Social discovery tools: Cataloguing meets user convenience

SOCIAL DISCOVERY TOOLS: CATALOGUING MEETS USER CONVENIENCE

Louise Spiteri

School of Information Management

Dalhousie University

THE ROLE OF THE CATALOGUE

The library catalogue has long acted as an important and fundamental medium between users and their information needs.

The traditional goals and objectives of the library catalogue are to enable users to search a library’s collection to find items pertaining to specific titles, authors, or subjects.

CAS 2011. Fredericton, NB

CHANGING NATURE OF CATALOGUES

Today’s library catalogues are competing against powerful alternatives for information discovery. Services offered by sites such as Amazon and LibraryThing allow members to:

Interact with the catalogue and with each other Create and participating in discussion groups Tag items of interest in language that reflects their needs Share reading, listening, or viewing interests Provide recommendations and ratings for selected items.


SOCIAL DISCOVERY SYSTEMSLibrary discovery systems, such as AquaBrowser, BiblioCommons and Encore provide an enhanced search and discovery experience for the users.

Allow users to enhance the content of bibliographic records by adding their own tags, ratings, and reviews.

Can play an important role in helping information professionals meet one of the primary underlying principles of cataloguing, namely that catalogue records be designed with the user in mind and that, whenever possible, the needs of clients must be placed above other concerns


RESEARCH QUESTIONSCAS 2011. Fredericton, NB

What is the relationship between the principle of user convenience and social discovery systems?

What are the ethical dimensions involved in creating catalogue records to reflect user convenience?

What is the relationship between culture and user convenience?

How can social discovery tools facilitate the creation of catalogue records that reflect the culture(s) and needs of the library community in which they exist?

CODE OF ETHICS FOR INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS (KOEHLER & PEMBERTON, 2009)


Support the needs of the profession and the professional association(s).

Understand the roles of the information practitioner and strive to meet them with the greatest possible skill and competence.

Whenever possible, place the needs of clients above other concerns.

Be aware of, and be responsive to, the rights of users, employers, fellow practitioners, one’s community, the larger society

Insofar as they do not conflict with professional obligations, be sensitive and responsive to social responsibilities appropriate to the profession.

IFLA STATEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUING PRINCIPLES (2009)

convenience of the user

common usage

representation

accuracy

sufficiency & necessity

significance

economy

consistency & standardization

integration


IstI

USER CONVENIENCE AND CULTURE (BEGHTOL)

Cultural

warrant:

• Any knowledge organization or representational system should reflect the assumptions, values, and predispositions of the culture(s) in which it exists.

User warrant

• Individuals are considered to be members of a certain culture(s) and represent that culture(s) when they participate in the development and use of knowledge organization systems.


USER CONVENIENCE AND CULTURE (BEGHTOL)

Cultural hospitality

• Knowledge organization systems allow for personal and community choices


ACTIVITY THEORY (HJØRLAND, 1997) Knowledge organization and representation cannot

be isolated from the culture, environment and context in which these processes take place.

Individual resources are analyzed and described according to their uses, both intended or actual.


DEFINING CULTURECAS 2011. Fredericton, NB

Culture is a collective phenomenon and involves groups of people who share the same culture.

Defining cultural values is particularly challenging in pluralistic countries like Canada, where people who live within the same political nation may belong to several cultural groups.

Cultural groups may define themselves in different ways, such as according to language, nation, religion, generation, region, or workplace.

RECONCILING CATALOGUE RECORDS WITH CULTURE

How can library catalogue records be designed to meet the different cultural needs of communities?

How do you reconcile these different needs with the integrity of the content of catalogue records that follow standard procedures and guidelines?How do you create catalogue records that meet user convenience in environments of shared bibliographic databases and little opportunity exists to create customized records?


BARRIERS TO MEETING USER NEEDS

Cataloguers involved in back-end

processes of catalogues

Insufficient interaction with

clients

Cheaper to use minimal vendor

records


INCREASING ROLE FOR CATALOGUE RECORDS Library use often occurs outside the confines of a

physical building.

Increasingly, the catalogue record must provide information that clients would have obtained traditionally from browsing physically through an item and scanning its contentsEnhanced content, e.g., tables of contents, images, detailed

summaries, and so forth.


SOCIAL DISCOVERY SYSTEMS TO THE RESCUE?

When users add metadata to existing catalogue records in the form of tags, ratings, or reviews, they are given the

opportunity to express both their needs and their cultural points-of-view.

Library staff can learn more about the members of the library community by examining tags, ratings and reviews, and create collections and services, such as Readers' Advisory, that more closely reflect the needs of the users.


SOCIAL DISCOVERY SYSTEMS TO THE RESCUE?

User-assigned tags and reviews can help members of the library community connect with one another via shared interests and connections.

User-created metadata can reflect not only a personal perspective, but also a community perspective. User-contributed metadata can assist in the expression of different cultural manifestations.


BUT WHAT IF THEY MESS UP THE RECORDS?

The MARC record cannot be altered. Users can only add content to the MARC record, e.g., tags, ratings, reviews.

Library staff could monitor content to fix errors

Inoffensive content could be flagged by other clients (Edmonton model).

User content may be less accurate or neutral, but still informative (e.g., the tag “boring”).


WHAT ABOUT OBJECTIVITY? Cataloguers have traditionally believed in the importance of

creating records that are free of bias. The provision of unbiased catalogue records, while laudable, is rarely truly attainable in practice. Cataloguers decide what to include and exclude in a catalogue record.

Subjectivity becomes even more of an issue via the choice of subject headings and classification numbers.

User-contributed tags and reviews could certainly reflect bias, but this bias could be a useful and important expression of user convenience and cultural warrant.


GRASSROOTS LANGUAGE

Formal representation language may not reflect users and the community

Social discovery systems can balance formal vocabularies with those of the community

User-contributed metadata could allow us to examine to what extent controlled vocabularies reflect the needs of the user and help us update these vocabularies.


CONCLUSIONSSocial discovery systems can bridge cataloguers' desire to create accurate catalogue records that conform to accepted cataloguing standards, and their ethical imperative to ensure that these records meet the needs of the clients.

User-contributed metadata allow clients to express their needs and cultural warrant

User-contributed metadata can be an invaluable resource by which to examine how people use and interact with catalogue records and to modify controlled vocabularies such as LCSH.


Social discovery tools: Cataloguing meets user convenience

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