I'm glad to see this getting some attention someplace else other than
the cataloging listservs. Dr. Mann expresses this much more eloquently,
however IMNSHO, management would have to be near brain dead even to
contemplate these changes. We are moving closer to a society where only
the very rich and perhaps the very scholarly will have appropriate
access to information, and what's worse, those who do not have access
will not even be cognizant of that fact. This will only serve to
further widen the bridge between the haves and the have-nots.
Dru Edrington
Librarian IV
Public Utility Commission
PO Box 13326
Austin, TX 78711-3326
512-936-7075
________________________________
From: owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu] On
Behalf Of Michael Ginsborg
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:07 PM
To: law-lib
Subject: "What is Going On At the Library of Congress?" by Dr. Thomas
Mann, author of the Oxford Guide to Library Research (3d ed., 2005): the
impending loss of LC subject access to books?
Thomas Mann is a reference librarian in the Humanities & Social Sciences
Division of the Library of Congress (LC). He is also author of the
Oxford Guide to Library Research (3d ed., 2005). He has written two
essays entitled, "What is Going On At the Library of Conress?"
(http://www.guild2910.org/AFSCMEWhatIsGoingOn.pdf). His second paper on
the subject, and other related articles, can be found at
http://www.guild2910.org/future.htm
<http://www.guild2910.org/future.htm> .
In the first of these, he presents compelling evidence that, with the
development of Amazon and Google Books, LC's management thinks
(1) it is no longer necessary to maintain LC subject headings (in an
online catalog not merged with Google);
(2) it is no longer necessary to shelve books in subject-classified
order, according to the LC Classification system; and
(3) it is no longer necessary for research libraries to keep duplicate
copies of current books when they can use warehouses instead.
He distinguishes between "general browsing," to see what is available on
a subject, and "focused searching," to identify specific facts or ideas
for scholarship. Google Books aids general browsing, or "information
seeking"; LC's system of subject access aids scholarship or any
sustained inquiry on a subject. Because LC's management is preparing to
dismantle LC's subject-access system, he concludes that "the national
library of the United States is giving away the birthright of American
scholars for a mess of Internet pottage."
His findings have additional evidence in the assumptions of LC's Working
Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
(http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/) See the Work Group's
background paper on "Users and Uses of Bibliographic Data," at
http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/docs/UsersandUsesBackgr
oundPaper.pdf, favorably citing research that "that users do not need to
know controlled vocabularies to conduct a successful search, there is
enough content made available for an initial relevancy decision, and
navigation between the search results and the desired resource is simple
and fulfilling."
The issues Thomas Mann has raised merit our examination and collective
concern, not just because LC's initiatives have troubling implications
even for non-research libraries, but because they challenge the very
principles of librarianship. And I doubt that anyone would make the
mistake of reducing Mann's position to a conflict between LC's union
employees and LC's management, even if anyone also thought that such
conflicts involved values of no wider consequence to the public.
(I am expressing just my own professional view here, without
affiliation.)
<http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/aallwash>
____________________________________________
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