"Libraries were once the center of the information universe. Fifteen years ago, if I had told you about the coming internet, you would have assumed that libraries would have a prominent place on it. They don't.
Libraries, including WorldCat, rarely show up in web searches, even for books. I lay the blame squarely at the wrong-headed decision to keep library data off the "real web" and to push WorldCat as a "aggregation point" for nobody.
Keynote presentation at the North Atlantic Health Science Library meeting, October 26, 2009.
An introduction to semantic web technologies and their relationship to libraries and bibliographic data.
This disconnect is the number-one threat to science librarianship today—perhaps to all academic librarianship. How can science libraries persist when scientists haven't the least notion that libraries or librarians are relevant to their work?
We don't need a German Digital Library. There is already a Global Digital Library, so "GDL" is already taken as a trademark, sorry (ok, the German version uses DDB as label): "the net".
"I think we've gotten to the point in these discussions where we have to
define our terms. In the same way that "MARC" means both a structure and
data elements and a content standard, the terms FRBR and RDA are now
taking on multiple meanings."
An ambitious project to create an online catalogue of every book in every language ever published is under way. Public goodwill is not in doubt, but some libraries remain to be convinced.
When I think about the library "catalog" I think that it will contain more than just metadata about library materials but also the materials themeselves. Think mostly books, journal articles, encyclopedia articles, definitions, images, data sets, etc. Moreover, the library "catalog" will enable people to do things with the items in the collection. It is more than just find and get.
Are research libraries imperiled? Is the Internet driving a stake into their hearts? Maybe. Google, Science Direct, Factiva, and PubMed all “eliminate the middleman,” meaning us librarians. The richer the database, and the better the search interface, the less our customers need us. This is not a bad thing! This is a good thing! We want to be disintermediated! Almost every responsibility that we assume today, and every task we assume tomorrow, should be undertaken in the hope that one day our work will be done, or that we will be superseded by new, user-friendly systems of self-help. So. Is the Library dead? Yes. And then again, No.
Karen Coyle helps the Open Library team navigate the twisty paths of the forest that is library metadata. A little while ago, we were lucky to have her present her view of its origins at the Internet Archive. I thoroughly enjoyed her presentation and I thought someone else might so I've rewritten my notes from the session as an exciting love-and-death-style account of librarianship over the years.