evidence…
A brief but pertinent post from Lorcan Dempsey today on the use of evidence - or rather, the non-use of evidence - to back up discussions on bibliographic data and catalogues.
I’ve got evidence on the brain at the moment. This area of librarianship is not alone in the fact that its discourse sometimes lacks grounding in evidence. But the future of the catalogue is certainly a dominant topic of conversation at the moment - a conversation that could only benefit from the existence of and reference to a solid evidence base.
[Aside: While I'm talking about the future of the catalogue... I'll be very interested to see the papers from the Australian Committee on Cataloguing seminar that's on this Friday in Brisbane. Aptly titled Promise for the future, or legacy of the past? : cataloguing in a changing world the program includes papers on a range of topics from educating future cataloguers to tagging to RDA. Should be some good food for thought there.]
