Future of Cataloging, Resource Description, Indexing And Abstracting - Essay Example

FUTURE OF CATALOGUING, RESOURCE INDEXING AND ING Introduction Information handling is becoming the most important debate of the current century with context to the globalization phenomenon. Information is regarded as the most important tool for the strategic restructuring of an organization and the refined form of information is known as knowledge and knowledge management is also a critical program that needs attention and many firms are going after this scheme. There are many libraries that have plenty of information for the end-users and through their access other researches can be formulated accordingly. Information Extraction Knowledge base is the key requirement for the future strategic planning or research systems. The knowledge base comprises of information professionals who add their valuable info to pool up the system and for all this is for the achievement of a relatively better efficiency. The problem is how to acquire the relevant information or how to extract the required from the pool. This was once a issue in the past as record searching was very tedious and at times it took days for individuals to come up with the adequate set of retrievals. This was aided by the term ‘Cataloging’. Cataloging meant giving an appropriate identification to the item form where it can be easily retrieved. Cataloging can easily be understood if we take into account a library containing many books and journals and you step inside to search for data on economic facts in the World War II era. To get this information you needed to approach the librarian who will present you a book that is compiled of many abstracts from the various books that contain information about the desired World War II facts. This item is called as the catalog and it contains the description of the different books or journals referring to your search. From this catalog you can filter out your choices easily and as there is adequate resource description you could also go for different writer choices. Thus once decided which to choose, you look down at the catalog to find the location of the desired information tool (Book/journal). Thus the catalog acts as a fair assistant to you in minimizing your search time and effectively grants you the opportunity to identify your needs well. Cataloging has facilitated searching immensely. Cataloging and Description An important terminology within the catalog is the resource description. The catalog contains every bit of information required about the resource and therefore again is regarded as an effective tool for information handling purpose. The description contained by the catalog can be of any type that is if one goes out to buy/rent a DVD he gets a catalog referring to the cast, story, producer and date of production as well. These tools have greatly eased the searching capability of individuals in this fast moving global age. The cataloging feature has also facilitated online shopping schemes as at times individuals do not want to get the real feel of the shopping environment and thus want to shop from remote locations. E-businesses and E-catalogs I would like to entertain with a few facts that relate to the wide acceptance of cataloging. The world is becoming a global village. Internet is the source for this close, fast and direct communication between different nations. Within the last 20 odd years the web has gained extreme popularity. What ever is required is available on the web. Now people can have focus databases from the entire world within seconds and can easily manipulate their PEST analysis accordingly. How has the web helped the businesses develop? For that one needs to understand a few jargons: E-business—this involves the use of electronic platforms to conduct a company’s business E-commerce—this just involves buying and selling online. E-marketing—this constitutes of the efforts which the company makes in order to communicate with its customers. These businesses need to have efficient catalogs in order to sell/market their products effectively. Online buying is the most apparent example of cataloging. There are benefits associated with this scheme. One would ask why people switch to buying online rather than visiting stores and feeling the actual experience. There are sites that let you buy directly from manufacturers, online versions of regular retail stores, auctions, specialty sites, comparison sites, group buying sites and so on. Some sell items, others give advice and still others search the Internet to find you the best deal. Looking at this one may wonder how easy it gets to buy online, you simple have to just type in a word or words that best describe what youre looking for. Use product name, manufacturer or type. After you enter your search words, youll get a list of items matching your description. Here you can witness the resource description as it contains almost all information required for buying purposes. These catalogs allow you to have a feel of the actual equipment and also provide information about the complements (add-ons) you can apply to your product. Simply click on any link for get more specifics. Many businesses have online catalogs. First you need to log on to any desirable site. Search for the variety and make your choice. Here is a perfect demonstration of the use of an E-catalog. Let’s consider that you have decided what you want? You have read through the days sales, searched for that treadmill and browsed through the clothing section for that perfect sweater. Well, as you browse through, youll find a button or link that says something along the lines of "ADD TO SHOPPING CART." Similar to the real world, you push around a virtual shopping cart during your online shopping ventures. This cart collects all the items you add to it during your visit. When you feel you are done you browse out to enter your details which may include all your personal information like name, address, phone number and most importantly, your credit card info. Dont worry; using a credit card is safe, as long as youre shopping on a secure site. This was a real life citation regarding the prospect of utilizing IT at max. There are many merits regarding this technique of shopping 1. You can do it 24hours/7 days. You can shop whenever you want. 2. Comfort is the priority. The e-shopping has simplified shopping at the max level as its entire priority is customer comfort that is one does not need to wander around in the hot climate. 3. Type, price comparison is simplified. You wish to buy a video online. Comparing the prices of these videos is much easier online than by running to a variety of video stores. The simplest way is to visit different sites and see what they are offering. There are several other price comparison sites listed at www.dealzconnection.com. This is simplified by the cataloging. And at times these catalogs often refer to something closer to what you want and then you can identify other great stuff such as you were there to buy a movie featuring Adam Sandler and like it was the ‘The Longest Yard’ and the catalog also gave description of another movie ‘anger management’ which has a high rating and watching it you realize that your money is not squandered and you got a fair deal. 4. Private shopping. The Web based shopping provides more privacy. Many people would be too embarrassed to buy items in a store where they have to face at least one other person who knows what they are buying. When you buy these items online, that embarrassment is minimized. 5. Complete information. The E-catalog provides complete information about products and at times there are demonstration videos also present which create more awareness about the product. 6. Product add-ons. The catalogs also provide information about add-ons or complements present for the associated product. This enables the buyer to look for better options directly rather than moving around or searching for desired add-ons. Information blow-up Communication is expanding rapidly across different cultures and so is information. In the 1980s there were only databases that catered to really large amount of data. Why am I calling it data is because data is information that has no meaning at all. To simplify it lets assume that there are two boys standing by the road. One needs to cross the road the other one is just a time passer. For the crosser the number of cars and their speeds is like information and for the other it can well be said as data. To be precise data is the raw collection of facts and figures. Now the point is as the organization grew in size so did their data and the need to maintain all of it was required. Databases were able to store all the information but the querying became slow as the size was enormous. Thus a new concept was introduced. It was the ‘indexing’. This sped up information processing and delivery as the programs were able to index the information records accordingly and therefore it was identified faster than before. Indexing as tool to remedy the retrieval case Indexing enabled faster record retrieval. Later in the 1990s the word data warehouse was incorporated and this revolutionized the computer industry. It is quite evident that sales of software and hardware have increased rapidly during the 1990s as there are more n more people getting into the internet. Thus there is an overload of information present now. But the problem is that the Web is the database of databases and therefore indexing here is a real problem. The point is that there are many indexes present on the web thus the quality control is problem as the web gives references according the word match criteria thus the end-user may not be able to acquire the quality he is seeking. Indexing at a particular segment is easy and does provide optimal results but in case of the web it is very difficult to manage as the sources which the web provides is not based on any quality checks or established sets of procedures rather it is based ad hoc situations. Organizations have been successful, to some extent, in placing filtering functions that help in attaining quality standards. Another important implication is the abstraction of relevant information as we move along the abstraction level we refine the data into knowledge. Abstracts are important as they summarize or elucidate about the material held within the actual text. Abstracts help in selecting the most prominent source for research purposes and indexing combined with abstraction has lead to more efficient research. Abstraction allows the end-user to filter out the required sources. What organizations have done to remedy the situation of poor quality indexing is that they have created portals or online libraries that are subject to proper material only. These sites cater the end-users with better quality. An example is www.springerling.com and Amazon as well. These online resources have information of about almost every journal/book and they also maintain a catalog with the abstract from the actual text that further facilitates the end-user search. Online portals help the researchers a great deal as they provide the most recent research in the desired area and contribution made by other individuals. These also help in promoting team work. These portals are more like virtual libraries which are filtered by the holding organizations to give their customers the best deal present for that time. Information Personnel The role of information professionals is seen to be diminishing by many. But this is not the case as their need is rather increasing as the new age is all about information technology and handling information in the most feasible manner present. As a fact, today’s information media and environment are becoming immensely diverse as there are different cultures and languages that contribute to the knowledge base of the industries. Knowledge consists of two phases 1) explicit and 2) tacit. Explicit knowledge can be acquired easily as it is most often referred to as school based learning whereas the tacit knowledge is really hard to attain as this is an individuals own thinking and cognition. The new Era and Professionals The new information age comprises of digital archives and electronic repositories. Does this mean that the need for catalogers is diminishing? NO, as these can elaborate with their tacit knowledge on how to effectively index an item and extract relevant information from the text to make it a good abstract. This is called as entering/forming the actual Metadata. Metadata means data about data and in this field the catalogers or the information professionals are the key personnel to design it. Thus in creating a system for indexing, cataloging and abstraction there is a vital need of interaction with these professionals as they understand the complexity more than other professionals working on the project itself. It is said that the need of these specialist is not decreasing instead it is increasing as they are required in the design and implementation phase of successful project fulfilling our requirements. This is not it, these professional must also learn the knowledge management concepts and apply the standards effectively. The world is changing rapidly and therefore it an agile competition overall. Each organization requires a perfect strategic edge in order to maintain or improve its clientele. The Web is regarded as the database of databases and in current perspectives it has eased the search criteria for any individual. But the point raised is of quality and quality sources are difficult to find unless you the right to enter into the virtual libraries of this world. There have been many changes in the cataloging business as automation has played an important role and will continue to change the perspectives of cataloging operations. The basic idea of cataloging is to reduce cost and increase retrieval speeds and this can be managed by including the expertise of the relevant information professional at hand. Conclusion We come to the conclusion that the internet has made a strong impact in cataloging, resource description, abstraction and indexing. It has not put a halt to the need for specialist catalogers instead with the current technology at hand it has motivated more to adapt the IT structure and acquire different ways of minimizing search costs and cataloging and these professionals play an important role in developing a better tool for the benefit of the entire internet population. The future of this industry is bright indeed as more need is felt to acquire information on a timely basis. ‘Google’ has helped in this cause a great deal as whenever a user fits in a search phrase it does provide with quality reference links at the side while displaying the actual search results. Now there is a click-stream approach being used and the most visited site is referred more than other scholarly articles. 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