Beyond Your Department: Uniting Catalogers
eLearning
By the end of the session, attendees will form a community of technical services professionals. Fighting against the perceptions of catalogers as isolated or antisocial can be a challenge, especially when many institutions only have one librarian assigned to catalog. Further, many of these catalogers hold multiple roles and may not originally be catalogers, resulting in a higher frequency of flawed records and inaccessible OPACs. We can address these problems by creating cataloging communities, which will improve the quality of their work, thereby improving the usability of catalogs for patrons.This presentation will provide examples and opportunities to connect catalogers, informed by the presenters’ initiatives in creating a statewide cataloger community. These opportunities to build community will be modeled with one-on-one interactions, cold emailing, listservs, workgroups, roundtables, connecting with existing resources, etc. The session will create connections among catalogers, with the larger goals of improving access to library materials and sharing metadata best practices. The formation of these communities will encourage more librarians to participate in metadata projects, making the field a more welcoming place to learn and work. These communities will also empower librarians to champion technical services roles and positions.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Articulate the importance of creating community amongst catalogers and metadata specialists;
- Form larger connections with other catalogers and metadata specialists within their communities; and
- Prioritize collaborative metadata projects and the sharing of best practices for improved records.
Who Should Attend: Technical service employees, ranging from official catalogers to anyone who has cataloging responsibilities in their libraries.
Presenters:
Amy Banks is a cataloging librarian at the Utah State Library. Amy has a B.A. in English Education and an M.A. in English from Brigham Young University. She also has an MSLIS from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Amy started her career in education, teaching secondary English classes as an English teacher and writing classes as an adjunct professor. She shifted into librarianship as an Adult Services public librarian, and now enjoys cataloging for bookmobile and rural libraries across the state of Utah.
India-Bleu Niehoff is a cataloging librarian at the Utah State Library. A double-Badger, India has both a BA and her MLIS from UW-Madison.
Presented By:
