How users find the library catalogue

I have been doing a lot of reading lately on library catalogues and the future of the library catalogue as I write my book. With the amount of information that I’ve read, and the seemingly endless amount of literature on the subject, I fluctuate between extreme excitement for our future, frustration at the slow progression we’ve made and an overwhelming thankfulness that I am part of such an interesting, collegial and fascinating profession!

One of the most interesting ideas that I’ve been reading about and exploring is the idea that our catalogue isn’t a “destination spot”, rather it is found through a gateway, pointed out to an individual by a friend, colleague, application or some type of outside source. Fascinating.

While there will be, for the foreseeable future, individuals who have bookmarked our catalogue on their browser, there is an increasing amount of users who find us through RSS feeds, iPhone apps, friend recommendations or a social networking presence (such as Facebook). Of interest is how we are addressing this new form of access to our catalogue, in an environment of immediacy, brevity and short attention spans.

Recommended Readings
Always on: Libraries in a world of permanent connectivity by Lorcan Dempsey
Libraries on Move: Library Mobile Applications

What is professionalism?

In view of my last post – and the contradicting sentiments reflected in the comments, I thought I’d explore the concept of professionalism and professional conduct with the express purpose of how an attitude of superiority or arrogance can assist/impact professions and professionals. My last post centered on personal conduct and professionalism in how we handle our achievements, not the attitude or traits of any particular profession. This post continues with that theme.

However, rather than just my own opinion, I thought I’d also include some interesting thoughts and online articles about the subject. I’ve used some examples throughout various professions, including the medical profession, because they were mentioned in the comments. This is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas or thoughts, simply a quick look at what others are saying about professionalism from a variety of fields.

PROFESSIONALISM
Professionalism…How do I get one?

“So, what is professionalism if it’s not power lunches, golf, drinking with the boss, and business suits? A general, raw view of professionalism is, “a focused, accountable, confident, competent, motivation toward a particular goal, with respect for hierarchy and humanity, less the emotion.” What this means is that you leave out the outbursts and emotional thralls that accompany stressful situations and success. You maintain focus, with a sense of urgency, and accept responsibility on a path toward a specific goal. In the process, you maintain respect for your superiors, peers, and subordinates as well as respect them as human beings.”

Professionalism Initiative: The University of Kansas School of Medicine

This is an interesting article because it also lists the elements of professionalism. In one of its introductory passages, a bold and encouraging statement about what it is to be a professional is provided. The characteristics that are presented can be directly applied to our library professionals, if we choose to accept them.

“In addition to competence in their field, all medical professionals must strive to retain those humanistic qualities – integrity, respect, and compassion – that constitute the essence of professionalism. The core of professionalism thus includes altruism, accountability, excellence, duty, service, honor, integrity, and respect for others. These qualities apply to all aspects of the professional’s life, including the relationships between medical professionals, between specialties, and between professional organizations.”

Also, they directly address the attitude of arrogance in the medical profession:

“Arrogance – Arrogance is an offensive display of superiority and self-importance. Unfortunately, by their nature, medicine and science can foster arrogance in the medical professional. The training is long and arduous with a seemingly endless mass of knowledge, which at times feels impossible to master. Students of science are thus prone to assume an air of self-importance, having survived such an initiation. Arrogance destroys professionalism by reducing the individual’s ability to think for himself or herself, making empathy for others difficult and removing the checks and balances of self-doubt.”

Also of interest in this document is a section on descriptors of unprofessionalism [emphasis added], which includes a lack of effort toward self-improvement and adaptability as described below:

“Medicine and academic science demand continuous personal growth and improvement. Resistance or defensiveness in accepting criticism, remaining unaware of one’s own inadequacies, resisting changes, not accepting responsibility for errors or failure, being overly critical, being verbally abusive during times of stress and displaying arrogance are reflections of a poor professional attitude.”

Turgay Kivrak, a senior developer in Amsterdam recently blogged about arrogance as well in his post Arrogance, Humility and Software Development. I encourage anyone who is interested in the negative impact of arrogance to read this post.

Kivrak’s post appeared on the 23rd of January, but I was not aware of it until this morning. There is a similar theme to my post, Don’t Let it Go to Your Head. In particular:

The feeling you have when you see the greatness of your work and your thought should not lead to arrogance, you should be thankful to have that gift, keeping in mind that it is given to you to use in benefit of humans.

If you look at life, you can also easily see every extraordinary thing given to the human is supposed to be used in benefit of others and if he uses it for himself, like arrogance, he pays a lot for it. So, even if you are gifted, there is no excuse for being arrogant

Kivrak provides a list of additional resources on the topic:
Success, Arrogance, Rise and Fall
Humility
Extreme Humility

Don’t let it go to your head

You feel untouchable – everything is going well, opportunities are being presented to you and everyone knows it. STOP RIGHT THERE.

Everyone knows it? One of the most interesting lessons I’ve learned in my relatively short life is that nobody likes a braggart, an “I’m soooo busy” type of person that they are now too good for others. After all, they don’t have time now, do they, because they are so much in demand?

In one of my former jobs while attending graduate school, I was working as a legal assistant and office manager. The assumption by those who reigned over the office assistants found it challenging to believe we had ideas, thoughts, feelings or achievements and successes of our own. They were too busy expounding on their own worth and wealth of opportunities. There was also another set. The set that was happy in their lot as legal secretaries and none too pleased that I wasn’t. It was not a place, where, even among my own co-workers, stories of my successes were welcomed. Many times, this was not the result of jealousy, but a simple matter of angering very kind individuals that enjoyed their position who were put off by my distaste of the same position.

I never forgot the lessons I learned in that job. Today, I share my successes with those that care, not those who are trapped by close physical proximities (ie. uncontrolled circumstances) and have to pretend to care. I also know that, while I may be extremely excited about what I’m doing, there are always others doing more – and often doing it without the need for acknowledgement.

There are some truly amazing professionals (and we’ve all met someone like this) that have accomplished and contributed so much to our profession, and yet are the most humble and down-to-earth individuals we have ever known. They ask questions, understanding that they still have much to learn.

An attitude of superiority and contempt for others only takes you so far. At some point, the opportunities will run dry and no one will want to work with you. More importantly, no one who used to care will listen.

While I think all of us can reflect on moments when we were so excited by an event or opportunity that we ran around telling everyone and enjoyed the “big head” moment for a while, we can also remember taking a step back and feeling a little embarrassed by our behaviour – especially if it resulted in a “know it all” attitude resulting in hurt feelings.

I will never forget how very small I was made to feel at times in my former work as a legal secretary. Because I chose not to share the fact that I’d published or was earning an MLIS, those “know it alls” knew nothing at all.

Whether you’re a manager, co-worker or friend, it is important to remember that being humble is also a virtue. We are all, unfortunately, replaceable and, eventually, forgettable, whether or not we like to think so. If you are doing well in your career, there is no need to hide it, but there is a need to remember that it is how you deal with your successes that determines if you’re a professional.

Tim Spalding’s “What is Social Cataloguing?” Presentation

Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, presented at LIANZA this past October, 2009 in New Zealand. He has posted his presentation on YouTube in a series of 6, 9 minute videos.  The theme of his presentation? “What is social cataloging?” It’s great!

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Access Your Library: Anytime, Anywhere

While many of you are enjoying ALA midwinter and the new product release announcements, I saw this one from LibraryThing that I just couldn’t ignore. Following their new release of Shelf Browse, they will soon be launching a product called Library Anywhere.

Library Anywhere promises:
•A mobile catalog for any library, up and running in minutes.
•Mobile web and apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android.
•Cheaper than you’d guess.
•Search, place holds, and more.
•Showcase hours, branches, and events.
•No installation process.
•Works with 90% of current OPACs.
•Comes with an “accessible version” that provides a fully Section 508-compliant version of your existing catalog

Check out their blog posting, Library Anywhere, a mobile library for everyone for more information and a link to their ALA handout.

Thoughts on quality in bibliographic records

In the age old debate for cataloguers: “what is more important quality or quantity?”, very little is ever said about how we define quality.

What do we, as cataloguers, consider a “quality” or acceptable bibliographic record? Is it one without errors? Without any obsolete tags? One with uniform subject headings throughout, say, a series? One where all the punctuation between MARC fields is correct? Or, is a quality record a record any record that can be found or accessed?

In 2007, when I first started this blog, I wrote a post called Quality v. Quantity. At the time, I was convinced that quality demanded more than a “good enough” attitude. Recently, another blogger also wrote a very similar post, ironically enough also called Quality vs. Quantity.

My post, as well Ms. LeGrow’s neglects, I believe, what is at the heart of the matter. What do we define as a quality record and are there levels of quality based on circumstances and expertise? Unlike my views in 2007, I believe quality must be balanced with productivity, especially with the new technology (ie. “Did you mean…? feature) and increasing amounts of formats that we are put to cataloguing. My definition of quality has also changed. In an ideal world, our records would be perfect (of course, the definition of that, too, is debatable). However, I find I am more interested in access points and accessibility. With the change to RDA, I don’t believe a using a colon, rather than a semicolon will impact access, nor will the improper use of capital letters or additional tags within the record. However, cataloguers still focus heavily on these small editing issues – and debate this issue vehemently!

With the growing ability to harvest metadata from a variety of places, not just OCLC or local consortiums, at what point can we accept the work of others? After all, it is neither efficient nor acceptable, especially when harvesting large amount of metadata, to edit each individual record. Indeed, with the ability to download bib records for the most popular items in a library’s collection, if we accepted those records which we must assume are considered “quality” by the institution which created the record, wouldn’t we increase our cataloguing productivity?

And, thanks to Terry Reese, we can make mass editing changes with MarcEdit, to assist with uniformity for mass records too.

If most cataloguers believe his or her records are the best, when can we start accepting our colleagues’ records and really focus on the original cataloguing? Until we understand what we mean by quality, we can’t begin to address the issue of quantity vs. quantity.