ALCTS CCS Education, Training, and Recruitment for Cataloging

Minutes - June 16, 2001

Members present: Beth Picknally Camden (chair), Michele Behr, Diane Boehr, Dominique Coulombe, Lynne Howorth, Michelle Turvey
Members absent: Margaret Prentice-Hecker, Rita Knight, Andrea Stamm
Guests: Susan Morris, Linda Stubbs, Cathy Gerhart, Maria Leffler, Margaret Lu, Robyn Gage, Helen Larr, Elizabeth McLean

The meeting was called to order at 2 PM. Members and guests introduced themselves.

Beth Camden announced that she will continue as committee chair for two more years. It is hoped that having a stable chair will provide for more continuity in the committee's projects.

Minutes from the Midwinter meeting were approved with corrections.

Mentoring Pilot Program

B. Camden reported on the current status of the mentoring pilot program. There was an overwhelming response to the request for mentors and mentees. We currently have 40 mentors and 50 mentees. All have been contacted, but final matchups have not yet been made. In retrospect, the matchups would be much easier if we had a Web-based registration form, which could eliminate a lot of the back and forth e-mails. If the Web form could be directly connected to a database program that would be even better. It would also be useful to have all the supporting documents on the Web to refer people to.

There was some question as to whether we could put this type of form on the ALCTS website in a timely manner, or would it be possible to have it on another website, perhaps with a link from the CETRC page?

B. Camden also pointed out that she does not have any electronic copies of the final approved versions of the supporting documentation, only paper copies. She will try and get the electronic version from the former chair K. Herlihy.

The assessment of the original four mentor/mentee pairs was never done. It was felt that at this point it might be best to just go ahead and make the new matchups and then do evaluations. Liaisons need to be reminded to keep up with their responsibilities to the mentor/mentee pairs.

Originally the committee planned to send prospective mentors copies of the guide, responsibilities, bibliography and sample job announcements. It was felt that it was no longer necessary to include individual job announcements in this packet, just point to some job listing resources on the Web or in a journal. M. Turvey will look for the best online resources, preferably one that includes a sort for Technical Services. D. Boehr will go through the job announcements she has collected over the past six months and forward relevant highlights to M. Turvey.

We discussed what should be going to the mentees. Some prospective mentees seem to be expecting more formal procedures than the committee envisioned. We may need to develop a fact sheet for mentees so they know what to expect from the project.

It was suggested that in the future, we put out the call for mentors a few months before we put out the call for mentees, so a pool is available as needed.

M. Behr raised the point that while the large applicant pool clearly shows the need for such a program, was it really something the committee could handle or should some other group do it? We agreed that this was something we wanted to try, and that we were still in the pilot program test phase. Until we actually have enough pairs established to follow through and evaluate we cannot do a valid assessment of the program. In retrospect we probably should have mentioned a limit on the number of applicants in the initial call for participants, since 40 pairs may be too many for a pilot.

Automating a lot of the routine functions, such as the sign-up and evaluation forms would relieve the burden on a single person. Establishing a regular routine, with regular dates where calls for mentors and mentees went out, as well as liaison follow up will also make things go more smoothly.

Because of the distribution of potential mentees and mentors, some matches will need to be long distance ones. The evaluations should study whether person-to-person contact is more effective that distance relations, and make any necessary adjustments.

Timetable

July 2001: B. Camden will provide a list of all the mentors and mentees to the committee for review.

Late Aug.-Early Sept.2001: Matches will be made and liaisons will contact the mentor/mentee pairs, providing them with all necessary documentation either in print form, or ideally on a Website.

Mid Nov. 2001: Liaisons will do some informal follow-up on the pairs, so we can do some evaluation at Midwinter.

March 2002: Send formal survey documents to each pair.

June 2002: Tabulate survey results for ALA Annual.

L. Howorth volunteered to set up necessary Web forms and a database to handle sign-up and evaluation forms. B. Camden will check on ALA/ALCTS requirements for such a Website.

ALCTS Strategic Plan

The Committee next discussed the ALCTS Strategic Plan and how CETRC fits into this long-term plan. CETRC is specifically mentioned in 3 of the 6 goals outlined by ALCTS. Under the Best Practices goal, CETRC should plan to present a program on the mentoring plan and its progress at ALA Annual 2003.

Under the Education goal, CETRC should work with PCC and the CCS Executive Committee to develop continuing education programs for catalogers to be available 2003-2005.

Under the Professional Development Goal, CETRC should develop and maintain a mentoring program and evaluate its effectiveness in 2002.

Post-MLS Certification Program

The ALA Committee on Education has proposed the adoption of a voluntary post-MLS certification program, which would provide certifications in different areas of librarianship for librarians who took a certain number of advanced or continuing education courses and passed an exam. This would be administered by a new body to be established outside of ALA (because of current tax laws).

CETRC members had some qualms about this proposal. While such a certification might be valuable, if administrators don't buy in, it will not have much value. What incentive is there for librarians to participate; would certified librarians get higher salaries, better positions? Administering such a program could be very cumbersome. What would such a certificate actually mean? Would it be more of a moneymaking racket for course designers and certifiers, rather than providing quality continuing education? What would be the cost to librarians to take the courses and the certifying exams? Does it increase professionalization? What happens to the concept of the MLS as a terminal degree? Committee members wondered what problem such a certification program was supposed to be addressing.

Continuing Education

L. Howorth reported that the ALCTS Education Committee had identified the need for training in the following areas and asked for our reactions:

Workshops on specific material types
Series authorities
Name authorities
Subject cataloging and classification and related authorities
Acquisition skills
Workshops for new/old catalogers
Use and application of genre headings

M. Behr pointed out that this was a very traditional list of skills and we needed to be thinking more broadly and offer workshops in metadata, knowledge management, Web navigation, and HTML coding. She felt that distance learning or Web based courses might be best for training in special formats cataloging, since these courses are usually only offered annually or biannually, rather than when people may actually need to take them.

Recruitment

The group then spent some time brainstorming about recruitment. The problem of cataloger recruitment was being addressed at at least 3 meetings being held during this ALA meeting. What did we feel CETRC could do in these areas? B. Camden said she'd done an informal search of the AUTOCAT archives and discovered that in the past year she found 50-60 job postings that had been reopened. It would be interesting to compare the original posting with later job descriptions and see if the required qualifications had been changed, or the salary increased.

A guest who was a recent graduate from library school, confirmed our suspicions that students are discouraged from taking cataloging classes. She was also dismayed to find that most jobs seemed to require 2-3 years of experience or a second master's degree. The committee agreed that while larger institutions may be willing to hire directly out of library school and take the time to train a new cataloger, smaller institutions cannot afford to do this. If catalogers need to self-train, what will this do to the quality of work 5-10 years down the road when they transfer to other positions?

Students with no cataloging experience should be encouraged to take internships to gain experience. Mentors in our pilot project should try and help make their mentees more marketable by teaching them to write good resumes and cover letters highlighting their language expertise and intern experience where applicable.

Our greatest recruiting potential is to grow our own, pulling from our existing students, interns and paraprofessionals. However, some pointed out that it is often difficult for a paraprofessional to make the change to professional staff while staying within the same organization. After getting an MLS they may need to be willing to relocate to get a professional position.

It was suggested that there might be value in posting on the Web the Knowledge, Skills, Aptitudes document which was written by the committee several years ago, describing the knowledge and skills needed in today's environment by an entry level cataloger. Other suggestions for recruitment of new catalogers would be working with COLT or NMRT. Of course, our mentoring program is also a recruitment tool.

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