It all starts with a question: what makes this
different from this
Different from this?
I'm Peter and this is Stacks and Facts.
[musical interlude]
This is a book.
It has a title and an author, a front and a back with pages in the middle.
These pages likely have words and maybe pictures too --
but you already knew all of this because books are
Everywhere.
For a long time, books have been a dominant form of maintaining the human record and through
the years
they've picked up some common attributes like the ones I just mentioned.
And yet those few things are just the tip of the iceberg -- the
preface if you will -- to how we describe them and other
objects produced by human agency.
When we're talking about the metadata of books,
we have a ton to work with -- how we choose to describe a book can totally depend on what
we plan on doing with it.
And how you describe a book may be totally different from how I describe it, which is
fine!
Of course, when we're talking about describing books, especially within the context of library
and information science
We usually mean describing them for many people, not just for you or me.
That's why cataloging, or the process of creating metadata that represents an object, is an
entire field within librarianship.
Catalogers work behind the scenes to make sure that the books in a library are described
in a way that
ideally -- and I use that word with intention here, because what we expect isn't always
what we end up with --
ideally makes the book findable by those who are looking for it.
They do this by using a cataloging standard, or a set of rules developed
so that different objects in a collection can be described consistently, every time.
Cataloging is really interesting and important
so I'll definitely talk about it in another video.
But right now I want to talk, and hopefully you want to learn, about books.
So, how do we describe a book?
Generally, there are two categories that a descriptor can fall into:
Physical and not-physical.
That is you can describe the book as an object, and you can describe the body of information
contained within it.
Physical descriptors might include, for example, its format
So whether it's hardcover paperback or an e-book or audio book; its dimensions
So its height, width, depth, and even its weight; and its materials --is it made of
paper, leather,
cardboard?
Whereas non physical descriptors might include its subject and the themes tackles;
the language it's in and the country where it was published; and
biographical information about the author and other people involved in its production:
their names, genders backgrounds, and interests.
Of course, having this information is all well and good.
But what does it actually do for you?
The most obvious answer is, it lets you find things that you're looking for.
[musical interlude]
So! let's say that I'm a librarian, and my library's community just experienced something
really bad like a natural disaster.
My library already provides weekly storytime for children as part of our regular programming,
and we want to help our community recover.
So this week, I decide that I want to read a story to the kids that talks about fear,
disasters, and feelings in a way that helps them process their own experience.
Why?
Because my library serves a community where poverty is a daily reality.
I know that my patrons are often the least likely to have access to adequate mental health
resources, and in times of disaster
that access may be non-existent for a long time without having to read all of them.
I can make a list of books for exactly this purpose simply by looking through the subject
headings and brief descriptions
I can pick one to read at story time, and then the others I can refer folks to who want
to read things like it too.
As an aside, if you find yourself in a situation where you have a child in your life who's
struggling with all of the bad news in the world today,
I would recommend, "The Rhino who Swallowed a Storm," by LeVar Burton and Susan Schaefer
Bernardo with illustrations by courtenay Fletcher.
I put a short description and a link to its
WorldCat entry in the dooblydoo, which will let you find a copy at a library near you.
So go check it out.
Okay, aside over!
You can also use book metadata to understand the society at large that the book came from.
Fun fact:
Wikipedia has 79 years of the New York Times Fiction Bestseller lists as articles!
Looking at the metadata of all of these books for these years could give a sense of what
people cared enough to write about, and
how that's evolved over time without us actually having to read them.
Not that you can't read them, I'm just saying, it could take a while.
What questions would you ask with that kind of information, or what information would
you rather have?
Let me know in the comments below, and maybe I'll answer them!
[musical interlude]
Now so far I've only really talked about using non physical book metadata,
but I want to wrap up with a mention of what we can learn from the book as an object,
because I think that that's pretty dang cool!
Professor Eric Kwakkel came to UBC a little while back and gave a talk about this idea:
basically looking at a books physical structure to determine its purpose and origins.
This is an extension of what's known as "sociotechnology," or the idea that technology and society shape
*each other.*
This is different from the idea that societal demands ONLY dictate technological development,
or the other way around --
but not both.
I'll give two examples that Prof. Kwakkel used that stood out to me.
First was how uneven page sizes in medieval
manuscripts give a hint towards their purpose.
Uneven pages were used to save cost, and so we can imagine that the folks who brought
these books either didn't have tons of money --
say University students -- or
didn't really care about the books appearance as much as what was in them -- like tradesmen.
if we know that a book was written for
a university student rather than a professor, for example, that can give us context for
what we might find in
the book: say, notes in the margins or
doodles.
Plus, have you ever thought about where all the white space in the margins of textbooks
come from?
Because it wasn't always there!
It's no coincidence that that's where notes get scribbled.
Second, books are heavy y'all!
So if you have two copies of the same text, and one is
significantly lighter than the other, then maybe it's designed to travel to and from
the dorms rather than to stay on a lectern in a
classroom.
This might inform us about the location where the book was found.
So it's interesting to keep in mind this idea of weight as a design aspect has historical precedent.
[musical interlude]
So that's part two of my mini-series on metadata!
I think that book metadata is super interesting, and has a lot of unexpected uses and I'd love
to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Or tweet at me -- @StacksEtFacts !
Thanks for checking this out, and until next time don't forget to ask questions.
Alright, bye <3 <3 <3 <3
[musical interlude]