I just now finished my first reading of the Draft Report (Pdf) from the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. I will be re-reading parts of it, as there is a great deal to be pondered, but here are my first impressions:
- The group seems to have wrapped their collective brains around the issues quite well. They address many of the future issues that will hurt libraries greatly (and we are being hurt already, like the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pan) if they are not dealt with. I am impressed with the report’s breadth.
- The group stresses the interconnectedness of our future — bibliographic information should be gathered from diverse sources (publishers, booksellers, other libraries, etc.), as well as distributed widely. I think that our understanding the implications of this is holding us back. If we address this, we will not only solve most of our bib control issues (the two are inseparable, solving one involves solving the other, I feel), but solidly position ourselves in the information age.
One aspect I feel may be missing is the next generation of bibliographic cataloging. FRBR is a fantastic step forward, but it still doesn’t address the most fundamental issues that we face. How do we catalog our collections (and this includes everything we can access) so that we don’t have to use millions of hours doing so, and in such a way as to be able to adapt quickly and effectively to the changes coming in 5, 10, 50 and 100 years?
I think our solution needs to be as flat (non-hierarchical) as possible, and as granular as we can make it. Small chunks of data can be gathered and assembled in countless ways to serve the myriad of needs we will encounter. If we create an “uber-catalog” now that can be easily converted to MARC or FRBR or whatever system is developed. And not just our systems: we need to realize that we need a system that everyone and anyone can tap into for bibliographic information. Amazon has no use for MARC. We should have a system that everyone wants to use. That’s when we will know we have it right.
