In HOCKEY's view, the real question facing the Workshop is what to put in
this catalogue, because that raises the question of what constitutes a
publication in the electronic world. (WEIBEL interjected that Eric Joule
in OCLC's Office of Research is also wrestling with this particular
problem, while GIFFORD thought it sounded fairly generic.) HOCKEY
contended that a majority of texts in the humanities are in the hands
of either a small number of large research institutions or individuals
and are not generally available for anyone else to access at all.
She wondered if these texts ought to be catalogued.
After argument proceeded back and forth for several minutes over why
cataloguing might be a necessary service, LEBRON suggested that this
issue involved the responsibility of a publisher. The fact that someone
has created something electronically and keeps it under his or her
control does not constitute publication. Publication implies
dissemination. While it would be important for a scholar to let other
people know that this creation exists, in many respects this is no
different from an unpublished manuscript. That is what is being accessed
in there, except that now one is not looking at it in the hard-copy but
in the electronic environment.
LEBRON expressed puzzlement at the variety of ways electronic publishing
has been viewed. Much of what has been discussed throughout these two
days has concerned CD-ROM publishing, whereas in the on-line environment
that she confronts, the constraints and challenges are very different.
Sooner or later LC will have to deal with the concept of on-line
publishing. Taking up the comment ERWAY made earlier about storing
copies, LEBRON gave her own journal as an example. How would she deposit
OJCCT for copyright?, she asked, because the journal will exist in the
mainframe at OCLC and people will be able to access it. Here the
situation is different, ownership versus access, and is something that
arises with publication in the on-line environment, faster than is
sometimes realized. Lacking clear answers to all of these questions
herself, LEBRON did not anticipate that LC would be able to take a role
in helping to define some of them for quite a while.
GREENFIELD observed that LC's Network Development Office is attempting,
among other things, to explore the limits of MARC as a standard in terms
of handling electronic information. GREENFIELD also noted that Rebecca
GUENTHER from that office gave a paper to the American Society for
Information Science (ASIS) summarizing several of the discussion papers
that were coming out of the Network Development Office. GREENFIELD said
he understood that that office had a list-server soliciting just the kind
of feedback received today concerning the difficulties of identifying and
cataloguing electronic information. GREENFIELD hoped that everybody
would be aware of that and somehow contribute to that conversation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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