Yesterday I was in London for a meeting of an RLUK (http://www.rluk.ac.uk/ ) working group looking at shared metadata in a systems context. In the current economic crisis increased collaboration will help libraries manage and reduce their costs. The working group will prepare a report for the RLUK Directors’ September meeting to consider.
Cloud computing, data centres, developments in library management systems and an awareness that libraries need to meet the requirements of new generations of users are the other important drivers behind this work.
Enough of the library-speak, what does all this mean. Libraries used to keep lists or catalogues of everything that they had on paper or cards. These lists were used by librarians and sometimes library users. Then came the computer and the internet and there was a steady increase in the size of the description of each book or map or manuscript or photograph because the computer allowed more numerous and diverse ways of recording and searching this information. When you search a library catalogue and find a book you want to read about puffins by Joe Bloggs, the library has probably bought the book but the description of the book that helped you find it also comes at a cost. It might have been created by a staff member, bought from the book supplier or publisher in some way or copied from another library’s catalogue, again with staff intervention. That very same description is stored in every library catalogue where the book is held and every catalogue resides on a server – more costs. So what we’re looking for is a way of collaborating to pay for that description, and maybe the storage of that description, once and only once. Is this possible at all?
Of course to share descriptions in this way, libraries would have to agree on what exactly must be included in the description. We want everything possible – but can we afford it? The tools available to search these descriptions, the search interfaces are becoming more and more important as we examine these issues and full text searching is already with us. When you search this Library’s catalogue you are also automatically full text searching our online subscribed resources at the top of the results screen (http://discover.llgc.org.uk/ ). The report that the working group prepares needs to look to the future and this type of searching which is becoming more and more prevalent in the web environment.
Libraries in Wales are also interested in working at the national level and collaborating on data and system matters. When the report of the RLUK Working Group on Metadata is available it will inform the series of discussions already underway on this topic in Wales.
Kathryn Murphy