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 – Harriet Hopkins, Awen Cultural Trust.
TYPO TIPOFF
Do you need to manouvre the oeuvres on your catalogue after several upgrades? With thanks to @zemkat’s tweet on “uvres” for prompting me to have a look for its occurrences on WorldCat.
A hiatus in receipt of galleys for new library-set crime novels coincides neatly with requests from 3 readers for recommendations of classic bodies in the library.
Cataloguer Catch-up – highlights from our social media this month.
Seminars – Thanks to the generosity of seminar attendees last year (our first year), we are able to offer this year’s seminars on a “pay what you can” basis. This means that if you can’t afford CPD at the moment, you can come for free – no questions asked. If you can afford to pay £6 or £12, we’ll use your money to pay for next year’s seminars, and so on and so forth into the future. Some seminars will be recorded and available for one month after the event – please check individual pages for details.
Cataloguing Quandary? Launched at the request of clients who need to be able to book fixed-price very bespoke training, whether it’s a question about AACR2, RDA, DCRM or about the business of cataloguing (advocacy, training opportunities, career development) or, if you’re just looking for a confidential sounding board for your work project(s), the Cataloguing Office Hour aims to provide a low-cost, easy-to-access consultancy service: https://beginningcataloguing.teachable.com/p/anne-welsh-office-hour
Cataloguer Catch-up – highlights from our social media this month.
Seminars – Thanks to the generosity of seminar attendees last year (our first year), we are able to offer this year’s seminars on a “pay what you can” basis. This means that if you can’t afford CPD at the moment, you can come for free – no questions asked. If you can afford to pay £6 or £12, we’ll use your money to pay for next year’s seminars, and so on and so forth into the future. Some seminars will be recorded and available for one month after the event – please check individual pages for details.
This month’s Beginning Cataloguing Monthly has just been sent to subscribers.
CONTENTS
BEGINNINGS BOOKSHELVES
Metadata Must-read – Shawne D. Miksa, ‘Cataloging Principles and Objectives: History and Development’, Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, published online 22 February 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2021.1883173.
METADATA MUDDLE– Last chance to enter the current competition.
BEGINNING CATALOGUING LISTINGS
Cataloguer Catch-up – highlights from our social media this month.
Seminars – Helen Williams on ‘From Cataloguer to Manager’ (with 50% off code for BCM subscribers); Jacqui Grainger on ‘Unpacking My Library’ (with 50% off code for BCM subscribers). See all current seminars at https://beginningcataloguing.teachable.com/courses/category/seminars.
Metadata Must-read – Greta Bahnemann, Michael Carroll, Paul Clough, Mario Einaudi, Chatham Ewing, Jeff Mixter, Jason Roy, Holly Tomren, Bruce Washburn, and Elliot Williams, Transforming Metadata into Linked Data to Improve Digital Collection Discoverability: A CONTENTdm Pilot Project. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research, 2021, https://doi.org/10.25333/fzcv-0851.
Associate’s Choice – Yvonne Lewis reviews three books she read over the festive season.
METADATA MUDDLE– The challenges of an artist’s book.
BEGINNING CATALOGUING LISTINGS
Publications – Articles written since the December’s BCM.
Cataloguer Catch-up – highlights from our social media this month.
Seminars – Dr Katharine Schopflin on Organisational Information (with 50% off code for BCM subscribers); Dr Karen Limper-Herz on German Bookbinders in 18th and 19th Century London; Helen Williams on the move From Cataloguer to Manager. (See all current seminars at https://beginningcataloguing.teachable.com/courses/category/seminars).
“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.
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