wider web (through e.g. linked data) Accessible anywhere, anytime by anything Content-based searching routine, but users appreciatemetadata (especially for non-text materials) Social tagging part of scholarly activity Professionals support searching, tagging and manage controlled vocabularies 15. The cataloguing department in 2023 Transitioned to the metadata section Still a specialist activity But working more closely with other players, including ITsection, liaison librarians, teacher librarians, lecturers, teachers, students Different collections and users will still need differentmetadata and vocabularies 16. Cataloguing services (e.g. SCIS) Provide metadata for key resources to support curriculum,but perhaps only controlled fields Support tagging done by teachers and students pre-hocand/or post-hoc Manage or co-manage controlled vocabularies (e.g. ScOT?) 17. Final prediction for 2013 The second edition of RDA wouldnt have been released yet 18. Thank you [email protected]