A Study of Bibliographic Record Enhancement at University Libraries in Taiwan
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Lee, Yi-Lin
Abstract
The library catalog is the main finding tool for items owned or made available by a library. How to enhance and enrich the library catalog to improve its functionality and efficiency has become one of the major concerns of the library and information science field. Studies have revealed that enriched and enhanced bibliographic records are welcomed by catalog users. However, what do catalogers, who are the actual doers of the cataloging task, think about the bibliographic record enhancements? So far, we do not know much. The aim of this study is to explore the question from the perspective of library catalogers. The purpose is twofold: (1) to survey and investigate the status quo of the OPAC enhancements services provided by university and college libraries in Taiwan, and (2) to acquire knowledge about the catalogers’ understanding, opinions, and experiences of bibliographic record enhancements.
This study includes two stages. First, the researcher carried out a questionnaire survey of 162 university and college libraries in Taiwan to investigate the state of their bibliographic enhancements. 124 institutions (76.5%) responded. Second, 14 library catalogers were subsequently invited to participate in an in-depth interview about their opinions and experiences of the bibliographic enhancements services they provided.
The results of the questionnaire survey indicate that 56 of the 124 responding university libraries have provided enhanced bibliographic records. The top three collection types chosen for enhancement are Chinese books, foreign language books and audio-visual materials. The three most common added items are table of contents, abstracts and other websites. The most common way for presenting enhanced bibliographic records is through providing hyperlinks to external information. The library catalogers are the major source for generating the enhanced information. In addition, most librarians tend to agree on the value and utility of bibliographic record enhancements. They also believe that users need enhanced bibliographic records. Their opinion on keeping or planning to serve bibliographic enhancements is generally positive. For the future development of bibliographic enhancements, the interviewees suggest that we should pay attention to the progress of linked open data, big data, web-scale discovery service, and the WebPAC interface. During the process of enhancing bibliographic records, different approaches may encounter different problems and difficulties. The factors that affect the implementation of bibliographic enhancements include librarians, library directors, users, organization environment, the library scale, budget and funds, ILS systems, time pressure, the quality of enhanced bibliographic records, and workloads.
Subjects
書目加值
編目館員
大學圖書館
線上目錄
Type
thesis
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