OCLC: A Review (PDF here) is the title of an essay by Jeffrey Beall that is included in a book titled Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front.

First, let me reiterate my own attitude about OCLC: They are, for good and for bad, the 800 pound gorilla of the library world. Decisions that they make, and the approach they take towards librarianship, effect us dramatically, and there is not much that we can individually do about it.

They have done great things, from WorldCat.org to providing as complete a set of bibliographic records as exists in the world. Among the negatives are the cost barriers that can eat away much of the budget of smaller libraries, as well as the one-way trip that bibliographic information seems to make into their system.

This article, however, is a strong attack on OCLC that simply overreaches. Many of the projects run by OCLC, including WorldCat, have benefitted from their monolithic approach, and while I would much prefer to see them be more open and flexible, I still appreciate their scope and vision.

One example of the style of his argument: He opens the article with criticism for the title of Karen Schneider’s posts on ALA TechSource (“How OPACs Suck” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)). He states that her title is “specious, of course” because “they have quietly and efficiently been linking researchers and others with desired information for about twenty years.” He does not address the main concerns of the posts, which is how library search tools have fallen behind, and that the search capabilities that people have grown to expect are lacking in many of the major ILS OPACs.

It would be interesting to see an article that addressed each of her points in detail, explaining how the results she retrieved from various libraries in Part 1 are both valid and desired. What we get is his calling the TechSource editor “spineless” for allowing “such rubbish to be published”.

Near the end of the essay he also takes on Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Chief Strategist and Vice President of Research. Again, he doesn’t quote, doesn’t give specifics, and doesn’t keep it on an opinion level:

“Have you ever tried reading one of his articles? They are some of the most incoherent and desultory articles in the history of information.”

“…of course, has a blog. He lives for new technology. It seems as if he thinks that any new library or information technology is automatically better than the technology that predates it and it must be implemented immediately, especially if OCLC has a hand in it.”

I use these two examples because I have been reading Karen and Lorcan’s blogs for some time. I saw Lorcan Dempsey present at the Ohio State University Library 2.0 Seminar last year. I can vouch that they have substance behind what they write, and that they are well worth reading. His blanket portrayal of OCLC as existing only to “separate libraries from their money” reminds me of a library director I met who once referred to the OCLC logo as a “swastika”.

And so, about this essay? Read it and recognize that there are some very valid criticisms contained within. Some of these are criticisms that I have expressed over the years. However, beware the hyperbole and the personal nature of his criticism, for they strongly overshadow that which is worth stating.

found via ResourceShelf

In the 15 July 2006 issue of Library Journal, Jeffrey Beall writes a passioned defense of metadata against the forces of keyword searching. Much of what he says is valid, and I agree that metadata is necessary for effective storage and retrieval in the electronic age.

However, near the end of his essay he states:

There is also the problem of synonymy. For example, if a searcher needs information about plant science, but the best resources call it botany, then the searcher will likely be unsuccessful in his search. Our language is rich, and we often use many precise terms to represent a single concept. Full-text searching, however, is inherently imprecise in its execution.

This, to me, actually strikes me as one of the greatest challenges with the use of metadata: the need to know a controlled vocabulary. The average library user doesn’t necessarily know that botany, or cookery, or numismatics are the proper terms for subject searches, as opposed to more commonplace words.

Modern OPACs have plenty of “see” and “see also” examples, but this is only truly useful if the effort has been made to make the connections as complete as possible. I tend to use subjects only through the links available through results… results that I usually have reached by a keyword search. I like to tell patrons that, once you find a good result, track the subject headings to find other items, then check the shelves in each of the call number areas in which you found results.

The essay is well worth reading; we have a tendancy to forget the power of a controlled vocabulary and metadata, and it would be a shame to toss them aside in favor of the broad stroke of the keyword.

article discovered through Catalogablog