Lesson 7: Subject Cataloguing

Perhaps I became a tad disillusioned this week. Frankly, we pay as much for these online courses as students do in an in class setting, yet courses are being reused and reused, and the developers do not even have the courtesy to add updated material:

Such as the 1997 cataloging manual from Manitoba, which refers to card catalogues, and in the future OPACs will be important. Outrageous that this is still in the course readings.

It is even more shocking that no one went through the course to find out that links do not work:

And that to get the article through the link one has to subscribe to the service:

And most ridiculous, the journal is not even carried by UBC in eformat for online learners to access:

So with that said... my library world was rocked the other day as I discovered that while I have 600 or so books in the 500's, only 260 actually come up when we search particular topics. When I questioned the tech department, she believes it may be from when they automated the library and they only created minimal marc records. Now really, what was the purpose of creating records or automating if it means that no one can find the darn book? Doesn't it make you wonder who thought that was a money saver!

As a result, I now have my library helpers and occasional substitutes using stickies to write down subject headings, and I will add them to the cataglogue. Currently the focus is on science, so I will start there. One can truely see the importance of subject headings when one's library doesn't have them! :)

The task this week is to look at delicious.com. I find this an interesting site, but it makes me wonder what will happen to library organizational systems when the folksonomies become more and more prevelant? It seems chaotic and random, but then that is the essence of the web. Yet, here we are now trying to catalogue websites and add them to our opacs. I also think delicious or any of these 'cloud' technologies will be interesting to watch. Will the service create a set of users, who become dependent, who then will eventually need to pay for this service (such as MobileMe now?).

I wonder if some new age Dewey will appear at create a new form of organization or labeling that we will all follow to bring us out of the chaos of folksonomies?