Resource Description and New Media: Challenges and Opportunities

UCD Library Leabharlann UCD

Eoin McCarney & Hugh Murphy

UCD Library

Overview

• Outline of Project

• What & Why?

• Decisions

• Issues & Outcomes

• Future plans

The Project Goals

• Catalogue our entire collection of E-Books

• Catalogue a series of UCD podcasts

Why describe new media?

• User demand

• Raise awareness

• To see how it can best be done

• Get best value from resources

What should a Library catalogue contain?

• Print, Electronic, Both?

• Standards

• Format Agnostic?

• What we own or what users want to access?

Who can say which new media will take off?

It’s easy to get carried away..

“By the turn of the century, paper will satisfy less than 5 percent of the total commerce in information.

Although education and entertainment have their own migratory paths and rates, the

objective will be the same: paper is going to be replaced with

electronic media”(Kounta, J. (1992). Tomorrow’s libraries: More than

a modular telephone jack, less than a complete revolution - Perspectives of a provocateur. Library Hi-Tech, 10(4), 39-50.

1992, p. 39)

…or have we reached the tipping point?

JISC National E-books Observatory Project: Findings from the First User Survey, CIBER, 2008.

Apple iPhone

Amazon Kindle

Sony E-Book Reader

The ins and outs

E-Books

Good

• Available to user, anytime, anywhere

• Much greater functionality – cross referencing, links to other sources, advanced searching.

• Huge benefits in storage and maintenance

Not so Good

• Reading from print is still the preferred choice for most.

• Multiple packages = divergent collections, licenses, search techniques, business models.

• A large challenge for resource description, especially in light of changing options

E-Books - Early Decisions:

• Give E-Books a separate catalogue record

• Authority control not viable

• Bulk editing and broad QA of records required

Issues

• Sheer Volume – justifying the time

• Standards

• Moveable feast

• Authentication

• Assessing usage

Outcomes:

• Increased usage

• Reinforces new media

• Endorses the catalogue and retains its relevance

• Reduced authority control

• Maintenance issues (Books 24/7)

Podcasts

a “radio-style” program, usually in the MP3 digital format, disseminated over the Internet, that

includes a system for subscribing to it on a World Wide Web page in such a manner that future

programs are automatically downloaded. Subscribers typically transfer downloaded files to their portable media players, such as Apple Inc.’s

iPod and the Microsoft Corporation’s Zune, for later playback. The name podcast derives from a

combination of iPod and broadcast.

Britannica

Podcasts – Issues

• The lawless, wild west of cataloguing – little or no standards

• Proliferation of podcasts – what merits inclusion in catalogue?

• Potential to be seen as a diminution of the catalogue (“Podcasts? Really?!”)

• Assessing usage

Outcomes:

• Increased usage?

• Reinforces new media

• Enhances relevance of library and catalogue

• Maintenance issues (dynamic medium)

Overall Conclusions

• Some precedents for e-books, none for podcasts

• New paradigm and technology for new media.

• Massive consequences, both for collection development and resource description – where does it stop

People still use the catalogue (which is good) so (as ever) the catalogue has to represent what we have (which is complicated)

• Going forward, other solutions may prove to be more appropriate

The Future?

• Single Search interface across all media

• Primo, Encore, Vufind etc

• Is resource description cost effective?

Questions?