The End of LCSH? Provocative Report
Stirs Up Cataloging Discussion
Should the Library of Congress jettison Library of
Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the longstanding professional taxonomy? That's
one of the provocative suggestions in a new report announced Tuesday by the
Library of Congress (LC). But "The
Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery
Tools," commissioned by LC and written by Associate University Librarian Karen Calhoun of Cornell University, was already making waves
weeks earlier, thanks to a critical
review of a draft of her paper, written for AFSCME 2910, the Library of
Congress Professional Guild, by Thomas Mann (author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research). The
summary in LC's press release doesn't mention LCSH, but states that libraries
should reduce the costs of producing catalogs; enrich the catalog with
Amazon-like features like reviews and images; and offer rush delivery of
materials and other services. Mann criticized the premises behind the report,
warning of "serious negative consequences for the capacity of research libraries
to promote scholarly research."
Calhoun, who oversees the acquisition and cataloging of
books, online library resources and special-format materials for Cornell's 20
libraries, has an MBA and a career history with OCLC, but she says the
interviews with 23 experts—from libraries, vendors, and LIS schools—had the most
significant influence on the report. "Libraries are going to move at many
different speeds," she said, noting that the members of the Association of
Research Libraries for which the report is intended could participate in three
potential strategies. The first, "Extend," would involve improved interfaces and
simplification of cataloging for libraries maintaining a local catalog for a
locally-housed and -circulated collection. For the second, "Expand," shared
regional catalogs could serve more users. For the most ambitious strategy,
"Leadership," she said, "There is no fully realized version anywhere. I think
the Google Five [Stanford, Univ. of
Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, and New York Public
Library] have some elements of what it's going to take." An aggregated supply of
library resources on search engines like Google could then support speedy
delivery of materials in multiple formats, include digital and print-on-demand.
Mann argues that the solutions proffered hamper
scholarship, since scholars seek an overview of all relevant sources and wish to
become aware of cross-disciplinary connections to their work. LC Associate
Librarian Deanna Marcum said, "Tom [Mann] quite rightly points to the
superiority of doing searches the library way. He knows that people would get
better information, more targeted information, if they used all the tools we
made available." However, she said, "Instead of trying to force the users into
our systems, are there ways we can take our vast resources to where the users
are?" Calhoun said that it's not simply that students choose Google first, and
scholars don't. The latter pursue different strategies depending on their
discipline and their generation. "If we don't put [library materials] where the
scholars' and students' eyes are, many of them are going to bypass the
collection," she added. "If people know how to use catalogs, they get terrific
results. Most people do not know how to use catalogs; they're too
complicated."
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