Seeking the Subject - .searching in networked environments - )

ABSTRACT

As an exercise in pondering cataloging in the networked environment ("networked environment" meaning electronic information sources interconnected through the Internet), this article compares traditional cataloging and Web-based description of two topics--the concept of "green cards" and a recent nonfiction work. This involves, first, outlining intellectual access issues as they apply to reference services today ("intellectual access" meaning the formal or informal description of a work for purposes of its discovery by others). Following this is an outline of key cataloging issues, per Sanford Berman, and corresponding issues in Web-based intellectual access. Ways that catalogers and public service librarians can address these issues conclude the article.

THE REFERENCE SCENE

Several key issues in intellectual access apply to reference services today. Perhaps the most crucial is an increasing demand for what this author calls "naive" access--i.e., access to specialized subject knowledge by nonspecialists in that subject. Two major trends contribute to this demand. The first is the sheer volume of scholarly, professional, and popular publication. The second is a general intellectual trend toward interdisciplinarity (for one perspective on the implications of interdisciplinarity, see Messer-Davidow, Shumway, & Sylvan, 1993).

As a result, librarians must be fluent in many subject vocabularies. Consider, for example, a historian seeking technical information about medical effects of lead use in ancient material culture. What vocabularies apply (historical, medical, chemical, sociological, or material)? The librarian must be able to communicate across these disciplinary vocabularies. This is a crucial skill for reference librarians today.

A third key issue is that increasing sophistication of hypermedia creates higher expectations by information seekers. In concrete terms, if home-Internet and twenty-four hour news channels (not to mention cars, phones, and the occasional coffee maker) appear to respond so readily to our everyday information needs, why is it so hard to pursue a question at the library?

This sophistication is also redefining what constitutes a scholarly work. Contemporary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, for example, more often looks to the medium of messages--i.e., the way ideas are conveyed as much as the ideas themselves (see this line of thinking applied to hypertext navigation in Aarseth, 1997, chap. 8). The rise of media studies and the methodology of deconstruction are but two examples of this.

Further, the products of such scholarship are increasingly likely to be expressed in multiple media. In the humanities, a good example of this is the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu), a hypermedia work thoughtfully integrating history, geography, literature, cultural studies, material culture, and mythology. In the "hard" sciences, as computing becomes increasingly integrated into methodology, the results of research increasingly integrate computing. Think of the Human Genome Project (http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/HGP), the international gene-mapping collaboration.

Finally, fast-paced changes in information technology are having obvious effects upon reference services. The task of integrating reference resources in diverse formats is one. The breakdown of distinctions between reference services and computing/information services is another. Ways to address these issues are discussed in the concluding section.

THE CATALOGING SCENE

To outline some key issues in subject cataloging, this discussion will now turn to the indefatigable Sanford Berman (1993) and summarize his long-standing critique of traditional cataloging--i.e., deficiencies in traditional (AACRII) cataloging conceals works. These deficiencies are illustrated by a search in a traditional catalog (the Library of Congress catalog is used here) for information about "green cards" (representing "resident alien" immigration status in the United States). These deficiencies include:

* Anachronistic subject headings (A previous heading in LCSH was Alien registration receipt cards (United States)

* Table-of-contents absent

* Lack of added titles

* Lack of notes

* Poor cross-referencing (for comparison, see the Hennepin County Library's treatment of the topic, in particular the scope notes visible in the catalog).

Compare this to indexing of this topic with the Yahoo! Internet search engine (http://www.yahoo.com) (for purposes of argument, the dominant advertisements for immigration lawyers have been ignored). The result includes the site illustrated in Figure 1, which leads to an authoritative site about U.S. immigration (http://travel.state.gov/visa_services.html) (see Figure 2).

[Figures 1-2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Compared to traditional cataloging, what do we observe about the two pages in Figures 1 and 2?

* Traditional cataloging data are absent, nonstandardized, or nonapplicable. There is no reliable information about authorship, title, date, and place of publication.