In Defense of Catalogers

If you are a regular reader of The Dean Files, and specifically my posts here about my library experience, you know that I love cataloging. I might be one of, oh, a hundred people in library schools across the country right now that would say that. My love of cataloging comes from my belief that cataloging is the key interface between a library's patrons and the information resources a library holds. I was re-reading this blog post this morning:

Reading Tea Leaves, by Diane Hillmann

Ms. Hillmann's post reminded me of a few topics that have been floating in the back of my mind for a while. She points out that many libraries are now outsourcing the creation of new catalog records to their vendors (YBP comes to mind). Ignoring the quality of the metadata in these records (which is spotty), using vendors to create your catalog records raises two concerns to my young librarian mind. If you have no cataloging conversant staff, how will you confirm that the metadata in these records is correct? How will you effectively adapt these records to fit the needs of your users, as well as local cataloging practices? Only staff trained in and proficient with cataloging will be able to accomplish these tasks effectively.

Furthermore, research libraries rarely acquire items solely from booksellers and vendors that provide records with the items. Take the Carter, for example. The museum receives many ephemeral items each week, and these items filter down to the library. Of course, many of them are quite small and end up in the artist bio files or the subject files, but there are usually several worthy of cataloging and integration into the library collection. Vendors certainly won't catalog these items for us, and records rarely exist for us to copy. Let me share with you an example I cataloged at the Carter last week, a small catalog from an exhibition of still-life photographs in McKinney:

TR140.D433 A4 2006 (Main Stacks)
DeBus, Charles.
Charles DeBus : still life series.
[McKinney, Tex. : The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 2006]



With a little assistance from Mary Jane and Sam, I created the entirety of that record - an original record - that did not exist previously. Not only does this serve the library's users, it also enables patrons of other libraries to request the item from the Carter via ILL. Based on what I have experienced, and conversations with Mary Jane, these smaller items are among the most frequently requested items. Many libraries do not keep these items, and if they do, they generally don't catalog them. The Carter frequently is the only holding library for many of these items.

In addition, the creation of original records increases access to these items in all OCLC member libraries, through copy cataloging. Smaller libraries might not have the staff with the same level of cataloging and metadata expertise as the library that created the original record, but these libraries can copy the record, or update their holdings, to indicate they have that item as well. However, this is not possible without a broad array of librarians with cataloging skills.

Furthermore, many libraries acquire and catalog older items, many of which conform to older cataloging standards. Library staff conversant with cataloging will be far better equipped to examine and interact with these records, as well as being better-equipped to select the appropriate record for the item.

Beyond metadata generation, though, is the fundamental activity of interfacing with a library's collection: searching the catalog. Creating, or being conversant with, the metadata in the catalog will help librarians to bend that tool better to their purposes. Knowledge of specific practices and terms will help librarians to search very specifically. If much of the metadata is generated from outside the library and is unedited, library staff will have little idea as to how to use that metadata to search optimally in the catalog. Cataloging has certainly sharpened my skills as a searcher. In addition, if the library staff blindly uploads vendor created records, or copy catalogs without careful examination, the resulting metadata will be wildly inconsistent, further hampering effective searching.

So what purpose does a cataloger play in the "library of today?" Good catalogers are intimately familiar with the needs of their users, cataloging policies of their library, and more broadly best practices in cataloging. They are key to improving access to the collection, and tailoring the catalog to the needs of the users of the library. Catalogers incorporate unusual and different items into the collection, increasing access not only for the users of their library, but to the users of libraries on the whole through ILL and copy cataloging.

It seems odd to me that I feel compelled to write something defending catalogers. Cataloging (and more broadly metadata generation) seems to be a central skill for librarians, one that should be a foregone conclusion for all librarians to have some skill in working with. In my conversations with fellow library students, though, this seems not to be the case. I don't thin cataloging defines our profession, but it is an integral skill to serving our users well.

What role do you see catalogers playing in the library of now, and also the library of the future?