Beyond Your Department: Uniting Catalogers
By the end of the session,
attendees will form a community of technical services professionals.
Fighting against the perceptions of catalogers as isolated or antisocial
can be a challenge, especially when many institutions only have one
librarian assigned to catalog. Further, many of these catalogers hold
multiple roles and may not originally be catalogers, resulting in a
higher frequency of flawed records and inaccessible OPACs. We can
address these problems by creating cataloging communities, which will
improve the quality of their work, thereby improving the usability of
catalogs for patrons.This presentation will provide examples and
opportunities to connect catalogers, informed by the presenters’
initiatives in creating a statewide cataloger community. These
opportunities to build community will be modeled with one-on-one
interactions, cold emailing, listservs, workgroups, roundtables,
connecting with existing resources, etc. The session will create
connections among catalogers, with the larger goals of improving access
to library materials and sharing metadata best practices. The formation
of these communities will encourage more librarians to participate in
metadata projects, making the field a more welcoming place to learn and
work. These communities will also empower librarians to champion
technical services roles and positions.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the session, attendees will be able to:
- articulate the importance of creating community amongst catalogers and metadata specialists;
- form larger connections with other catalogers and metadata specialists within their communities; and
- prioritize collaborative metadata projects and the sharing of best practices for improved records.
Who Should Attend: Technical service employees, ranging from official catalogers to anyone who has cataloging responsibilities in their libraries.
Presenter:
Amy Banks is a cataloging librarian at the
Utah State Library. Amy has a B.A. in English Education and an M.A. in
English from Brigham Young University. She also has an MSLIS from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Amy started her career in
education, teaching secondary English classes as an English teacher and
writing classes as an adjunct professor. She shifted into librarianship
as an Adult Services public librarian, and now enjoys cataloging for
bookmobile and rural libraries across the state of Utah.
India-Bleu Niehoff is a cataloging librarian at the Utah State Library. A double-Badger, India has both a BA and her MLIS from UW-Madison.
Tech Requirements