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Re-thinking Serials Librarianship Birdie MacLennan 10 Mar 1993 15:40 UTC

2 messages,  85 lines:
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Date:         Tue, 9 Mar 1993 20:51:26 EST
From:         Edward Vielmetti <emv@MSEN.COM>
Subject:      Re: Re-thinking Serials Librarianship

  Mitch Turitz <turitz@SFSUVAX1.SFSU.EDU> wrote:

> Marilyn - I agree with you.  I think that the non-librarian "techies" have
> no idea of the complexity of our jobs and think that there will be no need
> to catalog things because everything will be scanned into machine-readable
> form and that keyword access will replace the online catalog.  (Never mind
> the problems of storage and retrieval capability).

As a non-librarian "techie" I have a different alternative future in
mind.  Serials collections and monograph collections will start to
look more and more like "archives", with the primary unit of
cataloging the "box" (directory), general but not terribly detailed
finders aids available to help you home in on which box (or set of
boxes) has the stuff you want in it, and detailed but quirky
cataloging and keyword access to information within the box.  Plus of
course some partial inventory list, scribbled notes from the person
who visited the box before, and a quite reasonable sense of despair
that you would ever be able to do anything resembling an exhaustive
search of the whole collection.

Having lived with and built several quite popular keyword-access
systems (WAIS databases) on the net, and having culled through reams
of trash looking for some relatively smaller sample of good texts
worth saving, I think I can confirm the sense that simple keyword
access on large undifferentiated piles of stuff yields you little but
noise.  The process of weeding, culling, and selecting from among the
"everything" and knowing what to catalog and what to index (and what
to throw away!) is key to proving effective access to a complicated
collection.

  Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com
Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 +1 313 998 4562 (fax: 998 4563)

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Date:         Wed, 10 Mar 1993 09:30:33 EST
From:         Gail McMillan <GMCMILLA@VTVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Re-thinking Serials Librarianship

I feel like such a stoggy traditionalist.  While electronic publications are
certainly changing many aspects of libraries, I still feel that the library's
catalog (online, of course) offers the unique opportunity for us to bring to-
gether all the different formats in which information is available.  Just be-
cause electronic publications are easily accessible to many, isn't it the
library's responsibility to guide researchers, students, scholars and the like
to the multitude of information resources--now and in the future.

Which researchers, students, or scholars (and others) are going to limit their
information to only one format?  Reasonably speaking, no one.  Libraries are
not just sources of information but they are also gateways to information--this
is not a new role for libraries.  I believe that libraries will continue to
serve both roles and that electronic publication will get better use because of
us catalogers and serials librarians than e-pubs would get/are getting out
there on The Nets. Our traditional service orientation is readily expanding to
encompass changing technologies--we do not have our heads in the sand nor in
the clouds.

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.........................Gail McMillan........................
___....____________......Serials Team Leader..................
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