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4.3 Subject Access in School Libraries

Now I’m into a SCIS Subject Headings Workbook…

The SCIS site takes so long to load properly and the content you need is the absolute last thing that loads… so far I’m in exercise three and it’s all really basic “look this up” stuff.

By the end… well I skipped the last three sections of the last exercise because I had enough really and I needed to pack up and get my kids from school.

ScOT

Atoms – these look virtually identical in the Thesaurus and Subject headings

Minerals – this has an entry in the ScOT but the closest subject heading is Mineralogy.

Angles – these both have entries but the ScOT has more narrower terms associated with the entry

Cars – this is used in ScOT but Motor Cars is the closest subject heading.

I searched for AFL both in the Subject headings search and the basic search.  The Subject headings search came up with three options online (Australian Football League being first) and the basic search came up with 458 items.  For students searching for materials about AFL, a keyword search will likely help them find what they need than a subject heading search.

A search for GWS Giants turned up nothing in a keyword search, but an advanced search for “Giants” and “AFL” returned two results, one actually about the GWS Giants.

A Basic search for Alice in Wonderland turned up a lot of results but the first half a dozen were either movies, or foreign language translations, then there was a 1978 edition of the book then a whole pile more translations.  An advanced search for “Alice in Wonderland” in the title field and the dates 1990-2019 brought up something more useful.  A subject heading search brought up two results – one for the film and one for Lewis Carroll, with a subdivision for the Alice books.

4.1 Introduction

Ok, this is really just an introductory paragraph, nothing to comment on here except that it sounds like I’m way more ahead than I am (it’s the end of week three of uni and this content is set for week eight), but I haven’t had time off when the mid semester break is scheduled – I’ll do that in the school holidays.

4.2 Locating Resources by Subject

I have written before about the problems with the LCSHs, so I won’t go into it again here.

Perform some subject searches on the Library of Congress catalogue, by choosing ‘Browse’ and using the ‘SUBJECTS beginning with’ option.

So, I began with Hockey – a sport I have recently started playing, and then chose the narrower term “Field hockey” – even field hockey has about 30 sub divisions, although they are really uneven. Note in the below example that there are subheadings for Argentina (who, incidentally, I went to see play against Australia on Saturday) but none for Australia.

Then I looked at the SCIS subject headings.  The first, noticeable difference is that hockey is “used for” field hockey, and a narrower term is ice hockey (whereas I am pretty sure the LCSH use hockey to mean ice hockey by default). Most students in Australia looking for ice hockey resources would search “ice hockey”, so this difference in vocabulary is important.

Next I searched the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials for “Emus”

Then I looked at items in the LoC that had this description – to find there was only one.

I think this was used in a viewfinder to create a 3D images, as it’s described as “stereographic”?

With regards to classification systems, there are some I have read about that were not mentioned in the textbook. Sweden used to have their own classification system, but it started to be phased out in 2008. There was also recent news coverage about Galiwin’ku Library that abandoned the DDC in favour for a locally developed system that works for the local population.  You can hear more about it on the Turbitt n Duck podcast.

Social Tagging

A lot of services use social tagging – Flickr and YouTube in particular – and this is vital when the resource at hand can’t be searched for text because it is a visual medium.  However, the risks of inaccurate tags or multiple tags meaning the same thing are high.  For example, on Friday last week it was the day of the strike of school students to protest political inaction on climate change.  I noticed on Twitter that quite a few hashtags were trending including #SchoolStrike #StrikeForClimate #strike4climate #ClimateStrike and so on. Now as a human being, I can see that these hashtags are all about the same thing, but Twitter’s algorithms can’t.

Trove allows you to tag items in the collection and have that visible to the public, or privately. I used this tagging to create a virtual exhibition.

3.5 Fundamentals of RDA

Practical cataloguing definitely looks… practical.  I want to sink my teeth into actually doing some cataloging instead of just reading about it…

I think I am grasping the gist of AACR and RDA and FRBR and FRAD.  But I do feel like I’m reading some of the same information over and over… I want to get more practical!

Later in this module, you will be encouraged to familiarise yourself with RDA and complete some cataloguing exercises.

Woohoo!

And then our next “reading” is a course designed to take three hours.  I don’t have time for that today.  I’ll have to come back tomorrow.

Using the RDA Toolkit

Unit 1 Getting Started

Woohoo! This was simple – click on the link in the ETL505 module to get to the CSU Institutional account for the RDA Toolkit, then create my own user account.

Unit 2 Interface and Navigation

Can I start off by saying that this is a really antiquated website?  It’s so old and slow.  It looks like something I would have accessed 20 years ago.  And the instructions in the toolkit aren’t always clear – or certainly aren’t to someone who has no experience cataloguing.  I don’t actually think we are supposed to be working through this whole thing but the module says “It would be helpful for you to read the guide “Using the RDA Toolkit”…

I haven’t worked through all the exercises, but I will review them again if I have trouble finding something when we actually get to the cataloguing part.

Unit 3 Searching

This SAYS it was written in 2012 but it seems to have been written in 1992, when the web was new.  We know how to search – we are librarians!

Unit 4 Personalising the Toolkit

Now we can save searches and bookmark specific sections.

Unit 5 User Contributed Content

This looks to be useful for when you are cataloging for a specific institution- the nuances of how your library wants it done can be recorded here and links can be provided to the RDA toolkit when needed, rather than switching between multiple documents.

Unit 6 Help, Support and Other Services 

Well a good part of this section is out of date as the home page no longer has the links you are told to follow. However, looking at the Beta site gives me hope that this antiquated website will be updated soon.

This video in the module was much more helpful than the booklet and it’s good to know that we can easily access the NLA policies for RDA inline with the text.

Stop! Hammer time! aka Time to get cataloguing

Ok, at first, I was totally confused (well at least partially confused) and was basically just copying the example.  I did 3 or 4 before remembering there are answers at the end of the booklet.  I’m not cheating but I do check the answers after I complete each example so I can see if I’m on the right track.  I’ve completed seven of the twenty seven exercises so far.  I do have questions but once I got the first few done I felt like I was getting the hang of it.

Interval

So, I started tidying up the way-too-many open tabs in my browser and came to this video about mindset changes.  The first one, being ok with being the least capable person in the room, really resonated with me (and the second, being ok with failure, but I’ll get to that).  In my professional development as a future librarian I have consistently put myself in positions where I am the least capable person in the room.  About a week into my studies last year I went to GLAMSLAM2018 where I met so many amazing people and learned so much! I was a complete noob and none of the content really touched on school libraries – barely any of it was about libraries at all! But I got involved and later this week I will be attending GLAMSLAM2019.  This willingness to be the least qualified person in the room has lead me to my roles with ALIA SNGG and being on the ALIA National 2020 Conference Program Committee.  Being in a place where I am the least qualified means I have so many people I can learn from!

The second mindset change, being ok with failure, is harder for me. I am someone who has been pretty capable at most things.  I don’t like being bad at things.  A few years ago, hubby and I were eating lunch (or dessert?) in a park and there was a group of twenty-something men riding skateboards and practising jumps and other tricks.  One of these guys in particular was really bad.  He kept falling over or missing the trick he was trying to do.  And I was amazed that he was ok with failing over and over again so publicly.  Because I hate to fail.  But I am learning to step out of my comfort zone.  This summer I joined a hockey team in a social competition, even though I’d never really played hockey before.  After that experience (even though I made so many mistakes and messed up numerous times) I’ve signed up to play in a full field winter hockey competition.  At training, we train with everyone from A/1st grade down to newbies like me.  And it’s been a great experience (barring one small 30 second incident) and I’m mostly ok with failing – and back to the previous paragraph, being the least capable person out there, or close to anyway.

This does connect with cataloguing, I promise.  I want to be good at cataloguing.  But right now, I’m not.  I make mistakes.  Even on this blog, I’ve made mistakes on my FRBR examples.  And I need to be ok with messing up, with making mistakes, with asking for help and for clarification.  If I don’t keep trying, if I don’t ask for help, I’m not going to get any better.

Interval Part Two aka This is why metadata matters

It might be hard to see in this screenshot of a screenshot but Ben Aaronovitch is credited as author of a Terry Pratchett book in a library system. In a response, Aaronovitch ponders that it might be an edition that he has written an intro to, but the original poster says that it’s not.  

This is why metadata matters.  I’m guessing perhaps the metadata for the wrong edition got imported for this edition and somehow the actual author got dropped off and the first statement of responsibility was Ben Aaronovitch?  Who knows!

Back to Cataloguing

Argh.  Just as I felt like I was getting the hang of it, I got slammed with a much fuller catalogue entry required.  I ended up with more specific RDA references than were required in some places.  I also don’t know if it’s vital that the entries are in numerical order – mine weren’t because I was working with the data as I found it.

These final cataloguing exercises took a lot longer than the rest.  And I didn’t get any of them 100% correct but the further I went on the more I got correct.  Glad to have this done!

2.2 Other Tools and Systems

There’s actually not much to be said about this short sub-module.

I understand how crosswalks don’t necessarily give you an easy conversion, as I can relate it to foreign language learning.  Some things just don’t translate well word for word, especially idioms.  For example, we were watching Nailed It Mexico last night.  It’s a Spanish language program but has been overdubbed in English.  However, text on the screen is in Spanish, and translated with subtitles.  The screen read “unos momentos luego” which directly translates to “some moments later”, but was translated into the more familiar English phrase “A few moments later”.  Or, more obscurely, we could go with the phrase “patos malos” which directly translated means “bad ducks” but in Chilean slang means “thieves”.

Other Thoughts

I’ve been thinking about WEMI this past week, and I came up with a better analogy (for me to understand anyway).  For me, it makes more sense to explain it starting with a story that is “traditional” – that most likely came out of an oral tradition hundreds of years ago and is in the “public domain” with no known author.  In fact, an oral storytelling tradition would mean that there would be many different versions of the story before one was written down.  I made the diagram above based on the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and used the examples of the Walt Disney movie and the short story Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman.

I hope this helps someone else!

2.1 Tools of Library Organisation

I began exploring the SCIS catalogue and started with a book my daughter got for Christmas, that I have read.  Wundersmith.

I found it interesting that there are four different ISBNs for this book, and there are two different versions that I can’t tell what the difference between them is.

I was also quite interested in the MARC record for the book.

I also searched “Maas” for books by Sarah J Mass – and was very glad for the quick link to results from 2014 onwards.  I looked at A Court of Thorns and Roses, and then clicked through to see books from that series, before more closely examining A Court of Frost and Starlight.

Finally I searched “Peregrine” in an effort to find a specific book from the series of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  I settled on a book called “Tales of the Peculiar” which is by the same author and closely related to the series but not actually a part of the sequence of stories in the series.  It is also purported to be written by a character in the book (much the same way that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is written by Newt Scamander (while actually being written by J.K. Rowling).

I noticed that the fictional author and publisher are noted and the series is noted in “other titles” however it is not logged as part of the series and given a number in the series.

SCIS is a third generation catalogue – I am sitting at home to access it! All the libraries I access have third generation OPACs, although my children’s school libraries are not available remotely, although I understand they have the capacity.  So I would say that they are third generation OPACs without all their potential realised.

When comparing a journal database with a library catalogue, I searched the Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts with Full Text EBSCOHost database, and searched for school libraries and took a look at the detailed record for the first result that came up.

This has many of the same, or similar fields to the SCIS records, below this screenshot (not shown) there were fields for ISSN, DOI and an accession number.

I love Trove. It is so useful.  Above is a screenshot of the catalogue record for The Press Dress (the actual dress; note that it is recorded as realia).  Trove gives us access to digitised newspapers, Government Gazettes and historical photographs.  I also love to use it to search for books I want to read.  Rather than individually search the catalogues of all the library systems I belong to (seven and counting), I can go to Trove, find the title that I want, and view which libraries hold that title.  

Using Google image search, I uploaded an image of a Commodore 64 that I downloaded yesterday for my INF541 post.

Google recognised what the image was of and found other similar images.  This can be useful when wanting to identify a flower or animal.

Next I searched Trove for a place in Australia, a local Aboriginal site called Red Hands Cave.

Trove immediately found images relevant to this search.

I found the section on Sound Retrieval interesting, as it said that we don’t really have technology that can recognise sounds the same way.  But that’s not true.  We have Shazam. As an example, I used Shazam today to identify the song that was playing in the shop I was in (BTW I didn’t like the song).

The module then asks for us to search for a favourite song on mp3.com and Spotify.  Mp3.com seems useless.  There’s no easily apparent way to search for a song, but only artist, and even when I search for the artist I can’t see how to find a specific song of hers.

The Spotify website doesn’t really work to find music.  You need the app.  However once I was in the app it was a simple task to find the song I was after.

For fun, I played the song on my computer and activated Shazam on my phone.  I took a screenshot and managed to capture the transition between the app “listening” and displaying the name of the song.

There’s other ways of searching for songs, such as by BPM.  Jog.fm groups songs by BPM and the sort of time most people could run a kilometre if they run in time to the music.

Reading what I have of this module so far, I do feel like I am slowly wrapping my head around FRBR, but it is slow going.  I also have appreciated the quality of videos and audio content in this subject (contrasting with previous subjects I have completed.

1.1 Introduction aka You mean we actually need to read the Preface?  Who reads the preface?

Forum task

Why is it necessary for information agencies such as school libraries to organise information?

Information resources must be organised.  Apart from the aesthetics of organisation (that many of us indulged in over the break watching Marie Kondo), organisation in a library has many practical uses.

Firstly, we have retrievability.  If a resource is adequately described and its location given, it can be found in the catalogue and retrieved from its location with relative ease.

Secondly, we have serendipity.  If like is shelved with like it increases the chance of a library member finding another resource they may enjoy or find useful because it is shelved with other books by the same author or on the same topic.

Finally, we have accessibility.  Closely linked to points 1 and 2, if the materials are retrievable and logically shelved, it increases a library member’s ability to access resources themselves (making the assumption that we are discussing a school library where students have ready access to materials and not a special library where items must be retrieved by a staff member).  Librarians should not be the gatekeepers of knowledge and materials, and everything that can be done to empower members to find what they need independently is worth the effort.

—

I already know a bit about cataloguing, it’s limitations and criticisms of our current systems and methods.  I really hope this subject gets into some of the critical theories surrounding cataloging rather than just “here’s how you create metadata”.  The preface to the book gives me some hope that we will at least take a broad look at the principles that apply to cataloging rather than just the nuts and bolts of metadata fields.  The textbook is also broad – not just focused on school settings, but cataloging in general.  This is a good thing because ALIA accredits this course for all libraries, not just school libraries.

1.2  In which we define information resources and metadata.

I do feel like some of this chapter goes a little off course for the topic.  Do we need to know about the other ways (in other faculties) the term ‘metadata’ is used? But, on the whole, the chapter gives a good explanation of what metadata is and why we need it. I felt like it provided good, relatable explanations of terms (using examples such as looking for a specific, uncommon spice in a large, unfamiliar supermarket) and I’m hoping I’ve understood it all!

The following quote really stood out to me:

“The more resources there are, the more important description becomes, and the less we can rely on physical arrangements to connect people with resources.” (Hider, 2018, p. 13).

If I continue on the theme of organising books in a library, my personal bookshelf is not organised in anything resembling a traditional organising system.  I have a shelf for books I want to read but haven’t read yet (#TBR), a section of general non fiction books, some fiction series, a section for recipe books and a shelf for books too big to fit on any of the other shelves.  I know where to find all the books on my bookshelf, but if you walked up to my bookshelf wanting a book on cognitive behavioural therapy, you wouldn’t know where to start to look for it.  But it’s only one bookcase, so you would find it without too much hassle.  But if I was talking about a public library with 100,000 books on the shelf, there’s no way my ad hoc system would work.

1.3 Metadata, FRBR and WEMI

“The more metadata creators know about their users, the more effective the metadata is likely to be.” (Hider, 2018, p. 24).  Libraries around the world, including school libraries, use the LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) even though they were never intended for children to use.  So, for example, if a child searches the subjects in a library catalogue for “cars” it will return little to no results, because the LCSH for “cars” is “automobiles”.  Older students searching for WWI won’t find anything, because the LCSH is World War I 1914-1918.  This is insanity but also a good reason that users rarely use anything other than a keyword search when using library catalogues.

I must confess that, on first read, I’m a bit confused by WEMI and FRBR, but I’m sure that will clear up as I read more.  It possibly doesn’t help that the limitations and criticisms of WEMI and FRBR are being presented as they are introduced in this text.  This video does make things a lot clearer.

For example,

This book is a representation of the Work Snapshot, a story conceived by Brandon Sanderson.  The Expression of this work is the story written down.  The Manifestation of the book is the hardcover copy with the ISBN of 978-1473224995. The Item is the actual copy I was holding in my hand in this picture.

However the book has other manifestations. In fact, the manifestation I read was ASIN B01N12IQVN because I specifically read the Kindle edition of the book and I guess the item is the specific copy that was sold to me.

Forum task

Determine some elements or attributes that might be useful for the purposes of discovering and retrieving a particular resource of interest to you, for example the prescribed textbook for this subject.Review these elements in light of the four FRBR user tasks—are they useful for all four tasks, or for some tasks more than others?

As an anecdote, I know that in my local library a young patron came in asking for a book “with the lime green plastic cover”.  Unfortunately the librarian did not know which book the patron was after and the attribute of the cover materials and colour was not in the metadata.  When the children’s librarian returned the next day and was told of this query, she immediately knew which book it was, and updated the metadata on the catalogue to reflect this so that that patron, and others, would be able to find that book.

In fact, colour cover is often an important attribute for patrons.  Maybe it should be in the metadata?

#LibrarianProblems pic.twitter.com/FTiMm0DGHu

— Barbara Moon (@moonb2) October 8, 2014

On a personal note, I recently ordered in a book from a local (indie!) bookshop.  It’s the third book in a trilogy and I really wanted to get the edition that matched the covers of the other books I have (two novels and a novella) in the series, so I specified the ISBN to make sure I got the right edition because the cover of the book was important to me.

As far as FRBR tasks go I think this could relate to Find, Select and Obtain, although I don’t know if that’s just a cop-out to say that it covers all three?

Something that is important to my husband, who reads a lot of epic fantasy series, is the “number” in the series this book is.  It’s important that he reads “number two” before “number three” etc.  I think this comes under the Find and Select tasks for FRBR but I am still wrapping my head around this, so I am entirely prepared to be wrong here!

1.4 Who Creates and Organises Metadata?

So, creators create metadata.  They give their work a title, they record when it was created and so on. Publishers create metadata by assigning keywords and writing blurbs and summaries of works.  Of course, information professionals create metadata about items.  These can be in-house cataloguers in libraries, or work for publishers to create shelf-ready items for libraries.  In Australia we have SCIS who the NSW Department of Education subscribe to, that provide catalogue metadata for items in school libraries.  While not all librarians will catalogue in their careers, they all need to understand the catalogue, how it works and the principles that support it so that they can optimally use the catalogue to find resources for their patrons.

Last week at ALIA Information Online Mike Jones spoke about the limitations of card catalogues as our legacy system, and how it does not work well in an online environment. The Tate in the UK does a good job of using the capabilities of the web with its metadata.  Contrast this page from The Tate of Monet’s Water Lilies painting with a comparable one on the National Gallery of Australia website.    The Tate provides so much more information and other things to explore.

I must admit to a little excitement when a book written by a friend of mine (who was the president of the Australian Society of Indexers) was referenced in our textbook.  Shout out to Glenda! <3.

There are also end-user created metadata.  This is often seen on image and video sites where there is no textual data to search so the tags become essential.  Trove also allows end-user tagging, for example this link takes you to items that have been tagged Political Cartoons. Sites like Goodreads also allow users to tag books based on any criteria they wish.  The limitations of this, however, are numerous.  No one is likely to find my personal tag of “never finished” as something useful.  The lack of a controlled vocabulary also means that a search for cricket will bring up books about both the sport and the insect, while tags for the insect could be cricket or locust…

SCIS

Watching the SCIS webinar, I’m surprised to learn that Australia is the only country in the world that has this centralised cataloguing service for schools.  Schools in other countries either do their cataloguing in-house or subscribe to SCIS. 500 records will take about 19 working days to catalogue – that’s a lot of classroom time! (It works out to be 16 mins per record.  I wonder how long it will take me to get that fast at cataloguing?) Because SCIS is an education-specific provider they apply subject headings to fiction and non fiction alike.  Also just discovered that SCIS don’t use LCSH – they have their own.  However I have still heard a lot of complaints about it, including the WWI example I cited above.

References

Hider, P. (2018). Information Resource Description : Creating and Managing Metadata (Vol. Second edition). London: Facet Publishing.

Lorenz, A. [Andrea Lorenz]. (2012, August 9). FRBR simplified. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPBpP0wbWTg