Scanning, Worldcat.org, Google Scholar, cataloging in general...
(Didn't get around to writing this last Thursday)
Thurs. Nov. 14
Today I finished scanning the bound volume and made sure everything was in the folder that was supposed to be there. Brad said he would upload them to the server tomorrow, so that next week I can put the links in the records.
Talked to Brad for a bit about various things.
Did some research with WorldCat.org and sheet music. Didn't really get very far. It was tricky. It's hard to find out who even has their sheet music holdings in WorldCat (and if so, which parts of which collections). In WorldCat.org, you can limit your results to musical score and then look for 'Internet Resource' which indicates that there's a link (probably to a scanned version of the item). But, I was getting different results if I limited to musical score and then looked for internet resource, or if I just looked for internet resource before limiting, or if I limited to internet resource. I'm not sure in what order it looks for those aspects of the record. Also, the link doesn't always click through to the actual record for the item in the holding institution's catalog - sometimes it just takes you to the main page of the catalog. Also, when looking for internet resource records, you can't tell which institution has the internet resource if there are multiple holdings (you have to look at each one). I know that OCLC is working on refining WorldCat.org - it will be interesting to see what happens in terms of being able to refine/limit results by format because it doesn't seem to be particularly useful right now for these types of materials. Overall, it probably has a lot of potential, but I think something like the Sheet Music Consortium has the best potential for mass, large-scale resource discovery of sheet music. The problem is that most institutions don't have the know-how or the staff to be able to get their sheet music records (if they're even to the point of being cataloged) in harvestable form. Brad and I talked about how complicated sheet music cataloging rules are (all cataloging, really) and how difficult it is for institutions to spend the staff time to do all this cataloging. Most just can't do it. Each institution is left to its own devices as to how much it can get done and to what degree. I wish that some simpler standards could be viewed as sufficient and "standard" for sheet music cataloging. Dublin Core isn't as robust as MARC, of course, but it has potential. I'm torn - I believe that if sheet music is going to get cataloged it should be done as thoroughly as possible so that the records are as helpful as possible, but if it's between getting some type of minimal record in and nothing at all, I think the preference is obvious. I really truly believe that cataloging, as it stands now, is far too complicated.
I also, just for the heck of it, decided to look up a few music topics in Google Scholar and see what types of things it spit back (nothing to do with sheet music) - lots of things from JSTOR, some from Academic Search Premier, Caliber, Cambridge journals, MUSE, and Highwire/Oxford. It would take a lot of in-depth research to really discover how useful Google Scholar could be for different areas of the music field. I wonder if anyone else is doing this type of research? I've seen similar studies in other fields, but not for music. Google isn't very forthcoming about what sources it draws from for its results in Google Scholar, so one must figure it out for oneself.
Hours today (Thurs. Nov. 16): 3 (4:20-7:20pm)
Hours this week: 6
Total hours completed: 121
Thurs. Nov. 14
Today I finished scanning the bound volume and made sure everything was in the folder that was supposed to be there. Brad said he would upload them to the server tomorrow, so that next week I can put the links in the records.
Talked to Brad for a bit about various things.
Did some research with WorldCat.org and sheet music. Didn't really get very far. It was tricky. It's hard to find out who even has their sheet music holdings in WorldCat (and if so, which parts of which collections). In WorldCat.org, you can limit your results to musical score and then look for 'Internet Resource' which indicates that there's a link (probably to a scanned version of the item). But, I was getting different results if I limited to musical score and then looked for internet resource, or if I just looked for internet resource before limiting, or if I limited to internet resource. I'm not sure in what order it looks for those aspects of the record. Also, the link doesn't always click through to the actual record for the item in the holding institution's catalog - sometimes it just takes you to the main page of the catalog. Also, when looking for internet resource records, you can't tell which institution has the internet resource if there are multiple holdings (you have to look at each one). I know that OCLC is working on refining WorldCat.org - it will be interesting to see what happens in terms of being able to refine/limit results by format because it doesn't seem to be particularly useful right now for these types of materials. Overall, it probably has a lot of potential, but I think something like the Sheet Music Consortium has the best potential for mass, large-scale resource discovery of sheet music. The problem is that most institutions don't have the know-how or the staff to be able to get their sheet music records (if they're even to the point of being cataloged) in harvestable form. Brad and I talked about how complicated sheet music cataloging rules are (all cataloging, really) and how difficult it is for institutions to spend the staff time to do all this cataloging. Most just can't do it. Each institution is left to its own devices as to how much it can get done and to what degree. I wish that some simpler standards could be viewed as sufficient and "standard" for sheet music cataloging. Dublin Core isn't as robust as MARC, of course, but it has potential. I'm torn - I believe that if sheet music is going to get cataloged it should be done as thoroughly as possible so that the records are as helpful as possible, but if it's between getting some type of minimal record in and nothing at all, I think the preference is obvious. I really truly believe that cataloging, as it stands now, is far too complicated.
I also, just for the heck of it, decided to look up a few music topics in Google Scholar and see what types of things it spit back (nothing to do with sheet music) - lots of things from JSTOR, some from Academic Search Premier, Caliber, Cambridge journals, MUSE, and Highwire/Oxford. It would take a lot of in-depth research to really discover how useful Google Scholar could be for different areas of the music field. I wonder if anyone else is doing this type of research? I've seen similar studies in other fields, but not for music. Google isn't very forthcoming about what sources it draws from for its results in Google Scholar, so one must figure it out for oneself.
Hours today (Thurs. Nov. 16): 3 (4:20-7:20pm)
Hours this week: 6
Total hours completed: 121
posted by Amy | 4:55 PM
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