Will Google's Keyword Searching Eliminate the Need for LC Cataloging and Classification?

Nope!, says Thomas Mann, a Reference Librarian in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress, "its limitations make cataloging and classification even more important to researchers." See Mann's paper, written for AFSCME 2910, here. There is a similar article in Library Journal, entitled Research at Risk, that I would also recommend. LJ recently did an about-face on its rather unpopular new policy of restricting articles to subscribers who establish a login, so you should be able to access this article freely. If not, and you haven't activated your login, drop me a line and I'll be happy to share.

Online Access for Report of the State Auditor

At the request of Ann, we've added a field to the bib record for the Report of the State Auditor that will provide access to the current online version of Salary and Travel Supplement. Give it a try and see how you like it.

Also, if anyone knows of a more common name for this publication, I could provide variant title access to that, making it a lot easier to find. Just let me know.

When I Talk Through Google...

...it makes me feel like #1.

Our good friend Google has a cool new service in Beta: an instant messaging/ voice chat program called Google Talk. Jennifer and I tested it out and it is very easy to download and use both for text and voice chatting. Although we did get a good bit of static the 2nd time we tried voice chat aka talking. Should be a major competitor in the IM game when widely released.

Happy weekend.

It's a WikiWiki World

If anyone is interested in getting involved with Wikis, here's a chance to get in on the ground floor. The LISWiki just launched on June 30, 2005 and there are plenty of topics waiting to be covered or just fleshed out. Unlike Wikipedia, LISWiki's mission embraces opinion pieces ("with factual information properly presented, of course"). So, if you have a soap box that's been gathering dust, they want to hear from you as well.

Raising the Bar: Legal Education Reform in Iraq

A collaborative project between OCLC Online Computer Library Center and the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law recently brought together 12 Iraqi librarians for a training workshop on cataloging standards and technology in Amman, Jordan.

WorldCat Adds Its Billionth Holding

At 2:21:34 p.m. EDT on August 11th, 2005, Anne Slane, a cataloger for Worthington (Ohio) Libraries, entered holdings information for the book The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s Pop Sensation, becoming the one billionth holding record in the WorldCat database.

The wording on this confused me a bit, but I'm thinking that they are saying WorldCat has 1 billion holdings records, and not 1 billion unique bibliographic records. (It's over 61 million bibliographic records now.) Impressive, nonetheless. Congrats, Ms. Slane!

GOLD/ GALILEO Annual Meeting

gpclibrarians
Originally uploaded by decatur library.

A good group of GPC folks attended the 2005 GOLD/ GALILEO Annual Users Group Conference in Athens last Friday. Here's a picture of some, but not all, of us. It was a very enjoyable day, featuring lots of yummy snack foods.

In addition to the eating, there were several interesting sessions. The previously mentioned presentation by Ross Singer of GA Tech on WAG The Dog was very informative. There was also a GALILEO update which covered the implementation of SFX and federated searching of GALILEO databases in the not too distant future.


The Digital Library of Georgia session included information about their newly redesigned website, some featured collections, and a great look at an exhibit about the Gold Rush in Dahlonega. Pete attended it too!




Hopefully many of the presentations will be online soon for folks who didn't get to attend. All in all it was a very fun and informative Friday.

Web Access to Works in the Public Domain

Interesting blurb from LC Cataloging Newsline, Volume 13, no. 10, August 2005:

This project makes links from the LC catalog to full
electronic texts of items for which LC has an exact match in print
represented in the LC collections. The project depends on the
cooperation of "trusted" partner institutions such as research
libraries and other organizations that are digitizing freely
available works. LC provides links to the electronic versions from
its catalog records for the print versions. Two new collaborators
are the RAND Corporation and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library,
University of Maryland. In the case of the former, over 680 links
have been made to RAND publications through the RAND Web site http://www.rand.org/publications [August 2005]. In the second,
over 140 links have been made to publications of the United States
Commission on Civil Rights digitized by the Thurgood Marshall Law
Library, University of Maryland at
http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/index.asp [August
2005].

The Secret History of Librarians

An interview with Rex Libris creator, James Turner.

Thought that this might be a nice diversion for everyone from my usual "Blah, blah, blah, Open WorldCat, blah, blah, LCSH ..." Someone posted this link to AUTOCAT last Friday (the day we catalogers set aside for non-cataloging-related discussion and general humor, which must be properly tagged before posting, of course). I've only had time to skim the article, but it looks like a pretty cute little series, sort of Mr. Bookman the Library Cop (my favorite Seinfeld character) travels through time and space to track down overdue library books. I would have liked to have seen a female protagonist, but oh well. I still have Bunny Watson from Desk Set and that’s not too shabby. Besides, it sounds like Mr. Turner really has his heart in the right place.

What do you personally like about libraries? And in what ways have your feelings toward libraries influenced this particular piece of work.

I like being able to go in and read books for free, without the staff glaring at me or throwing me out. A good library system is to be treasured, as it gives you access to tens of thousands of books. The sum of human knowledge available at our finger tips. The work of academics, poets, artists, philosophers, scientists... all at our beck and call. It's amazing. We sit atop a mountain of knowledge. It seems a pity to ignore it. … We just have to take advantage of it. As Andrew Carnegie said, "It is the mind that makes the body rich." He believed education was vital, and while I can't help build 1,700 libraries as he did, I can certainly help promote them.