[MUSIC PLAYING] FRED RASCOE: Cataloging involves a lot of acronyms, a lot of initializations. How many do you think you could name in say, ten seconds? DENISE SOUFI: IFLA, LRM, WEMI, FRBR. ANN KARDOS: ISBD DENISE SOUFI: NACO and SACO. ANN KARDOS: AACR2. DENISE SOUFI: RDA. ANN KARDOS: LCRI. DENISE SOUFI: PCC. ANN KARDOS: CONSER. DENISE SOUFI: BIBCO. ANN KARDOS: MARC. FRED RASCOE: Wow, is that it? Is that all of them? MARLEE GIVENS: No, it's not all of them. [LAUGHS] [MUSIC PLAYING] FRED RASCOE: You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Fred Rascoe. I'm in the studio with Marlee. Just us today, Marlee. MARLEE GIVENS: It's just us. FRED RASCOE: Until we get to the interview recording. MARLEE GIVENS: No. Oh, well, yes. Technically, yes. FRED RASCOE: Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. MARLEE GIVENS: And today's show is called Open Rules for Cataloging. And keeping with the theme established by our opening clip, this is also known as ORC. FRED RASCOE: ORC, O-R-C, like orcs of Middle Earth, as in-- let me read this correctly-- "and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of orcs in envy and mockery of the elves of whom they were, afterwards, the bitterest foes." Andy Serkis, eat your heart out. MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm glad to say that this ORC is a force for good, not evil. The Open Rules for Cataloging project seeks to solve three problems with the latest iteration of cataloging rules. They're expensive, they're complicated, and they're closed. FRED RASCOE: That's a triumvirate of bad, ugh. It's too bad they couldn't call themselves something that could be shortened, like, ELF. MARLEE GIVENS: ELF, yeah, E-L-F. So E for easy, F for free, L for-- FRED RASCOE: For what? MARLEE GIVENS: Well, never mind. We could spend all day on this, yeah. FRED RASCOE: OK, OK. Our songs today are about forging new paths, breaking rules, and looking for an ORC-- hunt some ORC. I'm looking forward to that set especially. But to set the tone, our first song is about mastering your profession and holding expert knowledge. Because that's what catalogers are, right? Experts. MARLEE GIVENS: Absolutely. FRED RASCOE: And that's what this song is, Expert by PragVEC, right here on Lost in the Stacks. [PRAGVEC, "EXPERT"] MARLEE GIVENS: You just heard Expert by PragVEC. And this is Lost in the Stacks. Today, we have invited three guests to discuss the ORC, or Open Rules for Cataloging, project. We'll start by letting everyone introduce themselves. ANN KARDOS: I am Ann Kardos. I am a metadata librarian at University of Massachusetts Amherst. DENISE SOUFI: Hi, I'm Denise Soufi, I'm the metadata librarian for Middle Eastern languages at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. SONYA SLUTSKAYA: Well, I'm Sonya Slutskaya, and I'm a catalog librarian at the Emory University Library. MARLEE GIVENS: So Sonya is here as an expert and is the one who brought us the information about this project, which is the-- I want to make sure that I get this right. It is called the Open Rules for Cataloging. DENISE SOUFI: That's correct. So this project was initiated by Amber Billey, who is the Systems and Metadata Librarian at Bard College, and that was back in 2019. I joined at that time, when she put out a call for catalogers to join this project. And she had three objectives, and these continue to be our objectives with the project. One is to reduce financial barriers to accessing cataloging resources, especially for public and smaller institutions. In the past, standards were issued as an integrating resource, which is something like a monograph, but with periodic updates. But now they're online, on a subscription basis. A second objective was to create guidelines and models that are straightforward, comprehensible, and inclusive to all types of library communities, and which are compatible with shared cataloging environments to allow for broad usage. So our current cataloging standard, Resource Description Access, can be complicated and difficult to use. And her third objective was to encourage greater participation and professional cooperation outside of legacy power structures. FRED RASCOE: The Open Rules of Cataloging does not come as a cost to the user, whereas the older rules, you actually have to subscribe, pay a subscription cost, right? And I say "older." I guess what I mean is older, in the sense of developed, but RDA is actually currently very widely used, right? ANN KARDOS: Yeah. RDA would be our traditional standard, Yeah. You can also call us ORC, which is what we affectionately go by-- [laughs] O-R-C, ORC, if it's easier than Open Rules for Cataloging. FRED RASCOE: Brings Dungeons and Dragons to Mind so yeah, I'm going to use that. ANN KARDOS: That may have been the intent. [LAUGHS] MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, and actually RDA is not even that old. But one of the complaints that even I am aware of, not being a cataloger myself, is how complicated it seems to use, although I don't think that its intention is to be complicated. I think its intention is to be comprehensive. But why don't you tell me what your experience of RDA is, in practice? DENISE SOUFI: I might not be the best person to ask. When RDA came out, I was actually a manuscript cataloger. And so I did not use the previous rules, which were AACR2. I use specialized rules for cataloging manuscripts, which were based on AACR2. But manuscript cataloging is a bit of a different beast from cataloging modern materials. So when RDA came out, one of the things that I did was to kind of reconcile my manuscript cataloging practices, which were based on the book called AMRAM. That's an acronym for-- I don't remember what it's for. It's a very long title. And so I did some kind of reconciliation with RDA. And at the time, I didn't really see a huge amount of difference. And it wasn't until later, when I got the job that I have now and I was cataloging modern monographs, and serials, and that sort of thing, that I realized how difficult it was to navigate the online guide that we have. The way that it's organized can be frustrating. It's not organized in a way that goes with the flow of cataloging. It's organized on a theoretical basis of works, expressions, manifestations, and items. And you kind of have to know what those things mean, where they fall within the mark record that we're still working with. And so you kind of get a feel for some of them, but then there are others that are a little more difficult to parse out. Where do I go to find these things? You would think that, with it being online, it would be easy to kind of just do a keyword search, but it's not. And this past year, I've been training a new cataloger. And I had her go through RDA, reading certain sections, applying them to catalog records. And she did that. But months later, she has said to me, I don't look in RDA. It's just too hard to use. And I just rely on what I've learned from you because it's too hard. ANN KARDOS: So my experience has been very similar to Denise's of late, where my colleagues say, well, I can't use this, or, I don't understand this, or, you shared this documentation with me, but I don't know what it means because I don't-- very few of my colleagues know what the difference is between a work, expression, manifestation, and item. They don't even understand that model. And half the time, I struggle with that model and how to explain that to them. So we get stuck in this cycle, where just like Denise said, people tell me that they're cataloging something or they're doing name authority work based on what I told them before and hoping that it's still correct and then hoping, if it's wrong, that I just know how to correct it myself for them, yeah. FRED RASCOE: Sonya, I kind of want to hear from you, as a cataloger. What's your experience with actually using RDA? SONYA SLUTSKAYA: I have to be totally open with you. We avoid using RDA as much as we can. So I am one of those bad catalogers that just says, oh, don't worry about RDA. Just do what I say, and that will be OK. But I often say the same thing Ann does, that, basically, RDA is fine if you have a philosophy degree. But in a practical sense, I don't know if it could actually be ever used for cataloging. MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more about ORC-- not orcs-- after a music set. FRED RASCOE: File this set under PR6039.033S5 [QUINTRON, "DUNGEON MASTER"] Dungeon Master. [LEONARD NIMOY, "THE BALLAD OF BILBO BAGGINS"] Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins, he's only three feet tall. Wow, what a set. MARLEE GIVENS: Uh huh. FRED RASCOE: OK, so that was "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" by Leonard Nimoy. And we started off with "Dungeon Master" by Quintron. Those are songs about worlds where you might encounter something called an orc. [MUSIC PLAYING] MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show was called Open Rules for Cataloging, or ORC. One thing we have learned in other shows about cataloging is that catalogers often defy stereotypes. FRED RASCOE: I have, in my mind, the stereotype of the cataloger being very meticulous, attention to detail. And it sounds like y'all are just kind of shooting from the hip, a little bit of a cowboy attitude there, just, like, whatever goes goes. ANN KARDOS: I mean, not quite, but I always say to people that I am a natural born rule-breaker. I hate rules. I despise rules. I really do. If I open something and it has instructions, I throw them away. I don't like rules. SONYA SLUTSKAYA: Says the woman who is on the Committee for the Open Cataloging Rules [INAUDIBLE]. ANN KARDOS: I know, but I think it's also, like, you have to understand the rules in order to break the rules and to be so cavalier about them. And right now, we have a situation where many of our colleagues can't even learn the rules to understand them so that they can then understand how to break them, as needed. If the rule structure breaks down, you're not even breaking rules anymore. It's just chaos. MARLEE GIVENS: We've just been talking about what's wrong with the old rules, and you're proposing to write new rules. So what has been your experience-- and let's start with Denise-- of taking this project on and actually writing new rules? DENISE SOUFI: Sure. So I would first like to say that I am not currently doing rural-writing. However, I will say that I was part of the group that kind of determined our workflow for writing our rules. So what happened was the project was on hiatus during 2020, after the pandemic started. And kind of at the end of 2020, I contacted the people who were initially involved in the project and said, hey, what's going on? Should we get things started up again? So in January, 2021, we did. And a few people who had been on initially joined back, and we got some new members. And one of the first things we had to do was decide, how are we going to write these rules? What resources are we going to use? One of the first decisions that we made was to use resources that were out of copyright. And we would compile kind of rules from these out-of-copyright resources to take a look at how have the rules changed over time. So as I said, I haven't been involved with actually writing rules, but it was a very interesting process to look at these resources and kind of either copy and paste or type up the rules that we found in these resources and, seeing how things have changed over time, what might still be applicable, what is different with the way that we do things now. So for me, that was an interesting kind of historical background. FRED RASCOE: We have, obviously, a lot of listeners that come from the library world, but we have a general audience as well. They may not necessarily be in libraries, but definitely use a library. And so the concept of cataloging to give a book some metadata to make it discoverable is understood. So in the system that's currently widely used, the RDA-- Resource Description and Access-- MARLEE GIVENS: Resource, Description, and Access, yeah. FRED RASCOE: Yeah, thank you, the RDA format. What's an example of a rule that is currently used in that that is different in your ORC rules? Is there an easy example? ANN KARDOS: So one of the rules that-- the rule that we have published right now is series. So that is the only rule that we have published for ORC. And I remember we actually had this very long conversation about language and deprioritizing English as a language, with our rules. And so I don't remember exactly what RDA says right now, but we're talking about things that might have multiple parallel titles. So a book has a title in, let's say, Portuguese, German, and English, and Russian. Normally, what we do would to be put the first title-- so the Portuguese title, if that was listed first on the book-- and then list the English parallel title after it. And so one of the discussions we had was saying, let's just deprioritize English and just list all titles in all languages, in whatever order they appear or however your own, like, local library feels it is best used-- like, to keep Portuguese, the first title, but for those other languages that, really, we shouldn't put English next if it's not in the list next. And if Russian is more important in your library, we don't want to say to not include it because it's the last on the list. You should just add all the languages in that title field so that a user of any of those languages can come in and type it in in their language and find that title. And that's been something that has not always been a practice because RDA is very much designed for the English language-speaking world. So we've had a couple of discussions about things like that, how to deprioritize language, how to put more information in the records to make sure that users can get what they need. So that might be an example of just something that we talked about recently. Also, we got some feedback for series. A lot of children's books are thought of as series, but are not actually cataloged officially as a series. Maybe Harry Potter might be an example-- I'm not sure if that's a whole series or not-- or Curious George, for small children. So there's not, like, a statement on there saying on the book, this is the Curious George series, whereas a lot of academic books will have a series, like Researches in Medieval Studies, or something. And it'll be a series. And this monograph is published as part of that series. But Curious George isn't necessarily thought of, maybe, as a series. So it has been practice in a lot of public libraries to create a series for those so that when parents and children come in to look for their favorite character, they can just type that in and find it, even if the character's name is not necessarily in the title or whatnot. And we got some pushback that people were saying-- we got some feedback that people didn't necessarily want to allow librarians to just create series out of thin air. And we stood by that, and we said, no, this is already, actually, practice in a lot of public libraries so that children can find the books for the characters that they love. And we would like to actually codify that as practice and say that if a librarian, in their own local situation, feels the need to create a series and to add that to the record in the Series fields, that we want to respect that. Because if you don't use it in your library, you can always remove it from your record. FRED RASCOE: And that, presumably, is part of the making it more inclusive, making a standard that's more inclusive? ANN KARDOS: Yeah, yeah. I will say, the first time I wrote a rule-- so I haven't been involved with Open Rules for Cataloging as long as Denise has. I joined a little more than 18 months ago. And it's kind of writing a research paper because you go through and you read all of these historic rules. And then I'm a cataloger who goes to look for rules or, particularly, for elements I'm not very familiar with all the time. So then looking at the Library of Congress rule interpretations, which should tell you, right there, that we have a standard, and then we also have rule interpretations to tell you how to read the standard. So it's complex, right? This is so-- it's cumbersome. FRED RASCOE: It's Dungeons and Dragons again. There's a rule book, and then there's a book to tell you how to read the rules. ANN KARDOS: Yes, yes. [LAUGHS] So doing all this research and then kind of comparing, over time, like Denise said, how an element might have changed or maybe didn't change over time, and you collect all of this. And it's just like writing a term paper, right? You do all this research, you have all this stuff in your head, and then you restate it in your own words. You figure out how to say it in your own words. And when I wrote my first rule, I was like, (GASPS) am I allowed to do this? Like. Am I allowed to do this, right? But I think my take on this is that I want catalogers to feel like they're experts, right? We're not just people who open up a book and follow some rules because someone told us to do something one way. You have to think of yourself as an expert. I've been doing this job for 15 years. I'm an expert. I'm an expert in what I do. Denise is an expert in what she does. Sonya is an expert. We have all this body of knowledge in our heads. And I hope that work helps other catalogers feel empowered because then they can find something, read our rule, see all the places where we say, or make the best decision for your local institution, and realize that they're experts. They're experts in their own collection, they're experts in their own populations, and they're experts in what they need for their local cataloging system. Because, of course, all of us have different backends of our catalogs, different discovery layers, and we all have such unique needs, based on what we get from our vendors and how our systems are set up. And we are the people who know that, not the people who write the current RDA rules. MARLEE GIVENS: You are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll talk more about the slow and steady, but ultimately rewarding process of rewriting rules on the left side of the hour. [MUSIC PLAYING] MANDY: Hi, this is Mandy Chef, the Loudmouth Librarian, and you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. [MUSIC PLAYING] MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show is called Open Rules for Cataloging. This project draws from pre-existing cataloging rule sets that are in the public domain, including some that are over 100 years old. One early set of rules that they cite is Charles Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalog from 1904. In the preface to this edition, Cutter writes, the convenience of the public is always to be set before the ease of the cataloguer. In most cases, they coincide. A plain rule without exceptions is not only easy for us to carry out, but easy for the public to understand and work by. But strict consistency in a rule and uniformity in its application sometimes leads to practices which clash with the public's habitual way of looking at things. No code of cataloging could be adopted in all points by everyone because the libraries for study and the libraries for reading have different objects. And those which combine the two do so in different proportions." He continues, "the increase in the number of rules is due chiefly not to making new rules, but to taking out from the long notes many recommendations that were, in effect, rules and are more easily referred to and found in their present place. The changes are largely for the sake of greater clearness and of better classification. Cataloging is an art, not a science. No rules can take the place of experience and good judgment, but some of the results of experience may best be indicated by rules." The last time we talked to Ann Kardos, we explored the idea that catalogers are magicians, but perhaps an even older idea is a catalogers are artists. File this set under Z695.C99. [MIA TIMS, "CATALOG"] [TUFF TURF, "BREAKING ALL YOUR RULES"] FRED RASCOE: "Breaking All Your Rules" by Tuff Turf and, before that, "Catalog" by Mia Tims, those are songs about catalogs and breaking rules. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Open Rules for Cataloging, or ORC. And in this last interview segment, Sonya speaks for many of her peers in asking about the current and future state of the project. SONYA SLUTSKAYA: Well, it's been very interesting, but I have a question. I'm going to just jump ahead because it's already been, what, four or five years, and there's just only one rule. And so what do you imagine it will be at the end, and how do you imagine people will use it when there is more rules and it's actually a set of rules? How do you think it will work? Especially in the environment, there are already so many rules, and so many systems, and so many other places to look things up. ANN KARDOS: Well, I'll start first, and then I think Denise can jump in with a bunch more information about where we're headed and maybe what we need. Like I said, I joined 18 months ago, and we're a pretty small team. There have been a number of volunteers over the time that Denise has been involved. But currently, right now, actively writing rules, I mean, I think there's six of us. And there's two people, Denise and another colleague, Jennifer Weston, who are doing the web work. So that's not a lot of people doing this work. And of course, we are all employed, and we're doing our jobs for our employers as well. And many of us work in institutions that are understaffed. So another reason why we need open and less cumbersome rules to use is because so many technical services and cataloging departments are really understaffed. So to do all this research, to catalog a piece is very difficult, when you're working. So we're doing this work to research the rules, and to create rules, and write rules on top of our jobs. And it's a lot of work, and it's a lot of work to-- and we have a community of followers, who want to know what we're doing. So we're also trying to actively communicate with them and send them updates as we work on things because there is a lot of interest in the community. I'm trying to think. In the general Google group that follows us, 400 or 500 members, something like that? DENISE SOUFI: That sounds about right, yeah. FRED RASCOE: Yeah, so that's more than one of my professional organizations that I'm in. [LAUGHS] That's more members than I have for a paid professional organization. But it takes a lot of work, and there's just not a lot of us to do it. DENISE SOUFI: I think we're hoping, with all this widespread interest, that there will be adoption of these rules. Well, I kind of see that starting with smaller institutions that don't have subscriptions to RDA. And will it work its way up? I certainly hope so. Also hoping for adoption of these rules by vendors. I do see a lot of problems with vendor records, where the RDA rules are not accurately applied. And I can see why they don't get applied accurately, so we hope that our rules would simplify that. And that would be helpful for any institution that's getting records from vendors, to have records that are accurately cataloged-- you know, they've accurately cataloged their resources. I think another vision that we have is that we would have a sustainable organization. As Ann said, we rely on volunteers. And right now, it's a small cohort of volunteers. But also, I don't like the idea of the burden being on just a few people. We do need quite a few people to run an organization, and I would like to see some change and some different voices added into the conversation. Don't want to be keep repeating the same ideas over and over again, although we do recognize that, while we're in the process of creating these rules, it actually is a lot of work. But I do hope that once we have finished with all our rules, after that, the maintenance should be fairly simple maybe, having some updates from time to time, and, of course, having a couple of people who keep an eye on the website, maintaining it, anything that needs to be done, in that regard. But these next these next couple of years are definitely going to be a lot of work, and we hope to get some more people involved in the project. MARLEE GIVENS: So of those three original objectives, which one do you think is the most persuasive in getting people to join? DENISE SOUFI: I think the ease of use. That's something that I hear over and over again from people who have joined. Not that there isn't concern for financial barriers, but it's primarily the ease of use. And as has been discussed, the new RDA toolkit is extremely opaque. And probably, we wouldn't even be using that. We'd probably be using these metadata application profiles that have to be developed by major institutions, like the Library of Congress. But that's going to be a lot of interpretation, again, a lot of complicated rules for people to apply. And I don't deny that, in some cases, you might need a complicated rule. But for the vast majority of our cataloging work, we just don't. And I think this is a major appeal of this project. FRED RASCOE: Doesn't matter how easy the rules are, as we've learned today. Catalogers are going to bend them to their will anyway. DENISE SOUFI: Probably. [LAUGHTER] ANN KARDOS: And yeah, I was going to say, I would agree with Denise because I manage our Google group right now. And so I see all the requests for people wanting to join, to get email updates, and whatnot. And there's like a little field where you can pop in a message. And not everyone fills out that field, but when they do, almost everyone writes something about, I'm the cataloger or a metadata librarian at x organization, and I'm curious to follow this group to find out if it's easier to use, or something like that. I would say most of the people who put a message in that field almost always say that they're excited to learn about work because it looks easier to use, full stop. FRED RASCOE: You have been listening to our interview with Ann Kardos, Denise Soufi, and Sonya Slutskaya about ORC-- not orcs-- and how catalogers make, and break, and remake the rules. MARLEE GIVENS: File this set under F596.K44. [JUDEE SILL, "THE PHANTOM COWBOY"] I have seen the phantom cowboy ride-- [CINEMA HEARTS, "YOUR IDEAL"] MARLEE GIVENS: That was "Your Ideal" by The Cinema Hearts. And before that, we heard "The Phantom Cowboy" by Judee Sill, songs about forging a path and setting a standard. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today's show was about the Open Rules for Cataloging project. We asked catalogers Ann Kardos and Denise Soufi why catalogers should want to join them. And frankly, I am a little envious of them. [MUSIC PLAYING] ANN KARDOS: I'll say, it's fun. I think we have a good group of people. We're small, but mighty. And like I said before, it's powerful to see yourself as an expert and to know that you can write rules, or build the website, or whatever. And so if people are thinking about getting more involved or if they just want to subscribe to our Google group to get more information, it's fun, strangely. [LAUGHS] I know people don't think of cataloging rules as fun, but it is fun. DENISE SOUFI: I would agree. It's a lot of fun. [LAUGHS] MARLEE GIVENS: And now let's roll the credits. [MUSIC PLAYING] Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. FRED RASCOE: Legal counsel and an audiobook of The Silmarillion, as read by Andy Serkis-- to really show us how it's done-- were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. MARLEE GIVENS: Special thanks to Ann, Denise, and Sonya for being on the show. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. FRED RASCOE: Our web page is library.gatech.edu/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us. MARLEE GIVENS: On next week's show, we meet a new member of the Georgia Tech Library faculty. And spoiler alert, she is neither a librarian nor an archivist. FRED RASCOE: What could she be? MARLEE GIVENS: Hmm, we'll find out. FRED RASCOE: Time for our last song today. Remember, Marlee, when we ended the show with a song by the Go-Betweens, about three weeks ago? MARLEE GIVENS: Uh huh. FRED RASCOE: Yeah, we're going to do that again. MARLEE GIVENS: All right. FRED RASCOE: But this time, it's at the request of our guests. They specifically requested this track, which is about a librarian that uses her expertise to locate just about anything. This is "Karen" by the Go-Betweens, right here, on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great, rule-breaking weekend, everyone. MARLEE GIVENS: Woohoo. FRED RASCOE: Go hunt some orc. [GO-BETWEENS, "KAREN"]