Subject Headings or Keywords? Google, Microsoft Join LC Working Group on Bibliographic Control

-- Library Journal, 12/7/2006

Earlier this year a provocative report commissioned by the Library of Congress (LC) raised questions about the utility of longstanding professional practices, including creation of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). LC's professional union was particularly critical, warning that a reliance on search engines could lead to inferior results. Now LC has convened a Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control "to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century," according to an LC statement. Besides representatives from several library organizations, the working group also includes representatives from tech behemoths Microsoft and Google. The group aims to advise LC on its role in steering the library community to analyze "how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices" can help librarians manage and users access library materials.

Group chair José-Marie Griffiths of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said "I agreed to chair this group because these issues are facing all libraries. It is an important opportunity for different sectors of the information profession to examine a common problem and recommend solutions that will benefit librarians and users." LC professional union spokesman Saul Schniderman commented to LJ, "I hope that the working group considers balancing the management of digital and nondigital resources and search techniques rather than transitioning from one to the other."

The convener is Deanna Marcum, LC's associate librarian for library services, who hosted the first meeting in early November. The group will hold three regional meetings during 2007, and each will focus on one of three broad categories: Uses and Users, Structures and Standards, and Economics and Organization. The meetings will be preceded by distribution of a background paper. Further details will be available at the project web site<www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/> which debuts December 11. A report will be drafted by September 1, 2007; public comments will be taken into account in the final report, which will be issued by November 1, 2007.

The members include:

·Richard Amelung for the American Association of Law Libraries

·Diane Dates Casey, Janet Swan Hill, and Sally G. Smith for the American Library Association

·Brian E.C. Schottlaender, Olivia M.A. Madison, and Judith Nadler representing the Association of Research Libraries

·Gary Price for the Special Libraries Association

·Robert Wolven for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging

·Daniel Clancy for the Google Company

·Jay Girotto for the Microsoft Corporation

·Clifford A. Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information

·Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC.