MyLibrary

I read with interest the (draft) Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control, and there are a couple of things that struck a cord with MyLibrary.

First, on page 7 (page 11 of the PDF document) the report discusses the definition of bibliographic control:

…Bibliographic control is increasingly a matter of managing relationships—among works, names, concepts, and object descriptions—across communities. Consistency of description within any single environment, such as the library catalog, is becoming less significant than the ability to make connections between environments: Amazon to WorldCat to Google to PubMed to Wikipedia, with library holdings serving as but one node in this web of connectivity. In today’s environment, bibliographic control cannot continue to be seen as limited to library catalogs.

Whew, because MyLibrary is all about creating relationships, except MyLibrary emphasizes relationships between resources and people. More specifically, Mylibrary is focused on four things: 1) information resources, 2) patrons, 3) librarians, and 4) a controlled vocabulary. Information resources are described in MyLibrary using simple Dublin Core elements. Patrons are enumerated in MyLibrary with simple names and addresses. Likewise with librarians. Like traditional bibliographic control, vocabularies are applied to information resources to draw them together. In this way they have relationships with each other. Unlike traditional bibliographic control, MyLibrary allows you to apply these vocabularies to people as well as things thus creating relations between patrons & resources, patrons & librarians, librarians & resources, as well as between resources & resources, patrons & patrons, and librarians & librarians. Libraries always have users, and it is meaningless to not include users when creating the relationships.

In any event, the emphasis on relationships is a step in the right direction.

Second, on page 11 (page 15 of the PDF document) the report discusses shared cataloging and redundant efforts:

The redundant modification of records in libraries results in unnecessary costs to the library community as a whole. Redundancies occur when individual libraries make changes to records in their local library systems but do not share those changes with the broader community. Their reasons for not sharing record modifications may be operational, technical, or economic….

These same things happen in open source software communities. Often times you will find people who download some code, use it for their own purposes, and then do not contribute their “fix” back to distribution. This does a dis-service to the community and ultimately the hacker. When upgrades to the distributed software are made available the hacker needs to incorporate their additions again. This causes friction. “Should I spend time adding my hacks to the new code, or should I just forgo any new features of the distribution?” All too often the the answer is the former.

The Report is good reading. Take 30 minutes of your time to check it out.

Tags: Facets & Terms, Open Source Software //