#1 15. December 2008, 9:53 am o'clock
I agree! Knowing what the pretty, pretty display is drawing from helps me know what I need to know to construct the data. In a library I used to work at, the previous librarian had disabled the “title” search from the keyword search - meaning if you knew the title but searched it in keyword, you would not find the item. Others on staff had been puzzling on why the catalog never seemed to bring the results back properly because all the MARC seemed right … I got into the algorithms and found out why. Once fixed, life was fab. Ya gotta know WHERE it is coming from and HOW it is arriving at that search.
#2 15. December 2008, 12:41 pm o'clock
Oh, good. I thought it was just me.
This is also reminding me of a book that I just finished reading– by Asaf Degani. Degani’s thesis is that interfaces to machines or programs that give no indication of the structure of the machine (or system!) or its processes will inevitably lead to disaster. If people can’t see how information is organized, they won’t be able to find it. And if librarians can’t figure out how their libraries are structured, how can they expect to help their patrons?
#3 15. December 2008, 12:49 pm o'clock
Argh. I apologize for that last post; I must have hit the “link” button or have forgotten to close a link tab.
The title of the book is “Taming HAL,” and the author is Asaf Degani.
#4 18. December 2008, 12:53 pm o'clock
This is why it behooves aspiring metadata librarians to learn some computer programming. It really makes a world of difference toward understanding how the metadata we’re creating is being used by the computer. And trying to tell the computer to do something, i.e., programming, is a great way to acquire the geeky sensibility that we need!
#6 8. January 2009, 5:54 am o'clock
I don’t think that data structures should be deliberately withheld from those who are interested. However, I have some sympathy with the programmer in question.
As you say, very few people would work with actual MARC records in their raw format - and I can really see no reason why you would want to unless you really were debugging at that level.
My impression (completely anecdotal I admit) is that many librarians (and I probably really mean cataloguers) feel that the data structures currently being discussed to realise FRBR are ‘to complex’, and that this makes them reluctant to support a move to FRBRized data structures. In this context saying that you wouldn’t expose librarians to this complexity makes sense to me - as the complexity of the data won’t go away just because people don’t want to engage with it.
I’d reiterate, I don’t think the data structures should be ’secret’ or deliberately hidden from someone who wants to see them - but it isn’t necessarily important for most (not all) to engage with this level of detail.
Chris:
Learning programming is one way, but I’d argue that it’s not the only way. I’ve never learned programming, but one of my former programmer colleagues complimented me once by saying that I “think like a programmer.” What does that mean, and where did I learn that? I have no idea, but it wasn’t by learning programming. I suspect I picked it up by hanging out with programmers and asking questions; also by listening to their questions–often more revealing.
I’d rather spend time learning to play my hammered dulcimer, to be honest. I’ll leave the programmers to do the programming and happily continue to work with them to make things happen!