SS commentary (CAJ) What I know to be true is indexing for literature and written works has been a very "literal" mess and impossible to work with.
Years ago, you had to apply for access, then everything was on hold for the COVID years, plus years, for unknown reasons, and the LOC emerged as a hot mess bonfire of disordered order. I receive the daily news feed from every section of the library, and the money spent seems excessive for low attendance features, and there seems to be a great disparity of funding for literature and written works.
The jobs posted have been vague, and the job descriptions "just wander about"! I, truthfully, wanted one! We could not get the data feed in any reliable form and "site scraping" resulted in miscatalogued books, a LOC note that it would take a few years to get an ISBN, and just dwindling information or entries.
My hope is they will find their cleaning method speedy, throw some dollars at it, and rehire the workers they need to make the LOC all it should be. As of this week, the feed site is showing comprehensive new instructions on downloading the data: this already a paramount move, and a homerun for quick consumer impressions. This may be the change LOC has needed.
