Category: Cataloguing Careers

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Cataloguing Careers: Harriet Hopkins

Harriet Hopkins

Our Cataloguing Careers feature has returned to the newsletter this issue, with Harriet Hopkins answering five questions on her interest in cataloguing and metadata.

Harriet is one of the speakers in tomorrow’s seminar on Training Matters. She’s also the recipient of CILIP Cymru Wales’s Kathleen Cooks Fund award to obtain cataloguing training for herself and her staff at Bridgend Library. As Library Manager and Strategic Lead: Programming & Promotion at Awen Cultural Trust, cataloguing is only one of her professional interests, but, as she points out in our newsletter and will no doubt re-iterate tomorrow, it was an area of professional practice that she identified early on as a an “elusive skill that no one seemed to talk about.” Her determination to ensure that she and other branch staff “are able to amend a record, or add a thesis” and her perseverance to do so are, quite frankly, awe-inspiring.

It’s thanks to managers like Harriet that cataloguing is not the lost cause in the public library sector that many believed it was becoming only a few years ago. Huge thanks to Harriet for sharing her journey in the Beginning Cataloguing News Cataloguing Careers feature for November 2021.

Cataloguing Careers is one of several features only available to newsletter subscribers. The next newsletter will go out in December, and you can sign up here if you haven’t already: http://tinyletter.com/beginningcataloguing.

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Cataloguing Careers: Natasha Aburrow-Jones

Natasha Aburrow-Jones

“Cataloguing is at the heart of everything that I do, as it is at the heart of any effective library,” says Natasha Aburrow-Jones in her upcoming Cataloguing Careers interview, “If you want your library to work, you have to have a decent catalogue, so that your readers can find what they need.”

We’re really delighted that Natasha has agreed to be interviewed in Beginning Cataloguing Monthly. As the former manager of SUNCAT (the former national union catalogue for serials), she shares three top tips for cataloguing these daunting items as well as updating us on how her background as a cataloguer is helping in her current work as Systems Librarian at the Faculty of Advocates.

Beginning Cataloguing Monthly is free, but available only to subscribers. If you’ve not signed up already, you can do so here. We don’t send any other emails via the list – just one newsletter a month – and we don’t share data with anyone else.

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Cataloguing Careers: Yvonne Lewis

Yvonne Lewis

The lead feature in Beginning Cataloguing Monthly is our series of interviews with people who work or have worked as cataloguers.

This month, we’re delighted to feature our Associate Yvonne Lewis, who is the speaker in our November General Seminar on The Unwritten Book.

Now the longest serving National Trust book curator, Yvonne started out as a graduate trainee at Lambeth Palace Library before completing her MA at UCL. When she started work as a cataloguer, the state of the art was 5″ x 3″ catalogue cards, and in her interview she describes the progress she’s seen, through old-style library management systems and retrospective conversion to the online resources with which we are familiar today.

Beginning Cataloguing Monthly is free, but distributed only to subscribers. If you’re not one yet, you can sign up here: http://tinyletter.com/beginningcataloguing.

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Cataloguing Careers: Emma Booth

We’re really excited about our newsletter, Beginning Cataloguing Monthly, which we’re sending to subscribers next Tuesday and which features a range of exclusive content not available elsewhere on our website, blog, or social media.

The lead feature is our Cataloguing Careers series, in which each month we ask a different person 5 questions about their route into the profession. We are absolutely delighted to feature Emma Booth as our interviewee this month. As well as being E-Resources Metadata Specialist at the University of Manchester Library, Emma is the author of the National Acquisitions Group’s report Quality of Shelf-ready Metadata, which is our Metadata Must-read for September.

The Metadata Must-read is one of the Beginnings Bookshelves, which also consists of a Classic Cataloguer, an Associate’s Choice of leisure reading, and a Body in the Library – a new book selected from our project researching crime fiction set in libraries. It’s one that we received as an Advanced Reader Copy, so is different from those on the @bodiesinthelibrary Instagram.

Beginning Cataloguing Monthly also includes a Typo Tip-off and a Metadata Muddle, for which you can suggest solutions and possibly win a free place at one of our upcoming seminars.

All this alongside listings of our events and recent publications, and a newsletter loyalty freebie or discount.

Apart from the listings, all Beginning Cataloguing Monthly content is exclusive to newsletter subscribers. Sign up before Tuesday to receive the first issue.

Image: Emma Booth’s profile picture on Twitter and LinkedIn. Reproduced with permission.

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