A Fierce Defense of the Status Quo - Tennant: Digital Libraries

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Roy Tennant

A Fierce Defense of the Status Quo
March 21, 2008

Thomas Mann, the staunch defender of the cataloging status quo is at it again. This time the report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, On the Record, is in his gunsight under the title "On the Record" but Off the Track. But the sprawling 38-page PDF also provides space for him to take his employer to task with "A Further Examination of Library of Congress Cataloging Tendencies" in which he pillories management for recent decisions affecting catalogers there. This is hardly surprising given his relationship with AFSCME 2910, The Library of Congress Professional Guild, which represents "over 1,500 professional employees" including, one supposes, a certain Thomas Mann. But whatever.

I have neither the space nor the desire to say much more about it than you should read it for yourself (but those unable to wade through his previous tome will not find this one any more inviting). I will comment on one aspect, though. After defending the way things have been over many decades, which has led us to this point where our users are often stymied in their efforts to find the information they seek, he lands on the solution for this problem -- library users must be taught how to use libraries. Now there's a solution -- how come we didn't think of that? For the author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research, third edition, 2005, this conclusion must seem particularly satisfying on so many levels.

We must teach people who are ignorant of the wonderful apparatus that we devised for card catalogs many, many years ago. We must instill in them an appreciation for a controlled vocabulary that for many years filed rock music under "Music, Popular" where everyone was sure to find it. They will learn. We will see to it. Then we will finally be appreciated for the geniuses we know ourselves to be.

Posted by Roy Tennant on March 21, 2008 | Comments (1)

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May 14, 2008
In response to: A Fierce Defense of the Status Quo
klg19 commented:

As a reference librarian and subject specialist, I agree with Mann just about 100%. No, no one has to look for "Music, Popular" anymore, thanks to OPACs. Electronic searching in OPACs--the ability to do targeted keyword searching, combining something likely to be in a LCSH with a general keyword, for example--has given the heretofore obscure subject strings new life and new relevance. Once a reader uses targeted searching to identify the best LCSH for the query, his or her work is in many ways done. And that string is important: the position of the word "History" in the first part of the heading or the third part makes a crucial distinction that simply tagging with "history" would never accomplish. As for users learning how to do research in the library--why is that so laughable? Don't students come to universities to learn research methodology? Is there a reason that good library research methodology shouldn't be taught as well? Perhaps you are not thinking of academic libraries, however. Perhaps our silly research methodologies are not useful in the public sphere. Fine--you go off and develop your own Google-based mode of research. But don't force it on us. Ours isn't broke, so don't fix it.