Comments on: Radiohead and the death of MARC cataloging

By: AJ Million

AJ Million — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:43:23 +0000

No problem with the vanity score. I think mine’s through the roof thanks to a bunch of old XC races I ran in High School and undergrad. And thanks for the new music too! I’m just interested to see where things go in the next 10-20 years.

By: James Van Mil

James Van Mil — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:34:29 +0000

I did some searching and found this: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/soundrec.pdf

See page 12

There seems the be a conflict between “electronic resource” and “sound recording”. Really I suppose the question might be, What do we do when all of our sound recordings are electronic resources? (The answer seems to be to treat them as electronic resources.)

I have found some cataloging for streaming digital albums (OCLC # 71365629, for example), but I do agree that with the increasing importance of digital media there should be more proactive cataloging of these things.

A more interesting example might be the new Brian Eno and David Byrne album (http://www.everythingthathappens.com/), which, unlike the Radiohead album, appears to be streaming permanently. And creative commons resources especially could benefit from this attention, since the distribution issue is less of a problem. See OCLC record # 71365629 for an interesting example.

-James

note that is the same “James” from above, I’ve just decided to enter my whole name to increase my Google vanity score :)

By: Million

Million — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:05:43 +0000

James,

You bring up a really good point. There are plenty of records for electronic resources out there. Still, there are absolutely zero for this version of “In Rainbows.” What if it was the only format available? Sure, you could fudge a MARC record to catalog it, but logistically how does that even work? What do the rules say on the matter? Then there is, like you said, the distribution issue…

Now, maybe MARC can be updated to deal with this but it still presents some very real problems. We’re operating with a Monograph paradigm and that’s not what we are dealing with.

—-

Gina,

Hate to say it, but I’ve caught myself doing the same thing before too. :)

By: James

James — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:34:18 +0000

I’d like to see some cataloging for a digital album which is no longer available from the original source and which would be technically (and legally) challenging for a library to distribute digitally.

Also LC has over 80,000 records for electronic resources.

By: Gina

Gina — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:15:27 +0000

“Libraries have taken the cheap way out and cataloged the CD that they bought!”

Uh, this is what librarians always do. They catalog the ‘stuff’ that their acquisitions staff purchases, or that their collection development librarians request added to the catalog, be it cds, websites, monographs, serials, etc. Unless you can find some rogue cataloguer whose mission is just to catalog anything that has ever been produced.