Journal of Internet Cataloging
In
the present fast-paced environment, continual innovation in library operations
and services is not optional. This
special issue of the Journal of Internet
Cataloging presents the thoughts and experiences of a group of innovators
seeking new ways for libraries to excel.
They are experimenting with CORC (the Cooperative Online Resource
Catalog), a groundbreaking initiative of several hundred libraries and the OCLC
Office of Research, which seeks no less than bringing order to digital chaos,
using the principles of librarianship.
Since
their early history, libraries have woven themselves into the fabric of
society. Today, the fabric of society
includes the astonishing, revolutionary threads of the Internet and World Wide
Web. The successful libraries and
librarians of the future will be those that step up to the challenge of taking
a leading role in the digital age and that relentlessly build upon past and present achievements. Often the pursuit of enduring excellence
requires sweeping away the wisdom of the past and starting anew, learning what
works through experimentation, trial and error, and opportunism.
CORC
offers librarians an unparalleled opportunity to innovate. It places in the hands of librarians
everywhere—at low levels of risk and cost—the transformative power of new
technology and standards. The fourteen
articles in this issue all tell stories of new ideas, discoveries, and insights
gained by being part of the CORC project.
They represent the perspectives not only of CORC founders, researchers,
developers, and observers, but also of library managers and practitioners who
are applying CORC to their daily operations.
The
first grouping of articles provides a “big picture” view of CORC. You have already glanced, we hope, at Jay Jordan’s preface to this issue,
which demonstrates the OCLC CEO’s high enthusiasm and commitment to the
project. In his article, Thomas Hickey, OCLC Chief Scientist and
CORC project director, provides a comprehensive treatment of the types of
collaboration that form the basis for CORC’s success so far, plans for more
tightly integrating CORC with OCLC’s WorldCat database, support for multiple metadata
standards (Dublin Core, MARC), the challenges ahead for CORC, and much
more. Charlene Hurt and Bill Potter’s paper offers two library directors’
perspectives on how CORC might reshape library services and collections for the
benefit of library users. John Riemer, in his piece on CORC and
the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), discusses the potential synergism
of these two international cooperatives and the challenges they might face if
their leaders and participants chose to more closely correlate their actions
and decisions.
The
second group of articles offers a research and development view of CORC.
Lois Mai Chan and her co-authors discuss the premise of Dublin Core
(simplicity, semantic interoperability, flexibility); the complexity of Library
of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and attempts at simplification; the
conclusions of the ALCTS/SAC Subcommittee on Metadata and Subject Analysis; and
research into faceted subject analysis in CORC using the FAST subject
schema. Carol Jean Godby and Ray Reighart describe the WordSmith research
project, whose goal is to obtain subject terminology directly from the text in
Web documents. Their article covers the
current implementation of WordSmith in CORC (i.e., the software and concepts
behind what happens when a CORC user issues a command to “generate possible
subject terms”) and provides the results of an evaluation of WordSmith by CORC
users. Diane Vizine-Goetz, a noted OCLC research scientist and renowned
expert on classification, explores the potential of the Dewey Decimal
Classification (DDC) system for helping CORC users assign classification
numbers and subject headings. Her
article offers insights into the use of the enhanced DDC database in CORC and
explains how to interpret and employ LCSH/DDC mappings in CORC records. Her commentary on Scorpion-assigned DDC
numbers (i.e., CORC’s semi-automatic classification tool) promises to be
particularly helpful to readers. Eric Childress, a key player in OCLC’s
development of CORC functions and features, discusses in detail the crosswalk
that makes it possible for CORC users to view any record in the database as a
MARC or Dublin Core record. Support for
multiple metadata standards in a single system is one of the most striking
characteristics of CORC.
The
third and fourth groupings of articles represent implementers’ views of
CORC. In the third grouping, librarians
report on implementations of CORC within cataloging and within cross-functional
teams. Jeffrey Edmunds and Roger Brisson, cataloging and digital
access specialists at Penn State, offer a “hands-on” glimpse of what it is like
to catalog Internet resources in CORC.
They comment on CORC’s automatically generated metadata, classification,
and subject terms; discuss the authority control features of CORC; and offer
suggestions for improvement of the system.
Norm Medeiros, Robert McDonald,
and Paul Wrynn analyze the appeal and value of CORC for library users,
based on their utilization of CORC at the library of the New York University
School of Medicine. They discuss how
they decided what to select, what selectors need to know about CORC, and the
experiences of using CORC and Dublin Core records as a basis for developing
subject-specific Web pages (i.e., pathfinders) for biomedical resources.
Readers who are interested in developing pathfinders as prominent research
tools for library patrons are likely to find their article of interest. Ann
Caldwell and her co-authors at Brown University discuss how representatives
from several functional groups used CORC to identify and select no-fee Web
resources, develop pathfinders, gain electronic resource cataloging experience,
and provide an opportunity for technical-public services staff
collaboration. They found the CORC
project promoted a new recognition of shared values among catalogers and
reference librarians at Brown. Karen Calhoun describes the “CORC at
Cornell” project, which was also undertaken by a cross-functional team. After describing the experimental workflow
that was developed and tested in the project, she employs systems analysis techniques
to model and discuss the potential of a widely distributed resource description
process.
The
fourth grouping of articles deals with using CORC and Dublin Core for special
categories of materials. Wayne Jones of MIT assesses the
adequacy of Dublin Core for describing
serials. Ann Hanlon and Ann Copeland of the University of Illinois discuss
using CORC’s implementation of Dublin Core to create resource descriptions for
the @art gallery, an online gallery
of the university’s school of art and design.
David Allen of SUNY
Stonybrook presents a set of insights and recommendations for the maps
cataloging community. He deals with
digital images of maps previously published on paper and offers interesting
examples of Dublin Core cataloging of varying complexity.
Through
their creative efforts today, this special issue’s authors are building the
future of libraries. We offer them our
respect and thanks. We also thank Ruth
Carter (JIC editor) and Haworth Press
for the opportunity to gather and disseminate an issue on CORC. A blend of the theoretical and practical,
the broad-based and specialized, the articles offer a variety of
viewpoints. We believe that there is
something here for any reader in the library and information science community
who has an interest in online systems for Internet resource discovery,
description and retrieval.
Karen
Calhoun and John J. Riemer
Cornell
University and the University of Georgia
March
2000