As I'm making my way through some of Thomas Jefferson's books, I'm wishing a couple things: that Latin wasn't as long ago and far away as it was (ca. '97-'99), and that I'd taken that New Testament Greek class when I had the chance. I adored Intro to Biblical Hebrew, but so far TJ isn't reading anything right to left... Cataloging this stuff is interesting. It's sometimes hard to differentiate proper nouns in the Greek and Latin and also to know what punctuation marks were actually existing on the title pages in titles that might run on for several lines-- in other words, where titles end and subtitles begin. There are some resources I can use for double checking that information. There's WorldCat, but a resource I wasn't familiar with before starting my internship and have become fond of using is the English Short Title Catalogue, hosted by the British Library. It provides intuitive basic and advanced search interfaces and well-displayed results, and provides quick but ample insight into the 'chief sources of information' from yesteryear, showing publication data like 'Londini : impensis W. Innys ad Insignia Principis in Cœmeterio Divi Pauli, MDCCXXIX. [1729]'. Some Latin is coming back to me (with the aid of ye olde internet), as I run across terms, especially in the pub data, like 'impensis' for 'at the expense of' and 'typis' meaning 'of the type', presuming the typesetter. I recently ran across this handy, albeit dated, document, in case you're wanting to catch up on some other esoteric printing terms.

Conceptualizing Catalogs

I recently ran across the blog, Everybody's Libraries, wherein author John Mark Ockerbloom spends a few recent posts discussing his vision for the future of library catalogs as concept-oriented, that they'll continue to be more concept-driven. Catalogs will be souped-up, interactive portals of information discovery, supporting both known-item discovery and browsing in new ways by increased cross-reference and conceptualizing resource description that goes beyond MARC's added entries.

Several things come to mind reading these posts. The desire for intuitive search environments is strong. Google now personalizes search, so that when I search 'thomas jefferson' as a novice Jeffersonian compared to someone steeped in TJ research, our results won't look the same. The vertical search of social networks like Facebook and Twitter retrieve results from a 'catalog' of peers semantically suited to me: they get my lingo. Antiquated OPACs controlled by strict vocabulary aren't intuitive, but are we setting ourselves up to sacrifice specificity for browsability? I don't think so, as long as catalogs still function to retrieve known information: title, author, etc. But for bibliographic records to function as information gateways seems to me to reflect both the way we interact with information nowadays (no 'loop' is closed, we leave everything open for possible discovery), and the surfacing of information on the Web (the deep/invisible Web unlocking itself). Also, part of what's going on here is that we deal with items/intentions beyond the physical, and so perhaps this is a better way of thinking about how to describe/interact with items/information.

I'm interested in all of this because at Jefferson Library I'm creating records in LibraryThing, a social networking environment, and they seem to me to fit the, ahem, concept of concept-oriented catalogs. They're certainly interactive. A user comes to the entry for Mathew Dobson's A medical commentary on fixed air in Thomas Jefferson's library. The record not only tells, but shows, the user various information. For example, Jefferson inherited the book from George Wythe, so the user is linked to Wythe's LT entry for the title. Concepts quickly surface in this environment: the user follows links to transcribed and original manuscript images of Jefferson's book lists, allowing, simply from viewing the LibraryThing record, insight into Jefferson's classification system. That's a lot to derive from a bibliographic record, and perhaps I'm waxing hopeful that this is the case. But as Endrina has pointed out, we're putting an awful lot of data in front of people with this type of record, and in a visually interesting and conceptually striking manner. I think as catalogs evolve to be more user-oriented (as opposed to system-oriented) that data will be presented increasingly conceptually and socially, and that this bodes well for creators and users of bibliographic records.

Back Over the Mountain

Augusta County has been hit hard with the weather recently-- an ice storm at the end of last week and then flash flooding to start this week. I'm ready for Spring! On account of the ice, last week I worked on the Libraries of Early America project from home on two days rather than drive over the mountain to Monticello. It went smoothly-- nearly everything I am doing is Web accessible, save for a few tasks I'll need to complete in-house upon returning to Jefferson Library. I quickly realized too that one of the print resources I consult for the project in Jefferson Library, I link to its online transcription, so I could simply read from it. My supervisor has photocopies of the book list manuscripts I'm dealing with to consult when there's a question about the actual spelling or transcription, but I'm linking to images of the manuscripts as well and was able to magnify them in my browser when I had questions. People are often fascinated by my entirely-distance MLIS program: "It's all on the computer?" The prospect of working on a project like this from anywhere with a computer with internet access might be equally puzzling, even in an age of Facebook and Hulu, where we're used to accessing the Web for more recreational purposes, but not necessarily for serious work.

Book Lists

I'm realizing that I don't know a whole lot about Thomas Jefferson, or, 'TJ' for short. One thing I am learning is that Jefferson kept a lot of lists. I've been introduced to several of Jefferson's book lists as well as later recreations of his lists in the course of my work so far at the Jefferson Library: the Wythe list, the 1783 list, the Trist list, and Sowerby's catalog. Something compelled Thomas Jefferson to begin to keep lists of the books he owned, including those he wanted to acquire. He organized titles by subject, influenced by Bacon's knowledge categories: Memory, Reason, and Imagination. Jefferson renamed these History, Philosophy, and Fine Arts. I'm not sure the ends to which Jefferson used his lists, and whether or not others accessed them, but clearly they would have been useful taxonomies for navigating his libraries. It is fascinating to view the manuscript images of some of these lists and witness the process of Jefferson's classification in his own hand-- items are struck through and written over, rubbed out and written anew, etc., and titles are accompanied by marks of various meaning. Jefferson's subject-based catalog accompanied his sale of books to the Library of Congress in 1815. Classification schemes lend order to things, help us navigate them, and let us derive meaning from them. I'm trying to let it all sink in at the moment with TJ and his lists without getting too hung up on needing to know everything.

Getting Started

After my first couple days at Jefferson Library, it is clear that there is a lot going on and a lot of work to do. It's exciting to feel that I can be a part of work that matters to people. It is also a little daunting. Getting started on projects is always a mixture of anticipation and trepidation for me as I settle into my own system for doing things. My first technical services task was to swap out text in some source code in order to make a book list available in Monticello's Thomas Jefferson's Libraries site. The 'Burwell list' contained Thomas Jefferson's suggestions to Nathaniel Burwell in 1818 of titles appropriate for female education. This task also involved cleaning up existing source code here and there. I don't have a lot of hands-on experience with HTML, but the more I work with it, the more I like it and take pleasure in understanding its operational functions. My supervisor, Endrina, has mentioned some of Jefferson Library's XML coding as well. We spent a good bit of time in J707 discussing XML markup, and it is great to hear its real-world applications in a specific context.

I am now beginning a more involved project of cataloging within LibraryThing. I will be cleaning up some existing records in Thomas Jefferson's library in order to get them up to the standards decided upon by the folks driving the Libraries of Early America project. Part of this task will also be to make sure there are links to help users navigate from LibraryThing (specifically George Wythe and Thomas Jefferson in LT) to manuscript images at Monticello, Massachussetts Historical Society (key players in LEA), and the Library of Congress. In J730, my cataloging course, we talked a little bit about 'cataloging 2.0' and what future tasks of the cataloger might be. I think this is a good example.

Welcome

Welcome, Reader. This semester I will be blogging my experiences as an intern at the Jefferson Library at Monticello in Charlottesville, VA. I am excited to work with the Jefferson's technical services staff on a cooperative project called Libraries of Early America which is taking place online in LibraryThing. It seeks to present the libraries of individuals influential to early American history, such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

This project interests me for several reasons. It is a real-world application of abstract library school discussions concerning implementation and use of collaborative Web 2.0 tools. How might LibraryThing be useful for libraries? Instead of many projects existing in disparate locations, the Libraries of Early America centralizes information in an easy-to-use platform that is easily accessible on the internet. Likewise, this type of project bridges contexts to support information discovery by a variety of users. When I met with Endrina Tay, Associate Foundation Librarian for Technical Services at the Jefferson, she described the possibilities for LEA to aid scholarship. Bibliographies and tag clouds will allow scholars to quickly identify works and ideas that were relevant to the zeitgeist of this fledgling nation in new ways. Cataloging makes this information available in useful ways, and I look forward to contributing to the Libraries of Early America in this manner.

This semester is sure to be an adventure. I welcome the challenges and opportunities that will come with my internship at the Jefferson. Check back for weekly updates from Monticello.