I get the vision of where we are going in terms of the semantic web, RDA, FRBR, etc. Believe me, I want to be there as much as anyone. But I still cannot for the life of me understand how we will get there. To paraphrase Janet Swan Hill, I need the intervening steps mapped out and I do not seem to be hearing those. Or else, I am missing them, which is entirely possible ...
Thanks to Georgie Briscoe for her interesting program on quality control in our catalogs! Hopefully we can pursue Barbara Bintliff's suggestion of a new column in TSLL to share our strategies for cleanup projects to catch the errors that Georgia described to us. Look for her article on her research project in an upcoming LLJ.
It was exciting the way the program Q&A portions often produced ideas like this that tech services law librarians could tackle to achieve a desired end. My concern is whether we have the time and energy to make them all a reality. After all, the themes I heard this year remained: budget and staff shortfalls, cross training, justification of what we do to administration (usually in terms of measurement of data), etc. And of course it is the year of RDA, so we are wondering how to grapple with that. How little sleep can tech services law librarians operate on? I guess we will find out!
The meeting was exhausting because there was so much content to absorb in such a short amount of time. I extend my sincere thanks to TS and OBS for their hard work in providing that content. And thanks especially to my committed and enthusiastic colleagues who make up those SISs. You are all amazing!
Philadelphia 2015: TS-SIS and OBS-SIS in the City of Brotherly Love
One of the really interesting things for me about this conference was the distinction between the visionary ideas about what RDA will mean -- the semantic web program -- and the tiny details we will have to figure out to get there -- what to do about the 336-8 fields and the 245 $h. Given the dire budget situation that seems to be facing everyone, it's going to be difficult to deal with the minutia, but if we could just somehow get there, the visionary business might convince people that it's actually important to continue to fund cataloging. That seems to be the crux of it to me -- if we can just hold out, there may be a really great payoff.
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