The Rogue Scholar

Utilizing LC's Controlled Vocabularies

I found this e-mail from Margaret Mauer's TS-LIBRARIANS listserv in my mailbox recently:

I have been experimenting with the newly opened ID.LOC.GOV web service this evening as I am thinking about pointing it out to folks via TechKNOW. It’s pretty cool. LCSH is the first controlled vocabulary that LC is opening up. The goal of the service is to “enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress but the web interface also provides simple user access…” at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/search/.  Type in a term like “retrievers” select the term “retrievers” and then go to the visual interface tab. It provides you with a data map of how the term “retrievers” connects to other terms in the controlled vocabulary. The search mechanism is sort of rudimentary, but the concept is terrifically interesting. Here’s the link to the about page for the new service:  http://id.loc.gov/authorities/about.html.

 I’ve been saying for a long time that we under-utilize our controlled vocabularies. Perhaps this will start to change this.

I've taken a look at the service she describes and it is indeed pretty cool. The "details" tab of the results page for any given query offers a metric ton of raw data: the URI and heading type, as well as a variety of live links to related, broader and narrower search terms. Besides that it also gives you any and every source it located the query string in, and lists those for you. Finally, you get the date the item was created and last modified and the LC classification data. Most of the data is available in multiple formats (generally including RDF/XML, N-Triples and so on). The "visualize" tab for the results gives the 2-dimensional relational  map for the term. 

Enjoy!

Sexual Abstinence and MeSH

There does not appear to be a MeSH heading for "Abstinence Education."  I'm not sure how I feel about this, seeing as how I seriously disagree with the need to catalog anything with that subject heading. But on the other hand, I do have to catalog something like that, so I'm conflicted.

This is a GAO booklet, with the main entry of 245 0 0 $a Abstinence education: $b efforts to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of federally funded programs.  It's a government sanctioned document--and it's public knowledge that this administration is all for abstinence education in public schools--so why not add a MeSH term for it?  Hmmm.  Maybe the NLM didn't get the memo.

At any rate, the search term "abstinence" gave me things like "Natural Family Planning Methods-->Periodic Abstinence" and "Sexual Abstinence-->Postpartum Abstinence", but that's about it.  Not a lot to work with there.  At the other end of the spectrum, the search term "sex" produced about a million responses, roughly half of which are biomedical terms for genes and proteins.  So I guess I'm combining "Natural Family Planning Methods" with "Sex Education" and hoping for the best.  The things we catalogers go through for the geeral public . . . my stars.

Cataloging 9/11

It's been a busy week (last week, I mean). Article Linker works for the databases we've linked to it (so far, Ebsco, Ovid, Gale), and we're jumping through all kinds of hoops working on linking it to PubMed. You have a choice--use a script to build a prepopulated ILL form on your server and access it as an Outside Tool, or use LinkOut--which would work (if we went that route), but would require us jumping through a rather different set of hoops. In either case, it's time-consuming, and energy sapping. And we're putting the next edition of the Grey Lit Report together next week, so we've a stack of pamphlets that nee to be cataloged as quickly as we can arrange--and when you're busy catalogging, there's a lot of energy that you don't have to spend on other projects. Such as linking Article Linker to PubMed.

A cataloging note from this morning caught my attention: not only did NLM need four years (years!) to add "September 11 Terrorist Attacks" as a MeSH entry term, but "Adverse Effects" is not included among the qualifiers they list for use. You can choose "Classification", "Economics", "Ethnology", "Ethics", "History", "Legislation & Jurisprudence", "Prevention & Control", "Psychology", "Statistics & Numerical Data" or "Trends", but there's no qualifier that deals specifically with the health problems that the attack generated. And I'll tell you right now, we've cataloged several hundred items on that subject alone in the past four years. It makes no sense to me that "Adverse Effects" doesn't fall under the same rubric as "Psychology" or any of the other choices. Was it an oversight? Did they  consider it and deliberately discard it? If so, then why?

Cataloging Katrina 1 Year Later

As you know if you've been listening to the radio or watching the tube or glancing at the newspapers this morning, it's been one year (as of yesterday) since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed life, limb, and property on the Gulf Coast. Mayne people are doing many things to remember this tragedy--I for one, can think of no better way to remember it than to take a look at what the government has learned from it (or not), and then catalog it.

So here we go (the full MARC record is behind the edit.)

What did the government learn? That they need a better system of evacuating nursing homes and planning for such emergencies in the future. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. You'll notice that I avoided a 505 field on this one--the tables of contents was there but was so brief I didn't see the point. You'll also notice I limited myself to only two 650 fields here, mostly because there wasn't much to add in the way of MeSH tracings.

I could say more on this but I think the point has been made. BTW, if anyone wants me to link to similar (hopefully better) resources on the subject, send them along.

Russ Feingold in MARC

This might not be perfect, since it's been some time since I did any original cataloging for web pages, but here it is (apologies in advance for the MESH).  Suggestions are welcome. One hopes you click on the link below to read the actual statement, too.

100 1     Feingold, Russell D.
245 10  $a I strongly oppose Patriot Act deal : $b statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold as prepared for delivery from the Senate floor, February 15, 2006 : [$h electronic file]/ $c  Russ Feingold.
260 00 $a [Encinitas , CA]: $b Truthout.org, $c [2006]
300        $a World Wide Web Page [1].
500        $a Wednesday, February 15, 2006.

530        $a Available via the World Wide Web.
538        $a System requirements: Internet Explorer or other web browser.
650 12  $a Federal Government $z United States.
650 12  $a Terrorism $x prevention & control $z United States.
650 12  $a Terrorism $x legislation & jurisprudence $z United States.
856 41  $u http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021506R.shtml

Cataloging Manga & Anime

The December 2005 issue of TechKNOW (care of Kent State U.'s TSLibrarians listserv)  is out. (It's actually been out for a while, but the hyperlink I had only started working a short while ago--it's fixed.)  This quarter Jeanne Poole covers cataloging cleverly selected bits and pieces of the wacky (and not entirely consistent) world of Japanese anime and manga. We get a brief history of the art form and a bunch of well-formed MARC records to boot.  Good stuff, folks.

(Why can't I write articles like this?  I own manga and anime; I'm friends with the Editor in Chief of Media Blasters, for corn's sake.  Grrr...)