The most depressing thing I've heard someone say in a long while...

"Well, no one uses LCSH anymore do they? I mean, it's all just keyword searching now."
Nooooooo. All those hours trying to get those semantic relationships just right...please tell me that someone cares!

After all, Great Britain -> Foreign Relations -> United States
is the total opposite in meaning to
United States -> Foreign Relations -> Great Britain
and if the book was about both, then LCSH give you a way to exhibit both.

Not quite the same as just typing 'Obama' and crossing your fingers now is it.

Tsk.

FRBR

Functional requirements for bibliographic records; the conceptual model which is about to redefine the bibliographic universe. Group one entities finally give us a more precise terminology to use when dealing with reference questions; after all, 'I want to read this book' is a substantially different statement to 'I left this book on the desk a second ago but now it's disappeared.' Thus we now have a work, an expression, a manifestation and an item. We are able to draw together and cluster all results about a work. Take for example Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In accordance with the new database structures that are growing up around FRBR principles, we could have one record for the work, and then attach multiple manifestation records to that to include original text, different editions, film adaptations and even Baz Luhrman's soundtrack.
FRBR is starting to have an impact on standards, evident in RDA. RDA, designed as the next step from AACR2, is structured very closely around the principles of FRBR. FRBR looks at user tasks, namely: to find, to identify, to select and to obtain. The bibliographic record is then checked for these elements to determine the extent to which the catalogue is meeting the needs of users. Which is great. But one of the main problems, and not to sound condescending, is that quite often our users are not sure what they want until they browse the catalogue. Currently the OPAC may bring up books about Romeo and Juliet as well as the text itself. For FRBR, this is a problem. However, in the interests of serendipity, perhaps this is not such a bad thing.
With a modicum of search training, a user is able to use the OPAC sufficiently. And dates of editions are always displayed. It worries me that the FRBR model would lead us to provide new 'manifestation' link records for each reprint of a book; technically it is a new entity although the intellectual content remains identical. I can see how useful FRBR would be to literary and musical works, but the impact seems reduced within the sciences.
The other major issue concerns the impact upon MARC21. If AACR2 is seen as predating computerised cataloguing, then MARC21 can be viewed as a means of creating nothing more than a computerised catalogue card. However, despite the format's limitations in terms of data extraction, we currently have several million records in this format worldwide. Quite what will happen to them is unclear. Perhaps it is time for a new encoding set to be introduced, one with more flexibility and functionality. And yet somehow the idea of converting all those records from one format to another seems like an awfully big adventure.

RDA: a Really Decisive Action or a Relatively Disappointing Area?

So. Resource description and access has landed. Sort of. Every time I glance at planet cataloging, open my Update magazine, or happen to browse the CILIP website, there it is. Draft proposals. More draft proposals. And yet more - well, you get the idea.
Ann Chapman provides a really concisive overview of the new code in Update magazine this month. Yet, the more I read about it, the more I feel that I'm missing something.

I understand that AACR was developed in a pre-computerised world. In this world, the catalogue card was King. The main access entry point was Queen and the added entries were really just some half-royal illegitimate infants running blindly through the castle keep. Most information was printed in books. The nearest we came to the concept of multi-media was listening to cassette tapes on our oh-so-trendy walkmans. It is amazing that since then the world has changed so rapidly. Many people conduct so much of their lives in an online environment, not least their education. Although I am wary of falling into trap of believing in the simplistic "information society" worldview, no one can doubt that the impact of digital resources on many people's lives has been enormous.

In practical terms, for the library user this meant the development of the OPAC and enhanced searching facilities. In this environment, the card catalogue Kings were deposed by the people's republic of the online public access catalogue, thus rendering the concept of main and added entries obsolete for the user. As new forms of media developed, it became problematic to catalogue electronic, digital and mutli-media items within the world of AACR2.

Thus changes needed to be made, but I can't help wondering whether they have been the right ones. RDA seems to be concerned predominantly with updating the language and the layout of the cataloguing rules, which is fair enough and makes good sense. It also lets us catalogue non-print items in a more meaningful way; again, big points there. Yet attempting to have one code to cover all media, when said media all behave in such wildy different ways, is perhaps (and I say this only tentatively) not the easiest concept with which to identify. There is also issue of the millions of MARC records currently doing their job perfectly thank you very much; what will happen to those?

As RDA works on a FRBR model, there is a need for functionality, which is great. However, the concept of 'preferred' and 'variant' access points is a little worrying, especially when so much work is currently going into the NACO project.

The simplification of terms, for example ‘s.l.’ being replaced by statements such as ‘place not recorded’ or ‘place not known’, might be easier for new cataloguers but it concerns me that it may lead to a gradual decline of skill and a steady decline in the quality of bibliographic records.

It is a concern that, the further we simplify the skill of cataloguing, the further we thus move to a library management who believes that cataloguing could be automated. After all, save the salaries of cataloguers and speed up a mechanical process. Except that it isn't mechanical. It involves skill, a clear vision of local practice and user needs, and an ability to apply rules with skill and panache. However, I'm not saying that RDA will lead ultimately to this future, but we do have to be careful as cataloguers to raise our advocacy within the wider library community.
Practically, there seems like there will be little change. I suppose only time will tell.

Hammer Horror: a genre to die for.

I have been intrigued by the Hammer Film Productions output for a long time and so, now that I am a proud member of a postal video rental club, I decided to find out more. The name actually derived from the stage name of the studio's original founder. I duly put the first title that came to mind onto the rental list and sat back to wait for the magic.

I wasn't disappointed. The Brides of Dracula arrived several days later, just in time for a Friday night in front of the laptop. It is probably the best film I have seen all year, if not of all time, and no hyperbole intended.

The film, short by today's standards at approximately 85 minutes, begins by introducing us to Marianne, a young woman who is travelling to a finishing school to take up an appointment as a tutor. After her coach stops at an inn, the driver suddenly takes fright and leaves the poor young girl inside the inn by herself. The story then proceeds quickly, as Marianne winds up at the castle and stupidly frees a blood sucking Baron. Fair play to her though as he did look rather dashing at the time; it's all in the eyes, you know.

So he escapes, she escapes, she falls in the woods, he starts creating a harem of Brides in the old windmill. Then, drum roll please, enters the star of the proceedings, the wonderful Mr Peter Cushing. What brilliance, what intelligence, what skill. Nothing will get in the way of this Van Helsing protecting the beautiful innocent Marianne. Put your guns away and show some respect for the holy water, crosses and just plain fisticuff methods of the 1960s-pretending-to-be-late-19th-century vampiric war.

Let's face it, if Dracula couldn't kill him, then what chance does this young disciple in an obviously plasic cape have? He could at least have got hold of a velvet one, he is supposed to be a Baron after all. But then that is the beauty of this film: the sets that look like they're one breath away from keeling over, the plot lines that don't fully run together, the fact that there is a church quite conveniently in the back room of the village inn. And yet, they still manage to chill, to excite and most of all to make you laugh and shriek in the same breath. I shall definitely be renting more. I can't believe it's taken me this long to find out about them.

One last thing: Marianne, if Dr Van Helsing gives you a rosary, it's not a necklace love, don't take it off before bedtime! Silly girl.

Striking coincidence?

As I was reshelving some recently returned books this morning, a face peering out at me from the cover of a certain literary critic's work reminded me very strongly of a certain bag-guy-turned-good character from a cult hit 90s TV show primarily concerned with vampire hunting.
So, I'll let you decide: Derrida and Marsters, same difference?

Why reading is important

Reading is important. It’s also really good fun. It is the only way that I would know how to experience life through the eyes of for example an Israeli woman, an Irish farmer or an American banker. The words on the page light up the brain, fire up the imagination, to take you on the greatest adventures. You learn something new, about the world, about yourself, maybe even about other people. It sounds clichéd, but it’s not. I promise. Give it a go. Nothing to loose. Go along for the ride, hitch onto the text, create your own interpretations. Picture Mma Ramotswe sitting in her agency drinking bush tea. Feel the heat of the sun as she contemplated the old Botswana sense of morality which is slowly, for her, ebbing away. Travel with Thursday Next through time and reality as she tracks down those literature thieves and evil-doers galore. Most importantly, have fun. Enjoy what you read.
2008 is the National Year of Reading. Read something fun today.

Why literature is important

I came to a realisation this morning whilst queuing in traffic on a rail replacement bus somewhere in the middle of the fens; literature is important because it forces us to question our identity, our place in the world, how our history is shaped and why the search for self unity is essentially futile.

There is no origin. It is not meaningful to speak of our coming from a particular place and time. Instinctively we trace our origin to our birth but this is a falsehood; even before we are born, we are shaped by the personalities of our parents and what they were like when they were young. We are essentially recycled beings in the same way that language and words are continually recycled into new meanings. It is impossible to get behind language as we can only communicate through words; even actions only make sense within our system of signifiers. Meaning is constantly deferred from sign to sign; everything only makes sense in relation to everything else. Nothing is of intrinsic transcendental meaning as such a meaning would only have meaning when compared to something else. Thus we are left with a system of signs which are represented through language. It is impossible for us to remember a time before language, before words, to take ourselves back to the mindset of a baby experiencing the world at a much closer – more ‘real’ - distance. When we acquire language we bring our baggage to it, our own personal emotional connotations, that frequently result in confusion when the same word may mean a different thing to two different people. For example, if I said that my rail replacement bus was purple, you may bring to that a memory of lilac and lavender floating in the breeze in a childhood garden, and assume that the colour was calming. Someone else may associate purple with bruising, perhaps from unpleasant childhood memories of their own, and assume that the bus had a threatening atmosphere. In reality, it was quite a nauseating shade of plum which is not very nice at 8am, although it did remind me of royal robes (in itself quite ironic as I doubt a Persian prince would travel via stagecoach.)

We attempt to define ourselves, our identities, through so many things: our names, gender, where we grew up, which school we went to, which books we read, which TV programmes we like, which profession we belong to. Ultimately, we are searching for the essence that makes the I ‘I,’ unique to anyone else. Perhaps this too is a fallacy; some parts of our being will always be parts of those people who shaped our formative years. Literature, through portraying this struggle with self identity and language, forces us to constantly question everything. Perhaps the answer lies in Austen’s philosophy; it is what we do that makes us who we are, not how we feel. Literature forces us to question; in life, we must act!

Reading Eagleton

I spent three hours of my life last night curled up on my new sofa listening to jazz and reading Eagleton’s English novel: an introduction. I remembered, as the hours ticked by, why I love Eagleton’s work so much. I read Literary theory; an introduction years ago as an undergraduate and it helped me make sense of literary theory and its purpose. Now, I finally understand – at least in part - why the novel is an inherently ironic form. It is a bit of a shame however that when I try to articulate Eagleton’s theories, they lose something in the explanation. I can read the books and wrap my mind around the concepts, but processing and paraphrasing is a little more difficult. Still, I’m willing to give it a go.

So far, I have read the introduction and two chapters, which are concerned with – amongst others – Defoe, Swift, Fielding, Richardson and Sterne. He analyses deeply philosophical concepts such as what it means to be human, how the novel as a form developed and why, and what effect the process of representation has on reality.

I love the way he slips phrases into the narrative and swipes chunks out of established ways of thinking. In one page, he states ironically that any gentleman of the 18th century was expected to have a classical education as this set him up with a good moral code - then continues, a good enough moral code to bloodily fight for empire. He talks about war being the ultimate meeting of high ideals, realistic realism and disenfranchised disappointment (I'm paraphrasing here!) A bit like a novel, which often strives to portray realism but alters it in the telling and the fact that it is fiction, shown most clearly in the desire for a happy ending where the good guys get what they deserve and the bad guys are justly punished. How one wishes this happened more in real life.

His focus on materiality and morality, the gap between them, and the means which authors take to close this gap is fascinating. Defoe, for example, abandons form in favour of content; his focus is placed firmly on materiality – the only people who had morals were people who could afford them. An outrageous stance to take in a Puritan England where the general thought was that even the poor should be pious in order to reach Heaven. One should rather die of hunger than steal a loaf of bread. For Defoe’s characters, this is ludicrous; there is plenty of time to be moral after one has amassed a fortune on ill-gotten gains. It is fitting that everything comes down to materialism. The gap between materiality and morality will never be closed due to the opportunistic and beastly nature of humanity. Pessimistic, perhaps, but maybe this accounts for Defoe’s positive stance towards capitalism; it gives the common man a chance for a better life, materialistically if not spiritually.

I shall continue with the book although during the three hours I spent reading it last night I only got through 60 pages; Eagleton’s writing demands immediate reflection. So perhaps tonight I’ll settle down, put Aretha back on the stereo, and read some more about Fielding’s devices for bridging the gap between reality in reality and the reality of a novel.