Cataloging

About: Cataloging is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4770 publications have been published within this topic receiving 32489 citations.

Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval. 3rd ed

Abstract: When I saw the title of this book, I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of the concepts and issues that I have not really considered since library school. Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval tries to do that, as it states in the preface: The primary audience I have in mind comprises students of library and information science programmes, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels…[T]his book is expected to meet the requirements of students undertaking courses in information retrieval, information organization, information use, digital libraries, and so on. (p. xi) Chapters 1–22 have an introduction, which gives a brief overview of what will be covered, and a discussion at the end of the chapter. Chapter 23 serves as a synopsis of the book and an analysis of what the author sees as upcoming trends in information retrieval. Each chapter has a fairly extensive reference list. The introductory chapters cover basic topics such as cataloging, indexing, abstracting, and subject headings. Well-known and well-discussed issues such as recall versus precision, user interfaces, and vocabulary control are covered in other chapters throughout the book. Other topics that are particularly relevant to today's search environment such as web-based searching, markup languages, and searching digital libraries are covered as well. Chapter 13 discusses the evaluation of institutional repository (IR) systems, and although the subject is decently covered, there is almost no discussion of the steps in the process of evaluation. Chapter 14 covers evaluation experiments, which could probably be skipped by an undergraduate but might be relevant to a graduate student. The author spends several pages in chapter 15 explaining how to search DIALOG as an example of online searching (as opposed to web-based searching) and then at the end of the discussion states that there are better interfaces to use. So why not use one of those other interfaces as an example? Most of the rest of chapter 15 is taken up by a discussion of CD-ROM searching. Both systems are still used, but a whole chapter is certainly not warranted. Chapter 16 does a good job of reviewing information retrieval in multimedia formats, including music and speech, but more discussion of the many video formats, such as DVR, would have been useful. The author spends almost no time discussing issues such as the economics of searching, although at times cost is mentioned. He mentions social networking once, in passing, in the discussion of web searching. The author also includes too much detail in many of his chapters, such as the algorithms used in one particular system in chapter 6 on automatic indexing. There are many editing problems with this book, the most significant being the number of screen shots that are too fuzzy to be seen. The index is barely adequate, and a glossary of terms would be helpful. I did expect that information retrieval has changed in some ways since I was in library school, and, of course it has, although many of the issues have not. This book has its good points, and I found some parts of it interesting, especially some of the topics such as multimedia searching and the issue of non-English languages in information retrieval. Unfortunately, it tries to cover too much and so does not do justice to any of the topics. As a potential text for students, it does not really cover the subjects adequately. At $90, the money could probably be better spent on another book.

Resource Disambiguator for the Web: Extracting Biomedical Resources and Their Citations from the Scientific Literature.

Abstract: The NIF Registry developed and maintained by the Neuroscience Information Framework is a cooperative project aimed at cataloging research resources, e.g., software tools, databases and tissue banks, funded largely by governments and available as tools to research scientists. Although originally conceived for neuroscience, the NIF Registry has over the years broadened in the scope to include research resources of general relevance to biomedical research. The current number of research resources listed by the Registry numbers over 13K. The broadening in scope to biomedical science led us to re-christen the NIF Registry platform as SciCrunch. The NIF/SciCrunch Registry has been cataloging the resource landscape since 2006; as such, it serves as a valuable dataset for tracking the breadth, fate and utilization of these resources. Our experience shows research resources like databases are dynamic objects, that can change location and scope over time. Although each record is entered manually and human-curated, the current size of the registry requires tools that can aid in curation efforts to keep content up to date, including when and where such resources are used. To address this challenge, we have developed an open source tool suite, collectively termed RDW: Resource Disambiguator for the (Web). RDW is designed to help in the upkeep and curation of the registry as well as in enhancing the content of the registry by automated extraction of resource candidates from the literature. The RDW toolkit includes a URL extractor from papers, resource candidate screen, resource URL change tracker, resource content change tracker. Curators access these tools via a web based user interface. Several strategies are used to optimize these tools, including supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms as well as statistical text analysis. The complete tool suite is used to enhance and maintain the resource registry as well as track the usage of individual resources through an innovative literature citation index honed for research resources. Here we present an overview of the Registry and show how the RDW tools are used in curation and usage tracking.

The AustLit Gateway and Scholarly Bibliography: A Specialist Implementation of the FRBR

Abstract: This paper discusses how the AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway's interpretation, enhancement, and implementation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR Final Report 1998) model is meeting the needs of Australian literature scholars for accurate bibliographic representation of the histories of literary texts. It also explores how the AustLit Gateway's underpinning research principles, which are based on the tradition of scholarly enumerative and descriptive bibliography, with enhancements from analytical bibliography and literary biography, have impacted upon our implementation of the FRBR model. The major enhancement or alteration to the model is the use of enhanced manifestations, which allow the full representation of all agents' contributions to be shown in a highly granular format by enabling creation events to be incorporated at all levels of the Work, Expression, and Manifestation nexus.

Subject Access: Conceptual Models, Functional Requirements, and Empirical Data

Abstract: One of the central functions of bibliographic control is providing subject access. However, numerous studies conducted over decades have shown that users routinely experience problems with subject access in library catalogs and databases. These problems are often due to inadequate quality of subject metadata, which is greatly influenced by complexity of subject representation. The fact that major cataloging standards (e.g., AACR2 and its predecessors) have been overlooking the importance of subject access and have not addressed subject cataloging is arguably one of the reasons behind problems in organization of subject access. The new cataloging code—Resource Description and Access (RDA)—attempts to fill this gap. Upon examination of how subject access is addressed in RDA and its underlying conceptual models that specify functional requirements for bibliographic control—FRBR, FRAD, and FRSAD—this article presents results of a study that used FRBR model as an analytical framework in examination of user sea...