Editorial

By the time this issue of LRTS is published, we will be well into 2017. I am writing this column in early February, shortly after ALA Midwinter in Atlanta. The United States has a new president and the inauguration took place during the conference, as did numerous protests and women’s marches, including one in Atlanta. Many conference attendees marched despite heavy rain and strong winds.

Like our federal government, there will be changes within our profession. I subscribe to the BIBFRAME discussion list and a spirited conversation has taken place, following an initial posting by a librarian who is preparing to give a presentation on BIBFRAME that explores life after MARC. The discussion touched on topics such as Library of Congress no longer being the chief source of bibliographic metadata; the need for new tools to create, share, and maintain linked open data; current implementations of BIBFRAME; and the value of the Linked Data community to libraries. The discussion has raised several key points related to the future of resource description and discovery and enabling linked data.

Many libraries, for a variety of reasons, have not implemented RDA nor do they plan to do so. The reasons range from lack of staff or funds, or no desire to implement RDA. Will there be a similar reception to BIBFRAME within the profession?

Discovery is a current topic of concern to many libraries. Some individuals believe that library catalogs are not used by patrons, who instead consult A-to-Z lists and discovery tools. They believe that large records sets that are continually refreshed by vendors do not require mediation or editing, and do not belong in a library’s collection since they are leased content. Others feel strongly that all resources to which a library provides access should be available through the library catalog and perhaps some other means, such as an A-to-Z list, to anticipate the various ways patrons will search for resources.

Our profession is generous both in sharing our opinions (as demonstrated by the recent conversation thread on the BIBRAME discussion list) and our expertise. We are willing to be flexible to accommodate our users and make choices based on who we serve and not so much by the feeling that we need to emulate the majority.

The papers published in LRTS demonstrate how our profession shares information to benefit others. I provide the following summary of the papers in this issue:

• In her paper “Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices in Overseas Buying Trips: An Interview Study Focusing on South Asia Specialists,” Mara Thacker details the challenges, benefits and opportunities of overseas buying trips obtained through interviews with nine South Asian-area specialist librarians. Her qualitative study provides best practices that are applicable in other contexts to help librarians to plan effective overseas acquisitions trips.
• Paul Ojennus’s paper “Open Access and the Humanities: The Case of Classics Journals” explores how predominant open access models are more applicable to fields in science and medicine. He discusses how humanities publishing models have been slower to embrace open access and examines current practices in the humanities, particularly open access options offered by journals that serve classics.
• Carolyn McCallum, Kevin Gilbertson, Steve Kelley, and Lauren E. Corbett explore how their online public catalog’s default facet mapping was inadequate for their researchers’ needs, particularly for faceting of bibliographic formats, in their paper “Can RDA Content, Media, and Carrier Coding Improve Discovery Facet Mapping?” The authors detail how they worked extensively to revise this default mapping, creating complex decision trees that ultimately assign more precise format facets.
• “Strength in Numbers: Building a Consortial Cooperative Cataloging Partnership” by Christopher Cronin, Mary S. Laskowski, Ellen K. W. Mueller, and Beth E. Snyder, discuss a one-year pilot project launched by eight of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) libraries to track the costs, workflows, challenges, and opportunities associated with sharing cataloging expertise for languages and formats that were needed by the participating institutions. The project’s major findings are outlined, and the subsequent implementation of a full-scale partnership that includes more of the BTAA libraries is discussed.
• In addition, this issue includes book reviews courtesy of LRTS Book Review Editor Elyssa Gould.

I hope you enjoy this issue of LRTS. As always, feel free to contact me if you have questions or concerns regarding LRTS or its content.