[200] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Cataloging Internet Resources
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Fri May 8 09:30:13 1992
Date: Fri, 8 May 1992 08:26:15 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
3 Messages, 117 Lines
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From: Priscilla Caplan <COTTON@HARVARDA>
Subject: Internet resources
There have been several comments lately along the lines of: why would
you want to catalog internet resources, when what's really useful is
a mechanism that will not only tell you something exists but also
connect you to it. I clipped a quote from someone (sorry I lost the
name) saying "people will not be very impressed... with searching
an online database for citations of other online databases or systems
which they can only access by logging off and then logging on to
something else."
The point is well taken, but there *are* internet resources that are
not systems or services that can be logged onto, for example,
ftp-able documents, e-journals, etc. I think we tend to get
confused when we lump these kinds of data resources with online
systems, which is one of the reasons I wrote the MARBI discussion
paper on this topic. It does seem reasonable to me to at least
think about the possibility of creating databases that contain
citations to documents regardless of whether those documents are
in electronic form and internet-accessible, or on paper and ILL-
accessible. If the same report is available on paper and in ascii
in an ftp site someplace, why not catalog it and give ALL its
paper and electronic locations?
This latter category, data resources (as opposed to online systems
and services) is the thrust of the OCLC effort at organizing a
project to try cataloging internet resources. It's also what
MARBI will be focusing on initially. Which isn't to say the other
isn't equally or even more important, but only that we feel we're
better able to tackle this first.
*-----
From: "Walt Crawford" <BR.WCC@RLG>
Subject: Cataloging resources: the format is not the display!
As a "library folk," I must take issue with Billy Barron's
comment...
> The MARBI spec will allow you to catalog it, but what
> about us non-library folks. It looks like an unreadable
> mess in that format.
I will assert that virtually *all* of the online catalogs
Billy Barron assiduously promotes access to are based on
the USMARC formats. Are they all "unreadable messes"?
I'll go further: without "MARBI specs" and the USMARC format,
we wouldn't have the wealth of available information on the
net that currently exists.
Criticizing MARC because the communications format itself
is not designed for direct reading is like criticizing
PostScript because it's hard to read an .EPS file directly!
(For that matter, ever tried to read a typical word processing
file as a straight ASCII file--say WordPerfect, for example?)
The communications format *communicates* information between
computers; it was never designed for direct end-user use,
but makes it quite easy to reformat information for end users.
Is a MARC format the best way to provide coherent access to
Internet resources? I have no idea. Would the experience of
librarians in providing controlled vocabularies and meaningful
access points improve such an access mechanism? You betcha.
One additional note, with respect to Gord Nickerson's
comments in the same PACS-L merged message:
Are we really serving users better by tossing them into
enormous realms of unprocessed data with no designated access
points than we did through cataloging? Personally, I don't
believe it for a second! (No, I've never been a cataloger.
I respect them and what they accomplish, though.)
-walt crawford, br.wcc@rlg.bitnet; Internet: br.wcc@rlg.stanford.edu
*-----
From: rtennant@library.Berkeley.EDU (Roy Tennant)
Subject: Cataloging is not collecting
I would like to clarify something that may at first seem to be a
minor point, but if you will bear with me I hope to convince you
otherwise.
Peter Graham was kind enough to pass on a thought that he had
while listening to a conference speaker (posted on May 5, 1992).
As he put it:
>About scholarly information on the network:
>To catalog it is to collect it.
Cataloging it does not provide access to it. This is nowhere better
proved than in the current work of MARBI that seeks to utilize an
expanded USMARC definition to catalog Internet resources. As
far as I understand it (which, admittedly, is not all that far), the
purpose of this effort is *not* to allow libraries or others to use
these records to connect to these resources, but is merely to allow
them to be identified and to give enough information that someone
could go *somewhere else* to connect to and use them. If this is
true, then cataloging is *not* collecting, not by a long shot.
Rather, I think the quote should be "To provide access to it is to
collect it." This has long been known by computer support professionals
such as Billy Barron, Brewster Kahle and Mark Resmer, as well as
a handful of librarians who have led the way in providing both
information and *access* to Internet resources. Speaking to my
librarian colleagues now, we must either wake up to the fact that
cataloging Internet resources is no longer adequate, if it ever was,
and that if we do not start providing access to these resources
then someone else will. And that would be a shame, becuase then
many of the users of these resources will not have the benefit of
our knowledge about where these resources fit in with the rest of
the information universe.
Roy Tennant
The Library
UC Berkeley
