E‐Journal Invasion: A Cataloguer's Guide to Survival

Citation

Peare, T. (2008), "E‐Journal Invasion: A Cataloguer's Guide to Survival", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 733-734. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810911851

This is an excellently produced book – authoritative, fully researched and, unlike many titles in this area, because all the chapters are written by the same author, the same clear and entertaining style is used throughout.

Entertaining? Yes, it is clear the author is enthusiastic about the topic and, while able to express her exasperations about past and current activities, she is optimistic about the challenges of the future, all stated with considerable humour and clarity. The author refers in the final chapter about the perceived view of cataloguing as “unsexy”, and illustrates the paradigm shift that is taking place to make the business of resource discovery central to libraries' effectiveness by using a quotation: “only librarians like searching, everyone else likes finding”!

This is a book that should be required reading for all librarians, from mangers to public service assistants as well as cataloguers so they might understand and appreciate the revolution that is going on in the background of the volatile world that is the current information environment.

The five chapters are introduced with a tight technical review of the way the profession has responded to the changes required to manage the emergence of electronic resources. It records the efforts to revise MARC through MODS and the development of Dublin CORE. This section is well illustrated with list of data elements and the text is enriched with references such as a 1995 meeting in Dublin, Ohio that was described as a workshop of “geeks, freaks and people with sensible shoes”. Throughout, the author's emphasis is on record creation for access and discovery, not just description and this mission is maintained in the rest of the book.

The second and third chapters record the huge variety of e‐journal formats, publishing patterns and subscription or supply arrangements. Again, they are well illustrated with examples of titles and the options available to librarians for managing them all. The level of detail on the latter is a reflection of the author's practical experience and the arguments for the different approaches are well stated. The local and commercial options for the managing of the thousands of e‐resources that libraries can acquire through a few subscriptions to aggregators are discussed in some detail.

There is a useful chapter on the author's own experience. This gives a good analysis of the compromises that must be accepted so as to provide access to the library's holdings in a timely manner. It also gives an idea of some the technical work‐arounds that are required for local situations where particular local management data is required and there are incompatibilities between the varieties of automation systems.

The final chapter looks a little to the future and maintains the view that cataloguing will continue to be about access over description and libraries have already shifted to “light” cataloguing, because of the need to acquire large numbers of records, any records, rapidly to inform our readers of the library's current resources. The e‐journal invasion is a good read – because it is a detailed review of the developments in the area, practical in its approach to the current issues, looking hopefully to the future and particularly well written by an expert practitioner.