The National Acquisitions Group’s QuickStart Cataloguing session for public library workers is now fully booked.
The recording of the hour-long training will be available in the members’ area of the NAG website after the event.
And remember, NAG membership is free at the moment for the public library sector ….
Many thanks to Jennie Hillyard for approaching me for the National Acquisitions Group’s programme of online events.
Really looking forward to delivering 2 Quickstart Cataloguing sessions. The first is an introduction to cataloguing for people working in public libraries who come across books that don’t arrive shelf-ready with a pre-made set of metadata.
Note that membership of NAG is currently FREE for public library staff, so do join up to qualify for the member discount and also all the other benefits NAG offers.
Beginning Cataloguing always offers a discounted rate for organisations that support heritage professionals, and I’m particularly pleased to receive this commission from NAG, whose recent report on shelf-ready metadata (authored by Emma Booth) has been such a great contribution to our understanding of cataloguers’ and their institutions’ needs.
As lockdown continues to ease, I’m grateful to Yvonne Lewis for this testimonial from the bespoke training I designed and delivered to staff at The National Trust.
“Anne designed a day’s cataloguing training for the National Trust. She worked with a small group of hand-picked property staff with considerable experience of object cataloguing on our bespoke library and museum system. Anne provided workbooks to take them through the fundamental principles behind book cataloguing and basic MARC fields. Everyone also worked through several examples, with a few tricky ones thrown in to show how judgement can still be required when dealing with your institutions needs from the catalogue.
The team had a lovely time on the day. Many questions were asked and answered. Anne also provided an element of post-training support to deal with those odd questions which always come up once you’ve left the building. Using the new trainees as fully as we would have liked has been paused due to COVID-19. We are hoping to re-start cataloguing projects slowly in 2021/22 as circumstance permit. Once we have seen how successfully the training has been, we will be considering when and how to extend the programme.”
The National Trust has its own bespoke library management system and catalogues using AACR2 in MARC, across both modern and pre-1950 books. I’m grateful to Yvonne not only for this testimonial, but also for briefing me fully on their LMS, which can only be accessed on-site, and supplying me with screenshots of the entry screens to add to the workbooks. I’m also grateful to HQ staff for printing the workbooks so that I did not have to carry them into Central London alongside my suitcase of example books for trainees to catalogue.
Bookings for in-person training is brisk – so far we have both paid and pro bono workshops booked in through to April 2022, and we are open to more. You can book a discovery meeting at https://calendly.com/annew-discoverymeeting or contact info@beginningcataloguing.com if you want to start a discussion.
Yvonne’s testimonial is available on linkedin (scroll down to “Recommendations”. Note: an odd glitch has me showing up as a client of Yvonne’s rather than the other way round).
With lockdown set to ease, I’m grateful to Seema Rampersad for this testimonial for the Beginning Cataloguing workshop on cataloguing in non-RDA environments at SLA Europe 2019.
“At the SLA Europe Conference held at Cambridge University in 2019, Anne’s workshop was chosen from proposals and was featured on an important part of our conference programme. The workshop was entitled – ‘“RDA? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Any RDA”: Back to the Future in Cataloguing in Special Libraries Outside the International Standards’ – which was very well-prepared, insightful and engaging as Anne arranged teams and used interesting shaped and colour dices. Her training technique and style demonstrated the theory, as well as the practical learning aspects of the workshop. I came away understanding information practices and standards better…even though I have experience in the library and information field! The use of the dices made the conference workshop remarkable, very memorable and fun for the group.”
Many thanks to Seema for her kind words, to the SLA Europe Conference Committee for selecting the workshop, and to Newnham College for its excellent hosting.
Bookings for in-person training is brisk – so far we have both paid and pro bono workshops booked in through to April 2022, and we are open to more. You can book a discovery meeting at https://calendly.com/annew-discoverymeeting or contact info@beginningcataloguing.com if you want to start a discussion.
Seema’s testimonial is available on linkedin (scroll down to “Recommendations”).
As the UK has a roadmap to ease lockdown, so in-person training can resume, I’m grateful to have received this testimonial from Catherine Chorley for some RDA training for CILIP SW in 2019.
“Anne led a training workshop on cataloguing using RDA standards for members of the CILIP South West Member Network in April 2019. As Chair of the Member Network’s Committee, I specifically sought Anne’s service …
The interest in this event was vast, and there were many email enquiries both preceding and following the event about the possibility of a repeat event, or for Anne to provide her training other regional member networks. This was largely due to Anne’s accessible and approachable teaching style, together with the comprehensive programme she put together to give attendees an introduction to cataloguing and the use of MARC/RDA.
What was evident was the great deal of care and forethought that had gone into the preparation for the event, with different cataloguing examples and exercises having been chosen to address a diversity of cataloguing quandaries and challenges.
From feedback gathered after the event, it was evident that attendees appreciated the opportunity to learn from Anne’s expertise … Comments mentioned being able to understand RDA as a direct result of the training, and the value of training in a frequently-neglected area of librarianship in many practitioners’ workplaces. Attendees also valued the depth of Anne’s teaching – they valued the knowledge about the rationale underpinning cataloguing and classification protocols and found this helped them in applying the theory in practice. This was further aided by the blend of theory teaching and practical application that Anne provided throughout the day …
In answer to the feedback question on what was enjoyable about the event, one attendee succinctly remarked, ‘All of it!’.”
Many thanks to Catherine for her kind words, and to the CILIP SW participants for a really fun day in Bristol. I hope to be able to get back to the South West when the world opens up again!
Catherine’s full testimonial is available on linkedin (scroll down to “Recommendations”).
At the end of 2020 I ran a workshop focused on creating digital classification games as part of Beginning Cataloguing’s online course offer. During the session I showed the participants how they could create a prototype classification game on their Android devices from a template game I had created. I had intended showing iphone users how they could do the same, but I discovered quite close to running the workshop that the app I was using on my Android device wasn’t fully compatible with the iphone version of the same app. However, I’m now looking at converting the app so that iphone users can run it too.
I used Pocket Code for the session. This is a block-based coding tool for Android devices and iphones, that allows you to create games and other mobile apps for free, without having to type in lines of programming text. I designed the prototype game loosely around the retro style video game, Pong. In this instance the player is presented with an image on the screen, and they have to tap on the corresponding Dewey Classification number bouncing around the screen to score a point. I find that interactive activities make learning easier for me. I also like things to be fun. So, that’s why I created the prototype game.
Through the session I showed the participants:
I highlighted some of the behind-the-scenes coding. But I tried to avoid going into a lot of detail, as I wanted to focus on the key areas they could adapt to create a game that would support classification training within their own library services.
The idea isn’t to replace classification training with simple games, but to help users get to know classification identifiers or numbers in a scheme for a library they use, in a playful way.
At the end of the session I wanted the participants to be able to go away with a few key thoughts:
It was fun running the session online. I enjoyed both introducing the concept of a digital library game to the participants, and the discussions it generated during the session. Thanks to everyone who attended, and Anne for her support before and during the session.
Ash Green
As shared with our newsletter subscribers yesterday, Ash Green’s first Beginning Cataloguing workshop is open for booking.
Join Ash for 2 hours of interactive learning through play using the Pocket Code app and a prototype game to explore the potential for gamifying learning about your library’s classification structure to help users learn it.
Continue reading “New Workshop Led by Ash Green”