I recently procured the book Everything is Miscellaneous from my local public library. This is a book, I believe that every librarian and MLS student needs to read.
What Weinberger is promoting is “messiness” being a virtue in a digital environment. He believes that as tagging increases, a data set is created that is more and more useful every day – particularly with images.
However, he doesn’t believe in the end of MARC, as some have accused him of believing (those who haven’t actually read his book from cover to cover). He also stated in the Many2Many blog specifically that he would like to see tagging integrated with the MARC records, creating a richer OPAC experience.
Roy Tennant, on the other hand, wrote in the Library Journal blog back in 2002 that “MARC must die.” He believes that MARC has outlived its usefulness. An example he gives is the inconsistency in encoding an editor in the 700 field. He states that “clinging” to MARC cataloging makes it difficult to serve patrons in a way they expect in the 21st Century. He has backpeddaled from this stand, but still feels that MARC and our cataloging system needs reworking.
There are certainly problems with tagging. Misspellings is one oft repeated example. I recall creating web pages for a grief recovery web site back in 2001, and having to put “greif” in the metatags to ensure that if a seeker misspells the word, he can still find the help he needs. Nowadays if you enter “greif” in a search engine, you will be asked “do you mean ‘grief’?” Perhaps that technology could be integrated into tagging mechanisms.
Nichole Engard quoted John Blyberg in a synopsis of a moderated discussion on Weinberger and Cataloging:
“Library 2.0 is not the dismissal of authority. It’s the retooling of authority and coming at it in different ways.”
I think that is it in a nutshell.
The Futurelib Wiki has several interesting scenarios for how to replace the current MARC records. Their first scenario – expanding MARC to include new data – seems to make the most sense to me. It makes little sense to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let’s keep our current MARC records, and add the dimension of tagging in a searchable way. That is not a trivial problem, but a very solvable problem in this day of relational databases.
We need MARC, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings in particular, for the basis of the organization of information. However, we need patron supplied tagging to increase information finding.
I have had this library copy of Weinberger’s book for so long that it is time that I purchased my own. I have placed an order through Amazon to purchase a used copy (the best recycling there is – used books!).