McLeansboro (Ill.) High School librarian Tom McKinnis is charging that more than 2,800 East Side Junior High School library books were miscataloged by library technician Karen Hughes, who has worked in that position for 10 years.
McKinnis told the school board September 25 that he made the discovery while preparing the books for a move to a new Hamilton County Junior/Senior High School. “I haven’t been through every one yet, but most new books that have been cataloged are not consistent with our senior high library or even most college libraries,” he said in the September 28 Mt. Vernon Register-News. “Now I can’t compile the card catalog. I have to create one and reclassify all those books.”
Hughes said McKinnis should change the data on the library cards himself and stop blaming her for the problem. In a letter printed in the October 2 Register-News, Attorney Barry Vaughan, contacted by Hughes following McKinnis’s charges, questioned whether there was but one standard for book cataloging. “If so, whose standard should that be?” he asked. “Should the standard for elementary students be the same for high school or college students?”
Posted October 8, 2001.