Education for Cataloging and the Organization of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum

Rodney Brunt (School of Information Management, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK)

Program: electronic library and information systems

ISSN: 0033-0337

Article publication date: 1 March 2005

154

Keywords

Citation

Brunt, R. (2005), "Education for Cataloging and the Organization of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 74-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510578831

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Teaching “cat'n'class” has never been easy. A combination of factors – a technical subject in an ostensibly humanities field, “backroomy‐ness” and mystique, lack of a clear message about its central position in the profession, and others – has not encouraged the reluctant student to engage. Added to these is the fact that, since the mid‐1960s at least, the subject has been the most rapidly developing facet of the library and information studies (LIS) curriculum, with the need to encompass automation, the increase in non‐book materials (NBM) and now the ultimate NBM – digitised publication.

Other pressures have surfaced. The time available in many schools for teaching the subject has been diminished to make space for novel areas of the curriculum. Where once all entrants to graduate courses would have had considerable pre‐course experience (even some cataloguing) the widening of the recruitment base has drawn in those, while still aspirant to the library profession, with virtually no pre‐course experience and thus little context setting.

As cataloguers, however, ours is not to reason why … as teachers of cataloguing, charged with the responsibilities of preparing the new generations of information practitioners (and not just future metadata creators) there is certainly a feeling of being overwhelmed.

So – what do we teach, and how do we teach it? This book is timely since it addresses all the foregoing points and many others, and while not necessarily bringing comfort to those in the front line, it does reassure that other colleagues have met the same problems and discovered some solutions. Contributions from a wide and impressive group from both the education community and employers make welcome reading.

The book contains 24 chapters organised into four sections, which give us background, context, specific aspects and alternatives for delivery. The preface sets the scene (and clarifies the sub‐title) and indicates the focus of each of the papers, the majority of which include bibliographic references. A comprehensive and detailed index completes the volume.

The first section, “A matter of opinion”, includes four papers, and the first of these, “Why teach cataloguing and classification”, by Michael Gorman, provides a robust and backbone‐stiffening reminder of the centrality of the practice in both the conventional, tangible environment and the digital. This should be required reading for all cataloguers who feel under threat from the search engine enthusiasts at the gates.

Sheila Intner, well known for her texts on applications of standards, reviews the practical aspects of cataloguing education and the relationship between theory and practice, the approach to teaching cataloguing of NBM, and the best way of doing it – formally or on the job.

“Why does everybody hate cataloging?”, asks Heidi Lee Hoerman, raising the question cataloguers fear to ask and fortunately offering some answers and remedies.

The second section, in looking at the context, provides some detailed background to the situation as it obtains in the USA. While most of the papers have only indirect relevance to the situation in the UK, Saye's discussion of the demise of cataloguing and classification in the LIS curriculum does reflect what has happened on this side of the Atlantic. One of his conclusions is that if libraries want well‐educated cataloguers, they must take a greater role in the preparation of new entrants for the intricacies of the work.

Kovacs and Dayton, on the experiences of graduates, tend to reflect anecdotal evidence from my own former students, that after some time in employment the value of having learned cataloguing becomes clear and retrospectively welcomed.

Turvey and Letarte in their paper “Cataloging or knowledge management  … ” provide the other side of the coin, and the report on their research indicates that academic staff (from all LIS areas, not just cataloguing) and practitioners agree that there is a core set of cataloguing competencies important to all entry level academic librarians.

The third section, “Education for specific purposes”, covers a range of questions including the teaching of book and non‐book materials in an integrated fashion, and instruction on authority control and catalogue maintenance. The final paper in this group, “What else do you need to know”, is by the editor herself, and it addresses the sorts of topics which ideally should be covered but which are often sacrificed in efforts to secure the place of core competencies in a crowded curriculum. Included is the management of technical services, and, perhaps more importantly, a substantial list of non‐library specific skills useful to cataloguers who have to engage with the world outside the cataloguing department. Four categories are identified: computer skills, communications skills, management and personal skills and personnel skills.

“Alternatives for instructional delivery” is the final section and it presents a review of delivery practices. It includes Koh's paper on innovations, which indicates that historically there has been continuing invention of delivery methods and goes on to look at some current examples. Other papers are devoted to the place of distance learning and the application of online technologies, and the need for continuous professional development to cover the many aspects which library schools cannot provide for.

Contrary to some of the sentiments expressed at the start of this review, cataloguers and teachers of cataloguing should not feel beleaguered, and the contributions to the book show why. While the papers are heavily slanted towards the US experience, especially in the exploration of professional and working aspects, those addressing the core issues have lessons for readers from elsewhere.

Perhaps the difficult thing to achieve is to get other practitioners – the senior managers, the readers' services librarians and the rest – to read and gain knowledge about what it is all about. I have always advocated that library managers should read publications on cataloguing, classification and indexing and certainly make the case for this compilation.

A welcome book, then, indeed, with only a few reservations. There is a feeling of denseness, with narrow margins and close type (betraying its origins as a set of periodical articles, perhaps). This might deter some of the hoped‐for audience in the non‐cataloguing fraternity. Finally, and without being too much of a cataloguer, the citation of Anglo‐American Cataloguing Rules should have been afforded greater care.

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