I felt I needed to take some time out tonight to reflect on the topic - 505 that I am doing at the moment. I handed my assignment in early as I had to go to Bangkok (a promise to my son and his girlfriend that I wanted to keep)so I have had the weekend to 'chill out', tonight I will be catching up on my sleep and tomorrow I will be launching myself into the exercises necessary for the next part of the course. RDA was really interesting, I loved reading about it and comparing it to AACR2. However, I struggled to understand the whole concept of FRAD and FRBR. Maybe when I get to work with it I will be able to come to grips with it better. Also I need to remember it takes time to assimilate all this information before you can apply it. Learning how to create subject headings using SCIS was great! I am a long way off being an independent cataloguer, but I worked really hard. I didn't worry about the hierarchy of the headings as Anne (Lecturer) said it wasn't necessary, but it was really interesting to see how subject headings could be established. I have no idea of how I will go but I was really happy with what I had done. I am learning to recognise that I can't expect myself to be an expert at everything I am learning. It is a gradual process and to be a good cataloguer will take time. However, I do feel I have established a good solid foundation on which to build. I was a bit nervous about how to reference the ETL 505 2A assignment. It wasn't like other assignments, I wasn't researching information. I did the best I could to work it out, and I really hope I have referenced it correctly. Time to go -only 5 hours sleep last night between getting home from the airport and getting up to work,so I am exhausted!

Why Do we Need Subject Access?

Subject access is vitally important. The children in my library come to the library on the whole to: *find a fiction book to read *find resources on a specific subject There are specific 'mechanisms' (Hider, 2010, p.99) that libraries use to help their users find information resources relevant to a specific subject. There are 3 steps to this process: 1.The cataloguer has to 'decide what the information resource is about' (Hider, 2010, p.99) 2. Transform that information into 'terms (words and phrases) or symbols which represent the subject'(Hider, 2010, p.99) 3. Provide 'access to these terms and symbols through the library information retrieval system'(Hider, 2010, p.99) Basically we need to provide subject access in order to meet our users' needs. This is achievable in two ways: The library information retrieval system needs to: ** 'provide access to the subject of the information resources in the system' (Hider, 2010, p.99) ** 'provide guidance on what has been published or made available about a particular subject' (Hider, 2010, p.99) Most catalogue searches are undertaken to find out: 1. if the library has access to a specific information resource (A KNOWN ITEM SEARCH) 2. if the library as access to information resources that 'deal with a particular subject' (A SUBJECT SEARCH) (Hider, 2010, p.99) So far so good! This makes sense.

Learning More About Bibliographic Standards

I was interested to know that not every institution produces full records. I knew that Charles A. Cutter first proposed three levels of cataloguing (Chan, 2007, p.81). AACR2, unlike previous standards, advantageously accommodated, ‘three levels of bibliographic description’; brief, medium and full, to meet the cataloguing needs of different libraries, of all sizes (Chan, 2007, p.81). However, according to Hider (2010, p.36) whether cataloguers use brief, medium or full records according to the needs of their library ‘they are still adhering to the same basic standard’. I loved Cutter’s explanation of how full records should be. He suggested, ‘the information resource needs to be described only as fully as is necessary to set it apart from other resources, and only as fully as will make it easy to find’ (Hider, 2010, p.36). Research results from the Centre for Catalogue Research in England was as follows: ‘The conclusion suggests that much of the information normally included in the catalogue entry is very rarely used by readers, and its inclusion makes catalogues difficult to use with the result that some items may not be found’ (Seal, in Hider, 2010, p.36). The conclusion must be to consider the needs of your users and choose the level of bibliographic description to meet those needs. The point is made by Hider though, that considering the needs of the user might actually mean enhancing records (Hider, 2010, pp.36-37) which may mean adding more metadata, especially if it provides ‘subject access to information resources’! Hider gave three examples: • Adding an abstract (e.g summary of a book’s or film’s plot) • Adding keywords from an index or contents page to improve subject access • Adding links to web-related material, like information about the author This makes total sense to me. I have almost finished evaluating every picture book in my library in terms of how they relate to the Learner Profile, for a Teacher Support document. I included a cover image of each book, my summary of each story and where possible I included a link to any web-related material that I thought relevant. I hope that it will meet my users’ needs! Now I am thinking perhaps that this information (ie. which attribute of the Learner Profile the book relates to) would be useful in the records too. Food for thought!

Caught In the Web

Through ETL 505 at Charles Sturt University I have been introduced to the wonders of the Trove, Pictures, Photos, Objects website. (The Mouse Brain Library was interesting too!) The idea of being able to retrieve images through such a website is very interesting to me. I am of course accustomed to searching via Google Images but didn't realise the National Library in Canberra had a meta data index and the fact that it is linked to a web service is phenomenal. I am just reflecting on the importance of the web today -I don't think it would be easy to live our lives without it. I am frequently checking books/information on the Internet at work -it's so user friendly!

Cutter

I read about Cutter last week. I thought he just spelt out the principles of a library catalogue, ie. that a catalogue's function was to 1. help the user locate a book by author, title and subject 2. show what resources the library has by a designated author and subject in a given literature 3. to help the user find a book in a designated edition (and character actually, but I am not sure what that means.) All that was fine -I understood that, but what I didn't realise (until going online today and doing'Let's Do Dewey') was that there actually are still Cutter numbers used in libraries. If I have understood it correctly Cutter numbers are used when you have more than one book by the same author, so that each book in the library has its own unique number. (Mind you, it involves letters too!) If this is the case how come I have never noticed a book in any library with Cutter numbers? Next time I go to the National Library I will go looking for Cutter numbers!

Libraries, Museums and Archives

I had never even considered the similarities between libraries, museums and archives. It had never occurred to me that people go to all three searching for information and there must be an organised system for extracting the information from each. My only experience really has been with libraries. Whenever I have been to museums it has just been a visit to enjoy exhibits, I haven't gone there specifically to research information on a specific topic. In Rayward’s article (1998, 4.4) he notes that regarding ‘the media of the past…there is little problem -- books for libraries, objects for museums and government and organizational records for archives.’ (Mind you no one would say libraries just contain books these days when so many other resources are now available in libraries eg. newspapers, magazines, DVDs, audio books, journals to name a few.) Libraries, museums and archives used to have fairly clear delineations over who held what though today the demarcation lines are more blurred. Some art museums could well house ancient manuscripts that are displayed not for the information on the manuscript but for appreciation of the artwork they exhibit. So too can research libraries, according to Rayward (1998, 4.2) be considered ‘museums of printed or written artifacts’. I am not absolutely sure as I have had no experience with government (or any other) archives, but I assume that these days records of parliamentary activities would include possibly DVDs which recorded important events in parliament for So, probably similar information is recorded, but just stored in different ways. I assume too that old paper files still exist where the retention of the physical paper is of historical interest (constituting a possible overlap with museum collections) but most files would probably be stored electronically now. In terms of how the nature of the resource changes what information we might want to organise and retrieve: As stated I know little about archives but I assume the essentials that need to be organised to identify the document for retrieval would be the date the event, the participants and location. The diversity of the resources stored in museums would make information retrieval more complex than retrieval of information from a library I would have thought. Whereas in a library or archive the information required for cataloguing is generally explicit from the written, visual or audio resources, in a museum an artifact requires evaluation from an expert in that field before any cataloguing can commence. What looks like a piece of stone to the novice could in fact be a rudimentary tool over 2 million years old originating in Africa from the Early Stone Age. Just as specialized knowledge of the artifact would be essential so too would specialized knowledge in how to catalogue artifacts be necessary. You would need to know what information people would need to know about the artifact in order to know how to catalogue it. In this case who created the tool, the date and its point of origin, its design features as well as its composition would all be essential information needed to catalogue the artifact. The aesthetic design of a curio could be the focal point of its importance. How this is then conveyed in text for cataloguing could be a challenge. To me this seems a much more complex task than cataloguing a book or DVD. The interesting point about Rayward’s article is that in 1998 he predicted advances in technology could close the gap on the differences in managing resources in libraries, museums and archives and lead to ‘functional integration between the agencies’ (Rayward, 1998, 4.7). Was he right? I can't answer that without a lot more research!

Effective Information Retrieval

Hider (and Harvey, 2008, p.21) see three issues as critical to the success of effective information retrieval: *standards for the organization of information *agreements for the exchange of data relating to information resources *belonging to 'cooperatives' to capitalise on the exchange of data relating to information resources. Regarding information retrieval Hider (and Harvey, 2008, p.23) make many valid points. I see the most important being the following: -the input of data must follow the set standards and require 'minimal effort'. (The latter is important because effective time management is crucial in the workplace.) -the input of data needs to be both accurate and consistent. This is obvious, because if it isn't it will negatively affect the accessibility and ease of access to resources. Hider (and Harvey, 2008, p.23) also focus on the fact that all aspects of data output need to be 'user friendly'. This includes such points as speed of delivery to the user, multiple simultaneous access to the data and meeting the needs of the user. So far so good! This all sounds quite logical to me. I am trying to catch up on the readings today so... now on to Rayward's reading!