Re: [ARSCLIST] Cataloging: Libraries and private collectors

[Sam Brylawski <goodlistening@xxxxxxxxx>]

This cataloging thread is very interesting. It's great to read these
diverse points of view; gratitude to all.  Steve Smolian asked about
the Victor project for which I'll provide an update. But there's much
which has been said that I'd like to comment on. Pardon the
scattershot thoughts...

I'm note sure that I agree that institutional and personal use of
fields, or selection of most important fields, are at polar opposites.
But Steve makes several good points about institutions' needs to
integrate their cataloging of SRs with that for books (and maps and
photos, etc.). Institutions don't *have* to adhere to MARC or AACR2
but most choose to, when they can afford to. LC's SONIC catalog is not
MARC and is only partially AACR2, but it's useful because a lot of SRs
are described in it (there was a conscious choice with SONIC to choose
quantity over quality) and the user interface is quite friendly. Its
content is exclusively SRs and we designed it with common queries by
researchers in mind. You can easily restrict your searches to such
things as specific dates, months, broadcasts, formats, non-commercial
recordings and more. But SONIC includes a great deal of "trashy"
cataloging. As Gene DeAnna wrote a few days ago, compromises are a
given. What I'm trying to argue is that the OPAC (online public access
catalog) can be as important to users as what fields are filled in and
what authority work is performed. I think that David Seubert pointed
out that, often, what many are perceiving as a weakness in MARC is
actually just a lousy OPAC. But there's no doubt in my mind that MARC
and AACR2 were designed primarily for  describing, and work best with,
discrete *single* works of an individuals or groups. They work less
well for compilations of individual works, which most SRs are. Karl
Miller has pointed out that we can find alot through rich contents
notes, but what's the value of a formatted db record if you're forced
to just keyword-search it?

Steve asked about the Victor project. I'm editing the Fagan/Moran
Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, about 150,000 matrices
recorded by Victor between 1901 and 1950. Tim Brooks and Richard Green
are advising David Seubert (the project director) and myself on
content and "rules." That process is ongoing. The scope of the project
factors in compromises similar to that cataloging institutions must
face. We have to decide when to give up searching for
composer/lyricists and other often hard-to-find information in order
to move on. As many of you know, the Discography was dormant for over
17 years and I'd like to see information about post-1908 Victor discs
become available publicly before another 17 years passes. It remains
to be seen how many more more published volumes on EDVR there will be.
We're aiming toward a website of the acoustics in early 2007. Unlike
card catalogs or books, computer files are dynamic. We can and will
continue to augment our information after it becomes public. For now,
we're conforming the names (performers and composer/lyricists) as much
as we can.

The EDVR documents Victor matrices: sides. We tie these matrices to
objects (discs) and will tie musical or other works which span sides
or discs together, but presently the discography documents individual
disc sides.

As for the debate over cataloging vs. discography, in the past, I have
dreamed that you could have both a breath mint and a candy mint, that
a discography could form the basis of a catalog. I still believe that
it's possible but looking at the Victor data we have I see that it
will be a great challenge, one we won't meet on the "first pass." My
hope is that our data is structured wisely enough to facilitate XML
output which one day might feed a catalog for a private collector and
institution. I hope one day to see a matrix-centric "registry" of
digital files which could serve to document which institutions have
re-formatted individual masters in order to prevent redundancy in
allocation of re-formatting resources.

I strongly recommend that those interested in the future of
cataloging, and how it might serve private individuals, take a look at
the thinking which has been taking place regarding "Functional
Requirements of Bibliographic Records" (FRBR). FRBR is intended to
describe materials as a set of relationships between "Works,"
"Expressions," "Manifestations," and "Items."  Very crudely, if I have
this right, Steve's Shubert song is a Work. The master recording is an
Expression of it. The 1961 Victor LP is a Manifestion of that
Expression. Steve's copies are Items. One could develop a number of
tools to manage those Items. Circulation tools for libraries or for
collectors, collection mgt tools, with fields for costs, values, and
your opinion of the Expression. (An exisiting example of the latter is
the number of "stars" you apply to your iPod library.)

FRBR attempts to address a number of the issues discussed in this
thread, particularly organizing like-materials together. But
implementation will be difficult, and there's resistance by some
libraries to it bacause it will require so much catalog "re-tooling."
Still, the thinking behind it is very interesting and useful. I've
done it very little justice. FRBR is a good Google term, in that most
the results relate to this one topic. A brief description of FRBR can
be found at "What is FRBR" (www.loc.gov/cds/FRBR.html).  More detailed
discussion is at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf. There's
lots more, incluing PowerPoint presentations and much debate.

Back to discography, the National Recording Preservation Board has
funded a small initiative to define a discography structure useful to
both collectors and institutions. Hopefully, a model to test will be
available later this year. ARSC may have a role in helping this come
to be and sharing the result with the recording community for comment.
As I said, the goal is to have data in a structure which will be
useful to a variety of users, one in which tools can be created to
serve specialized users.

Sam




On 5/11/05, Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Institutions and collectors require catalogs that differ somewhat; the fields used most intensively may well be at polar opposites.  A discussion of some may lead to a better understanding of what each group expects from its catalog and, perhaps, inaccurate assumptions, based on their own needs, about why the other group wants what it wants.
> 
> Most libraries and archives obtain most of their older recordings passively, through gifts and transfers.  This is particularly true of pre-CD formats.  Collectors actively seek to fill gaps in their collections.
> 
> A library's record cataloging has to conform to the cataloging of the same selection as printed music, which in turn, has to integrate in one huge catalog with books, periodicals, maps, photos and everything else in the library.
> 
> A collector must be able to tell if he has a particular item and, if so, in what condition, if it is an original or a copy and, if the latter, who made the copy.  The information has to match that in dealer's catalogs and on-line listings (made by people who know what they are doing.)
> 
> There is also the matter of entry simplification.  To meet its in-house needs, an institution has to follow the second version of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (the third version is deep in draft.)  The private collector may be satisfied with a simpler form of listing, as used in the old Schwann and Gramophone catalogs.
> 
> Collectors use their catalogs to assemble programs, to be played back or copied. This requires a much easier-to-eye scan list of composer, title and performer entries that those that library catalog "short lists" create.
> 
> These are a couple of the underlying issues.  There are many more, of course.  Feel free to contribute here.
> 
> The Victor project is going forward, with funding.  I'm sure these questions have come up in their committee meetings.  How are they handling these issues?
> 
> Steve Smolian
>