This survey sought to investigate how the transition to the new cataloging standard, Resource Des... more This survey sought to investigate how the transition to the new cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA), has been handled in one hundred of the largest US public libraries, specifically examining whether catalogers believe that some of RDA’s major goals have been met, and how some of the anticipated impacts of RDA implementation have been handled. A large majority of these libraries have implemented RDA for original cataloging, but respondents also generally believe that RDA has failed to meet some of its most important goals, primarily ease of use and cost-effectiveness.
The need to uniquely identify people with the same name will be as important in a linked data env... more The need to uniquely identify people with the same name will be as important in a linked data environment as it is in traditional library catalogs. Although older cataloging rules allowed multiple identities to share space in an authority record, the current rules are more stringent, requiring that all authorized access points for people to be disambiguated. While this task has been made much easier in recent years because of the amount of biographical material on the web, deceased and obscure people can pose a complex challenge. This is especially true for special collections materials, which are being given greater attention but which often deal with people who are long dead and little known. This paper builds on previous research in the use of online resources to perform authority work by providing an in-depth analysis of the genealogist’s toolkit and examining how freely available online genealogical sources can be used to find the types of distinctive information needed to crea...
This survey sought to investigate how the transition to the new cataloging standard, Resource Des... more This survey sought to investigate how the transition to the new cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA), has been handled in one hundred of the largest US public libraries, specifically examining whether catalogers believe that some of RDA’s major goals have been met, and how some of the anticipated impacts of RDA implementation have been handled. A large majority of these libraries have implemented RDA for original cataloging, but respondents also generally believe that RDA has failed to meet some of its most important goals, primarily ease of use and cost-effectiveness.
The need to uniquely identify people with the same name will be as important in a linked data env... more The need to uniquely identify people with the same name will be as important in a linked data environment as it is in traditional library catalogs. Although older cataloging rules allowed multiple identities to share space in an authority record, the current rules are more stringent, requiring that all authorized access points for people to be disambiguated. While this task has been made much easier in recent years because of the amount of biographical material on the web, deceased and obscure people can pose a complex challenge. This is especially true for special collections materials, which are being given greater attention but which often deal with people who are long dead and little known. This paper builds on previous research in the use of online resources to perform authority work by providing an in-depth analysis of the genealogist’s toolkit and examining how freely available online genealogical sources can be used to find the types of distinctive information needed to crea...
Uploads
Papers by Chris Long