Day 91: Post-St Patrick's Day Fallout

I am living on very much the wrong street for St Patrick's Day. After the parade yesterday, which left my right shoulder matching our school crest (white and RED; ouch!), my street didn't clear out until well into the evening. Absolutely marvellous weather though, and for now, only getting better (till the weekend anyways).

Lesson 90: The portions at McKibbons are absolutely extravagant. At Trivia tonight, I ordered the fisherman's chowder for the first time ever, but luckily had the foresight to ask what the size difference between "cup" and "bowl" was. The waitress told me that the cup was a regular sized bowl of soup, and the bowl was gigantic. The cup of soup that was brought to me was probably the equivalent of a full can of Campbell's Chunky soup!

Glad I didn't order that bowl!

On a more serious note, turns out my professor didn't appreciate my midterm example of reliability vs validity as much as I'd hoped, though I don't really understand why. But I still came out with a perfectly respectable mark.

Also, things seem to be just falling into my lap as far as next year is concerned. I may have lucked into a fantastic little apartment my friend won't be taking (the reason she won't be taking it? She just got engaged! Congrats, Laura! He's a lucky guy!). The apartment's not quite in the location I wanted, but next to a metro, so I can't complain. Might be nicer to stay out of the McGill bubble anyways; cheaper too.

I couldn't figure out a way to phrase this as a lesson beyond simply saying "course selection is haaaaard", but I'm also doing my course selection for next year. There are so many interesting courses that I'd like to take, and not enough time to do them in!

It looks like my biggest choice still to be made is Descriptive Bibliography (aka How to run a Rare Books collection) versus Cataloguing and Classification (Organization of Information, part two). My considerations are as follows:

• Descriptive Bibliography has the potential to be rather redundant given that I'm hoping to take History of Books and Printing, and Archival Principles and Practice as well.
• As much as I enjoy cataloguing, I don't know if I want to take another course about it that isn't going to focus on RDA, which as you may remember is meant to replace the current cataloguing rules right after my graduation (if they remain on track, big if).

Another course I'm not fully sold on is Database Design. Its focus is on Microsoft Access, and the course description states that it will also cover SQL which is what particularly interests me. However, I have been told that in practice, its coverage of SQL specifically is practically non-existent. And if I skip Database Design, I could take Language and Information instead, which is essentially about working in bilingual/multilingual systems which I imagine would be particularly handy if I want to stay in Montreal after graduation (which I would like to).

And of course, Knowledge Management comes hugely recommended, but I don't know that it's actually a course I'd like to take or that I would find particularly useful. Plus, I don't know what I'd be willing to give up in order to take it.

Other courses I'm hoping to take that I haven't yet mentioned:

• Metadata and Access
• Web System Design
• Library and Archival History
• Public Libraries

Choices, choices...

Day 32: Everything is Obsolete

In cataloguing, we use a set of rules called the AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd Update [with 2005 revisions]) to create and structure all our data in a standardized way so it makes sense, is consistent and is therefore easier to use.

However, these rules are largely a throwback to cataloguing for card catalogues, old technology with distinct limitations; space and size being the most obvious ones. So there are a lot of rules that we use that don't make much sense when you're cataloguing on a computer. For instance, if a book has more than three authors, you only list the first one. Even though, since we're using computers now, we could list every author a work has, even if it had 100 of them. Evidently, these rules could use some updating, and that's where the RDA (Resource Description and Access) comes in. A new set of rules for a new age, or some such business. Basically, the 130$ I just spent on the AACR2 will be going by the wayside in 2013 when the RDA comes into force. I'm not bitter, honest I'm not!

 Anyways, to the lesson! With such a major overhaul on the horizon, and one that we aren't really learning specifically right now, there are a lot of things I don't know about it. But I learned one thing today that I found particularly interesting.

Lesson 32: With the restructuring of cataloguing rules, works will have their own authority records.

We currently have authority records for people, so that if they use different names, or people spell their names wrong, it still directs to the one official, approved (authority) record for that individual. Doing that for works as well will allow us to find all the editions, translations, adaptations, etc. of one work in the same place. For instance, whereas now you'd have separate, and likely unconnected, entries for The Two Towers as a book by J.R.R.Tolkien and The Two Towers the film by Peter Jackson, despite the fact that they are the same narrative entity, with these new rules, you'd have a record for "The Two Towers" and it would link you to the book, the movie, the 50th anniversary edition, the french translation... everything! We'll see how it works out, but for now, I think that's pretty cool.

A good example of this concept in action is if you look at goodreads. There are flaws in the execution, which goodreads librarians like myself work to tidy up, but in general, all the editions of each work are combined into one listing. Which is particularly handy for the way you're meant to use goodreads, because it seems silly to say that I've read "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and have it suggest that since I liked that, maybe I'd like to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". Instead, the system knows that those are really just different sides of the same coin.

Though I'd like to know how they're dealing with boxed sets...

Bonus unnumbered lesson: What my program feels is a full course load (4 courses, or 12 credits, a semester), is only considered 80% of a full course load by OSAP. It doesn't really affect or ruin anything, it's just an oddity.