It's Raining Thesauri, Hallelujah!

(Today's title with apologies to The Weather Girls. Also, try not to think about thousands of copies of the LCSH falling from the sky.)

All of a sudden, I am dealing with not one, not two, but three major classification/indexing/thesaurus questions.

The first is a revival of a project that has been dead for almost a year, as the SOM is finally ready to start indexing their materials for the new curriculum. I'm putting the final polish on what I suppose you could consider a baby thesaurus based on the USMLE subcategories. The next step is getting enough stuff actually indexed to determine if it works or not.

The second is a project with the hospital to write a thesaurus to form the backend of their content management system for their website. I'm having quite the time wrapping my mind around this, but I am learning a LOT. This project absolutely feel out of the sky and into my lap, and I am so thankful. Oh, yes, Lord, let me read ANSI/NISO standards on thesaurus development. That's the KIND OF NERD I AM. I'm also enthused about this because I'm hoping to port it out to another project that needs a consumer health information thesaurus (shh!).

The third item is in the same vein although of a different type, as I am perplexed about the proposed changes to MEDLINE subheadings. On first blush, I would have to say I agree that 83 subheadings is too many. However, I am tending to agree with real reference librarians like Cindy Schmidt that the choices made for removal are not necessarily obvious or useful.

What I want to see, and what I have requested from NLM, is data supporting their proposal. I'm sure they've looked at the same questions I've been looking at: how much is enough? What kind of search is happening, and how can we best facilitate that? I'm hoping to get some good, solid answers to these questions, as I certainly hope the decision process was not, well, we need to get rid of some subheadings and these seem the most likely candidates. Some hard data will go a long way towards informing my decision.

So, it really is raining thesauri, and my nerdy, nerdy soul is all set to get soaking wet!

The Library of Babel

I'm awash in thoughts of indexing, and searching, and finding today. In a very-random-Vannevar-Bush-kind-of-way I came across a reference to The Library of Babel, and in a very Google-uber-alles-kind-of-way I followed the first link to the first reference to discover the tale.

I have a sneaking suspicion that in an alternate universe, I teach cataloging. I use this story to illustrate a number of my points about the organization of information. The students give me bad reviews because I don't talk enough about authority control.

"We also know of another superstition of that time: that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has gone through it and he is analogous to a god."

Learning a New Language

I've always had an interest in programming. When I was with the RML, I started learning PHP as part of my job duties and found it fascinating, but I didn't get very far as it required time and quiet--both practically nonexistant when working with the RML.

However, I'm thinking again about the benefits of knowing a language, probably because I really am tipping over into insanity. I personally would like to do some of my own mucking in our DSpace instance, although this will be mostly handled by our Internet Development department, so Java seems a good answer. XML and XSL are everywhere these days, so that seems to be a good possibility, too. PHP and MySQL seem so darn handy, and they pretty much run the web these days, so that's always a good option.

The key to learning a language is then regularly using it so you don't forget it. Which would I be most likely to use? Probably XML because it's an area of lack in our otherwise fantastic Internet Development department. I got a great suggestion for Visual Basic as well, and that seems like a great idea for a manager but maybe less useful for a repo rat.

Part of me also says, you know, this really isn't necessary and I could focus on more concrete things. Is this a "moneymaker"? Or a distraction from things I don't want to do?

My Pirate Name

Thanks to InfoCommuner for this bit of humor. Arr, call me Annie, matey.

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Vane

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

T Scott "Bridges the Gap"

T Scott has an thoughtful post about an upcoming talk he will be giving to the good people of Elsevier.

I applaud the effort, and as T Scott points out, I appreciate the efforts of Elsevier to recognize that librarians are one of their core market groups. It makes sense for them to play nice with us.

However, as I am REPEATEDLY told, I am young, and headstrong, and naive (gentle reader, you may or may not have caught these threads in my blogging, ha ha).

I believe, I think, I feel in my 31-year-old-anything-is-possible bones that the time of publishers as we know them is passing, just like I believe, I think, and I feel that the time of libraries as we know them is passing. Our fates are intertwined (like Gollum and the Ring, but that may not be a positive metaphor).

Information wants to be free. Institutional repositories, run by librarians, can help make this happen. NIH can make this happen. The whole Open Access movement can make this happen.

I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, primarily because many of the researchers and most of the librarians of today are Baby Boomers. They grew up and made their places in the world based on the old model. Today's smart PhD students want to get into PLoS or PLoM, and they want their articles in DSpace so they're findable in Google Scholar. Flexible librarians are making this possible.

At some point, the entire process will reach critical mass and the world as we know it will be gone.

Now, as we walk away from high journal prices, we also to some extent walk away from the peer review structure, the permanent record of research, and in many cases, the concept of "authority" as we know it. This is scary, and problematic, but the fact is that peer review is flawed in a variety of ways and authority can be conferred through other means.

To come back to T Scott: I wish him well. I'm sure he'll speak fairly and eloquently about the issues that face publishers and librarians alike. In my dream world, Scott speaks and the Elsevier folk look at each other and say, wow, we can do so much more together than we can apart. A new day dawns where we all work together to face the new reality, and we usher it in on golden wings instead of fighting it--and each other--all the way.

Reading the Headlines: Insights from 20 Minutes of Blog Skimming

I've streamlined my daily activities to some extent and now only actually READ a few blogs each day (a few being less than 10, depending on who has posted). That means when I have a slow time on the desk or a half hour set aside for "professional reading," I'm essentially skimming a couple hundred headlines and summaries, primarily from library science and technology blogs.

Today, this is what I see (I'm not saying any of this is deep or new, just that it literally JUMPS off of the screen at you after a bit):

• The digitally-induced identity crisis for libraries and librarians is deepening. Best quote (lost the source, sorry): "The librarian's new role is to help people build their own libraries." I absolutely love this idea.
• I perceive a growing divide between the blogging librarians and what I consider "the rest of the profession." Among bloggers, knowing a programming or scripting language is like music catalogers knowing at least one foreign language, but to expect or even suggest that this should be a standard for librarianship is a pretty big leap. How's your Italian? How's your PHP coding? Can you do the funny voices for storytime? Can you do all three? No? What kind of librarian are you???
• Rules are always an issue. Schools won't let kids access MySpace accounts. DRM makes videos useless. Censorship continues. Check-out times are too short. The need to focus on the service and forget about unnecessary restrictions popped out again and again.
  

So, that's the zeitgeist according to Whitney. Distilled down even further, it's obvious that these aren't new ideas at all:

• First item above: save the time of the reader.
• Second item above: respect diversity.
• Third item above: service with a smile.