Beginning Cataloguing Online School – Page 4

Available from Monday 28 September 2020, 20-25 hours of online learning you can complete in your own timescale: reading, watching presentations, and undertaking some cataloguing practice.

There’s an introductory video here, and an outline of the curriculum here.

Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B )) is the international standard for rare books cataloguing, created and maintained by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). It is freely available on their website.

In the days of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules DCRM(B) was more detailed than AACR2, and so many libraries used AACR2 for their general collection and DCRM(B) for rare books. With the introduction of Resource Description and Access (RDA), general cataloguing has become more detailed and now, with the new version of RDA’s needing application profiles to be created before implementation, small libraries already using DCRM(B) are beginning simply to extend its use to their general collections. There is a helpful Statement on DCRM and RDA from the Bibliographic Standards Committee responsible for DCRM here, and an update on the DCRM RDA Revision here.

The Beginning Cataloguing course Beginning Cataloguing Rare Books: An Introduction to DCRM(B) is entirely independent of RBMS. It’s based on their publicly available materials at https://rbms.info/dcrm/dcrmb/ and our own teaching examples. We set it up to meet the needs of our existing clients and are opening it up to anyone new to rare books cataloguing.

Thanks to our existing clients and newsletter subscribers, whom we told about it yesterday, places are already flying off the shelf, and it looks like it will be our most popular course so far.

Note: Beginning Bibliography students should check their email for a discount coupon code.

18 August 202020 August 2020

Free Presentation on Borders and Compartments

Updating presentations in the old Youtube channel I used with students in a previous role, and moving content to our Teachable page, you can see this video on quasi-facsimile of borders and compartments.

12 August 202029 August 2020

Welcoming Ash Green

Really delighted to be welcoming Ash Green as a Beginning Cataloguing Associate.

Ash is well-known in the library community, both as a librarian and an activist. They’re currently working on their first event, combining their creative and technology skills and interests.

With over twenty years of experience, Ash has worked in Cataloguing, Classification, Acquisitions and, of course, Systems. Recently they have been involved in games development and organising and speaking at conferences on tech issues. They’ve mentored with the International Catrobat Association and have co-authored conference papers focused on the online digital reading experience as part of the Read, Watch, Play and Read With Me networks.

Recently their LGBTQ+ Lives Online web archiving collaboration with The British Library and UK Web Archive was launched. Ash is the CILIP LGBTQ+ Network Steering Group lead for the project.

You can find out more about Ash on their profile page.

Watch this space for announcements of their upcoming projects.

7 August 202010 August 2020

Beginning Bibliography Scholarship Winner

The Library building, St Peter's Churchyard, Maldon

We are delighted that Dr Helen Kemp has been awarded the scholarship for Beginning Bibliography this year. Helen is the Librarian of ILA member Thomas Plume’s Library.

She is also a Community Fellow in the Department of History at The University of Essex, Special Collections Champion at the Albert Sloman Library, and Maddock Research Fellow 2019-2020 at Marsh’s Library, Dublin.

Thomas Plume’s Library, in Maldon, Essex, was founded in 1704, and holds over 8,000 early printed books and pamphlets. Helen writes,

4 August 20205 August 2020

Beginning Bibliography Begins

We were really happy to welcome participants to Beginning Bibliography, whose first unit materials went live yesterday.

With books stranded in my old office, my London Library membership really came into its own in preparing the course – first time using postal delivery. As usual, their service was superb.

I’ve also acquired some new old books, ordering online from various booksellers, who have similarly been quick and efficient in posting out. You can’t teach material culture without the materials, that’s for sure!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDdYueRJUN7/

3 August 202016 March 2021

Event Report: Beginning Copy Cataloguing

In her blog post on Concetta La Spada’s July Masterclass, Jennie-Claire Crate, University of Kent, reflects that there is always something new to learn in the world of metadata.

I started working in academic libraries 17 years ago, moving into my first metadata role after 3 years. It is well over a decade since I graduated from UCL’s Information Science course, and in that time I’ve managed a metadata team, written papers, delivered training on cataloguing, and presented at conferences. What would I find of interest in a beginner’s class on copy cataloguing?

31 July 202024 August 2020

Beginning Bibliography: Five Favourite Texts

Beginning Bibliography begins on Monday. We don’t set any reading that can’t be accessed for free, so this month’s Beginnings article highlights my top five book purchases in the field.

1. Bowers for the Detail. Love it or loathe it, you cannot ignore Bowers’s tome, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1949). You would imagine bibliographers to be obsessed with detail, and Bowers was certainly that. I first read this book in 1990 and in thirty years, I’ve not found a single challenge in bibliographic description for which I have not been able to find an answer within it. If only he had been able to write in an engaging, encouraging style, I’d go so far as to say we would need no other book on how to describe a printed book. Alas! He conveys all of the detail but none of the love, and I have met some very distinguished bibliographers who have confided to me they have never been able to read his Principles from cover to cover, only dip in and out of it as and when required. Copies are available from Betterworld Books and second-hand from Abe and Abe UK.

29 July 202030 July 2020

Currently Booking: Bibliography, eBooks and Masterclass Recordings

It just occurred to me that while we’re still working on the format for our newsletter and, not wanting to overwhelm the excellent LIS-UKBIBS mailing list with too many emails, it might be useful to provide you with a snapshot of what’s currently open for booking on the Beginning Cataloguing Online School, and provide you with a sneaky peek of what’s under development and coming soon:

29 July 2020

Why Offer Scholarships?

28 July 20205 August 2020

ILA Scholarship Place

The Independent Libraries Association has accepted our offer of a free place for one of their members on Beginning Bibliography, and we’re very grateful to their committee for administering the award.

If you work in a library that is a member of ILA, you have until 3 August to apply. The text here is a copy of their news release on the scholarship place: