RDA, or Resource Description and Access, is the successor to AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, second edition), the cataloging system developed nearly 50 years ago for the creation of card catalog records of print materials. The diversity and nature of library holdings has of course evolved since then, and by the turn of the millennium there … Continue reading Catalog Locally, Share Globally
Access language—subject headings, naming terms, and search terms—reflect the values, priorities, and assumptions of their creators, and often demean or pathologize marginalized groups. The complexity of solving these issues—if they are solvable—was explored in “What’s in a name?: LGBTQ+ and Latinx perspectives on access terminology—challenges and solutions,” on Saturday, June 26, as part of the … Continue reading What’s in a Naming Term?
Tired of the delays, some librarians have taken matters into their own hands by making the change in their own catalogs, without waiting for LC to take the lead. Communicating inclusion Two early adopters of the change: Sol López, technical services manager at the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) at University of New … Continue reading Conscientious Cataloging
Camille Callison, Indigenous strategies librarian at University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, commenced the American Indian Library Association President’s Program “Honoring and Respecting Relationship: Rethinking Library Praxis” June 25 at ALA Virtual by introducing herself as member of the Tahltan Nation and recapping some of the racist and problematic actions Canada has inflicted upon Indigenous people. … Continue reading Decolonizing Knowledge
In 1970, I was working in book receipts at Boston Public Library and just beginning to consider library school when I expressed an interest in cataloging during a coffee break with colleagues. Bill Crowe, who became dean of University of Kansas Libraries, suggested Cataloging USA, by Paul S. Dunkin, published by the American Library Association … Continue reading A Librarian’s Good-Bye
Librarians from the Philippines, Canada, and the United States discussed their research on the barriers to accessing indigenous materials, ideas to modify metadata and subject headings, and obstacles to implementing new cataloging and classification systems. Cristina Villanueva, librarian at the University of the Philippines Baguio, presented her findings on classifying and indexing Philippine indigenous materials, … Continue reading Removing Barriers to Indigenous Knowledge
Today when we say “technology,” it is often shorthand for “computer technology.” Of course this is not the only technology in our lives, but it is the one that defines our modern age. A century and a half ago, the defining technology was electricity and all things electric. The light bulb was literally the bright … Continue reading The Evolving Catalog
Ah, the memories that flooded back when we all heard the recent news that OCLC had printed the last run of catalog cards. If asked, I would’ve confidently assumed that had finished up long ago. An OCLC press release told us that since 1971, the company had produced 1.9 billion cards. My rough calculations give … Continue reading The Last Card
This phase of the industry offers many choices, including both proprietary and open source license options, some based on cloud technologies and others that continue to rely on local hardware. Though a new generation of library services platforms has entered a phase of early adoption, the integrated library system remains viable, especially when extended to … Continue reading Library Systems Report 2014
Five years ago, ALA’s Presidential Task Force on Library Education specified eight areas of core knowledge for librarians. The third area, titled “Organization of Recorded Knowledge and Information,” details how librarians provide library users access to materials. It defined three specific competences related to recorded knowledge and info: Organization and representation; Developmental, descriptive, and evaluative … Continue reading Organizing Content
