Catalogers on the Reference Desk

To start the post this week, I would like to start with a quote from Autocat, the cataloger’s discussion listserv:

There is no question that technical services librarians who serve on the reference desk often come back with a great idea or two for improving entries in the catalog. Where the unfairness lies is that reference librarians are not expected to do the reverse. A better knowledge of cataloging would be a huge benefit to reference librarians and yet, while you see many technical services positions advertised that require evening and weekend hours on the reference desk, how many reference positions do you see advertised that require cataloging knowledge and experience? I am willing to bet that if you go to a library jobs site right now and check the first few reference position openings, you are unlikely to see even one that requires a contribution in technical services. It's a double standard. I suspect that this is the reason why many good catalogers will not apply for positions that require reference work.

OCLC WorldCat Quality Report

My job as a cataloger (as you probably know) requires me to use OCLC’s WorldCat daily, through the Connexion Client. For you intrepid readers that skimmed that jargon-heavy first sentence, allow me to explain. WorldCat is the largest bibliographic database in the world - meaning that it has more catalog records in it than any other database. It is where I start when I catalog a book, as well as where I do the majority of my work. As we are an OCLC member library, we are expected to contribute records (and update our holdings) for every item we have in the library collection. As you can imagine, in the course of cataloging items in the collection, I come into contact with records of a wide array of quality, from very minimal level records, to records that (to me) seem to have too much information in them. There is truly no standard level of quality in the WorldCat database, and even records indicated to be of the best quality are often not exactly that. When my colleague Penny Baker at the Clark posted this tweet recently (in her usual humorous style), I came across OCLC’s report on the quality of records in the WorldCat database.

In the Shadow of Lincoln

I’ve always had things that I read or discover in passing that pique my interest and push me into reading extensively about a subject. Among my more recent interests in this vein has been Abraham Lincoln. My interest first came when I read the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin shortly after it was released. It was a fascinating book - one that changed my view of this incredible man and his presidency. I subsequently read both of the books by William Lee Miller about Lincoln (Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography, and President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman) and these in turn prompted me to read the two-volume set of Lincoln’s collected writings. I really wanted to “watch” the man develop as both a thinker and a writer. Part of me hoped (and still does) that some of his writing style will rub off on me, as I find his style very eloquent and succinct - something rare in any day and age, especially ours. His legacies as a president, a man, and a writer cast very long shadows over Americans in almost any walk of life.

Preservation and Access

Despite what you might think, or learn in library school, librarianship is a profession of paradoxes and challenges. Many times librarians and other individuals outside the profession talk at length about new technologies and trends that present librarians with challenges externally. However, there are challenges inherent in the job we do as librarians, and one in particular is balancing the mutually exclusive demands of preservation and access.

Why I Love the 903

At the outset I feel obligated to tell you that this should be my last post about cameras for a while. I plan on resuming my usual rambling next week, but I feel as though after my last post about cameras, I left the door open to talking about my newest camera - my 903SWC. I’ve run several rolls through this camera now, and have the results back (see the slideshow below!) to confirm my suspicions about the camera, as well as having used it enough to see if it’s “for me.”

A Leg Up on Information

The digital communications technology that was once imagined as a universe of transparent and perpetual illumination, in which cancerous falsehoods would perish beneath a saturation bombardment of irradiating data, has instead generated a much murkier and verification-free habitat where a google-generated search will deliver an electronic page on which links to lies and lunacy appear in identical format as those to truths and sanity. But why should we ever have assumed that technology and reason would be mutually self-reinforcing? The quickest visit to say, a site called Stormfront will persuade you that the demonic is in fact the best customer of the electronic. pp. 86-87

Schama, Simon. 2010. Scribble, scribble, scribble: writings on politics, ice cream, Churchill, and my mother. New York: Ecco.

Simon Schama’s most recent book had many thought-provoking quotes in it - and this one in particular got me to thinking about the information that we share and consume online.

Cameras: A Litany

Last week’s post loosely traced my development as a man and my use of the square frame as a photographer. I intentionally edited out any real mention of specific cameras, as I thought it might be interesting to do a second post about my development and my choice of camera. Before I start, I want to share with you that I have mixed feelings about this post. I think it’s interesting, but as I have gotten older, what a photographer uses as a camera has mattered less and less to me. I love talking cameras with people, but the camera that a photographer uses is no indicator as to whether or not they are good at photographing. I remember on Monhegan that a woman had an M9 that she was reading the manual for when she wasn’t taking photos. At least she is learning, I suppose - but I feel that that is a nice illustration to my point - the camera does not make a photographer. And now I am going to put that out of mind and begin my narrative.