Re: [ARSCLIST] Cataloging of AV materials

["Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Miller" <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Steven C. Barr wrote:
> > 4) I have been suggesting to ARSC for several years that they are
> > the logical body to establish some sort of standards for discographic
> > databases, both cataloguing (i.e. users "a") and archival (users "b").
> > We have the experience, both positive and negative, of RDI and AVRL
> > to guide us...
> > I'd be interested in any thoughts here...
> While ARSC has made some great progress in membership, I believe that if
> the membership were greater, or if the organization tried to join forces
> with other organizations, like ALA (I dropped my membership year ago) or
> the Association of Research Libraries, etc. that it could end up having
> the resources to lobby for both some uniformity in the presentation of
> finding aids, local databases, etc. and also present a unified front on
> copyright issues.
> What has interested me of late is that even informed librarians do not
> necessarily understand the needs of those doing discographic research and
> similarly, the value in the skills an archivist/technician can bring to a
> collection. Perhaps more dialog is needed there as well.
Agreed...

But...and more importantly...neither group seems to have appreciated...
possibly even understood...the great increases in ease of cataloguing,
accessibility, and so on that was made when digital computing became
readily available! This is something I learned after I spent substantial
spare time entering the Plaza matrix listings, taken from Record Research,
into a dBASE III+ file and then found out how easy it was to find a given
title (and this was well before mouses!) by sorting the file and scrolling
until "I've Got the Yes, We Have No Bananas Blues" (with the sort order
affected by letter case and punctuation marks) appeared. It was much
easier than leafing through all my RR back issues!

What we may need, in fact, is a multi-user dialogue (a bit of an oxymoron...
shouldn't be a "trialogue [on up]?") involving discographers, catalog users
and database experts...and possibly others?
Steven C. Barr