Do+School+Librarians+Need+a+Cataloging+Course?

I asked librarians on LM_NET if school librarians still needed a cataloging course. I was very interested in what they had to say about their current cataloging practices. This is particularly important as librarians are being told to librarian less and teach more -- so where does cataloging come in?

Thanks to all who responded. I appreciate hearing from the people are faced with these questions every day. I did get the feeling from some who felt my original question was whether or not to teach cataloging rather than the question being how much of the cataloging being taught should deal with RDA. We will be learning how to catalog but your responses pretty well substantiated my feeling that students should still be learning AACR2 but also be introduced to RDA because it is the wave of the future. I particularly enjoyed hearing from vendors who felt that librarians who do not have a basic understanding of RDA will be at a disadvantage in the near future. Thanks again for your time. floyd

I have been a school librarian in Missouri and now in Illinois. RAILS/RSA requests an exact record. Although copy cataloging is nice, some records are very similar when you search either OCLC or another library MARC record. For this system, it is important to check the 856 field, edition, language, pagination, and publisher. In Illinois, RAILS has had free RDA workshops available to all member libraries, including schools. So, RDA must have some importance for this system to offer several workshops.

I copy catalog or make it up. If it's not in Follett or LOC, it's so rare that nobody will care if I just do my best. I think teaching new librarians how to copy catalog and edit a marc record (to change from volume 3 to 4 of a serial title, for example) is useful. Also useful is to show LOC and other cataloguing sources for downloading, etc. But intricacies of cataloguing? Of all my worries, this is not even on the list!

I'd love to hear what you learn from the field. I teach both Cataloging (Dewey and Sears, along with tagging concept and genrefication) and Automating (MARC records and copy cataloging). We are combining these 2 courses into one beginning this Spring, and I'd love to hear what your respondents have to say.

It is hard to imagine I am entering my 26th year as a high school librarian. I received my MLS from UW-Madison in 1992, and had a minor in Library Science before that. I am an ol' schooler cataloger, and I love it! When I received my masters we were just delving into Marc records and investing different OPAC systems. But, since then I have educated myself on MARC records and now RDA. In a medium sized school district, I am one of 8 librarians and the only one with real cataloging education and practice. If anyone has to do original cataloging, they come to me for help. I feel it is very important for librarians to practice AACR2, since most of RDA is based on that. I purchase cataloging from various vendors, but find many errors. I can't tell you how many hours I spend cleaning up records from companies or from other librarians who have not been taught the proper way to catalog. Everyone needs the AACR2 background, at least, and if well educated in that can move on to RDA. The end product is a searchable, user friendly catalog for our patrons. And if the librarian does not understand or can not properly maintain the schematics of the records, it will not aide our patrons.

Actually many of the new records are RDA. I had to specifically ask my vendors to continue giving me Marc21 records, since my ILS is not compatible with RDA. (The copyright year does not appear.) Also, when I download from my Z39.50 source, the records are primarily RDA. I think most vendors have jumped on the RDA bandwagon. Not sure why the vendors who cater to the school market have, because some of the tags really won't mean much to our students.

As a school librarian, I feel it necessary to catalog regularly. Give your students a good understanding of it and then they will have the tools needed no matter where they find themselves in the future. I, for one, looooove cataloging. I enjoy the art of the practice. It is relaxing and rewarding to me. If i do it well, I am assured of others being able to find what they are looking for readily. It is quite satisfying in that way.

I'm a newer librarian. I took one basic cataloging course and have taken a few workshops along the way. I think it is important for all librarians to have at least a solid basic understanding of cataloging. All librarians need to understand that cataloging an item is a series of judgement calls, not a simple connect-the-dots process. Creating useful records is also a bit of an art. The problem with mindless copy cataloging is that, with so many sources of materials and different librarians managing the collection over time, the shelves can get very jumbled and the records pretty useless.

I would still go over it with them because there are times, rare but still times, that I find myself having to catalog a book electronically by myself. These are for those books that are not popular or are from a publisher who is overseas. Likewise, there are also times when I need to update or change the marc record of a book to make it fit better in our system. But I wouldn’t go too in-depth. I would suggest that you share with the students “tricks of the trade” on how they can find records already created. This is something I use all the time. For example, we have Interlibrary Loan and there are many times I will be processing a book that doesn’t have an easy record to copy and will look to see if I can find it in there. If I do, then all I have to do is select and copy over the fields. Another trick I like to use is to go to www.titlewave.com (Follett - where I do most of my ordering), and see if I can find the title there by doing a search. If I find it, I will use the call number and the subject headings they have listed as a guide towards creating my own. But I agree that most of the time, the cataloging I do is a simply click and copy. I use Destiny and even if I have to create a record from scratch, they do have an easy form to fill out. I don’t have them process books for me simply because I find that it doesn’t take that much time and with my tightened budget - every little cent saved helps.

I was lucky enough to be able to take a 2 day RDA copy cataloging workshop with Deborah Fritz in June. It was called RDA for copy catalogers. I learned how to recognize RDA records from AACR2 and hybrids. Before the workshop, I'd pick the record that had AR information for my student population. Now I know I should be choosing RDA and taking the time to add the AR information to the records.

As an elementary school, our jobbers know not to go past 3 digits after the decimal. Even then, trying to impress on the students that this is an address is rough. If I had to start over, I think I'd go with plus one, then alphabetically. I think the kids would have an easier time finding books that way.

Floyd, even though we "grab" much of our cataloging information, I still review it tomake sure it is what works with our collection. I want to make sure the subject headings correspond to not only Sears, but to the tracings that I have entered to make it easier for teachers to print their own bibliographies for their classes. I feel it is important to know the "why" in order to make sure you can massage it for your collection and your school needs. Just my humble opinion.

I do have opinions about this. I'm a high school librarian, and I do more and more of my own cataloging, since the z39 records are so readily available and it saves money. I had a conversation with an acquisitions librarian for the Memphis Public Library, and we decided that although 90% of cataloging is routine copycat cataloging, and one is tempted to turn it over to parapros, it's the other 10% that requires a professional's knowing when there is a problem and fixing it. Sometimes a book just came out, and it doesn't have a very complete record. (I had trouble with Gene Luen Yang's "Boxers & Saints" recently). Sometimes with an older record (a classic, perhaps) there may be a change--maybe the author's dates don't reflect his death, or maybe you have a different edition. Sometimes it isn't a book but an artifact or item of local history, and the librarian needs to create a record. Maybe you want to add some subject headings that would work better for your patrons. Anything the librarian does needs to be in accordance with AACR2/Sears/Dewey. It's for posterity. I think school librarians still need to be taught the principles of cataloging. Even if they are going to accept most copycat records as they are, they need to at least look them over for accuracy. Besides, a solid knowledge of cataloging is one of the things that separates a professional library media specialist from just some nice lady who comes in and tells stories. It's kind of like a lot of professions--probably 90% of a doctor's business is the common cold and minor injuries; however, he/she still needs to know what to do when a more complicated case walks in.

I am going to answer this from a vendor perspective if that is okay. I think your students should have a basic understanding of both AACR2 and RDA. I agree that a lot of records will continue to be in AACR2, but everything coming out of the Library of Congress and most vendors at this point are RDA. When we deal with our customers, it goes much smoother if the customer knows what they need done and where they would like it done. When a customer does not understand any of it, it makes it a bit harder on us to provide what they want. Having a basic knowledge of the rules is a big help in knowing at least what they are looking at and what they need to have done.

I'd teach and train your "school librarians" to the same extent and degree that I'd teach and train any other "librarian"! The key word here is LIBRARIAN. Just that. LIBRARIAN. Not school librarian of children's, public, law, medical, administrative, metadata... librarian. it's LIBRARIAN as in the name of the profession! If your students want to be part of the profession, they better be well-enough trained to be able to converse, participate, engage, contribute fully to it ... and that means knowing and being able to understand and participate in both AACR2 AND RDA cataloging! Your attitude shocks me. As if school librarians don't sense enough snobbery from librarians in other special fields of the profession -- come on, they sure do! -- you seem to be inferring that in fact they ARE second class librarians, i.e., they don't need to know what the "real" librarians know, which they absolutely do! I took a grad class two summers ago entitled "Cataloging for Children" where we covered RDA as it pertains to children's services and schools and believe me, it's going to hit these areas too. Follett already has a slew of webpages waiting for us and they've run webinars to prepare us for RDA's arrival as have different salient divisions of the ALA. With ILS system catalogs and vendor and publishers' catalogs featuring RDA cataloging, which many/most are already, how and why could we lowly "school librarians" NOT be impacted by it? Maybe you and your students will have to work a little harder than usual; after all, everyone taking cataloging courses or doing PD courses to stay current with the changes in cataloging that RDA promises is working harder, so why wouldn't you want to be on a par with them? Why should your students go through the extra effort, you ask? Heck, so many people depend on copy cataloging -- or have little to do with cataloging in the first place -- that you'd think few would bother. First, folks in the profession are learning RDA because they're professionals and understand that as a professional responsibility, they need to learn it to stay current. Second, they're learning it because to help their patrons wend their way through the new system and use it to their benefit, librarians need to understand it inside and out in order to teach it to people who depend on them to know it well enough to help them make sense of it and use it to their own benefit! Make your students learn both RDA AND AACR2; it's not going to kill them -- it's only going to help them raise their sights and learn to think of themselves full-blown, highly trained members of an internationally-recognized profession -- instead of settling for the "just" status that's so often associated with "school librarians." And God knows, being in a school, they're going to need that strength of conviction about themselves and their role when they, too, are repeatedly asked -- as I have been -- "Now, did you have to go to college to be a librarian?" I kid you not; THAT is how many teachers think of us. –

I graduated with my masters in LEM in 2009. While I was in grad school (2007-2009), I worked at a private school as their librarian. So, I've been a librarian since 2007. I've never used traditional cataloging. If I can't find the record, I find one similar to it and adapt it to my media. Common sense is much more valuable than cataloging. It's very challenging to teach, however! :)

I mostly use copy cataloging or purchased but I do tweak. Marc 650 for Spanish materials is one I frequently add and I also catalog board games, which is all original cataloging.

In general, the intricacies of cataloging may not be worth spending a lot of time on in class because it is so easy to click a barcode and get a good MARC record. I think what's missing in cataloging knowledge (in my experience, anyway), is the misunderstanding on the difference between a title record and a copy record. This is especially important as more schools go to a union catalog and we can all see each other's database. I see so many people altering title records for personalized info instead of altering the copy record. I see people that don't understand that adding personalized (site-based) information to a title record results in duplication and a catalog ends up with 75 title records for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone instead of one. Also, when one is adding a new book to one's own collection without this basic understanding, the tendency is to add a title instead of to add a copy which causes even more duplication in the system catalog. The other thing that seems to be causing problems out in the field is subject headings and creating them out of one's head instead of making sure they match a standard. I do not know a whole lot about RDA but I do know that Destiny has a conversion button to click, thus upgrading a record. I honestly haven't been able to see the difference that results from this conversion but that could be because I don't know enough about it to know what to look for! I hope that helps answer your question.

I am a school librarian. When I took cataloging my professor barely touched on RDA. Now that I have been in a library for three years I can tell you the time she spent teaching us the basics of AACR2 was much more beneficial. Most of the cataloging I do is copy from our database. I do however look at the fields and make sure that match the material and have the best information possible. I want to make sure that a high school student will connect with the material. It is helpful to know the format of AACR2 for the rare occasions I do catalog from scratch and for adding to the records I do find. Hope this helps.

Interesting question. As someone who has been in the trenches for 10 years and struggled through my cataloging class, I basically take the records I find. I will usually tweak them to fit my school's specific cataloging precedents (and I do have a set of guidelines I've created for my school to make sure I catalog in a consistent manner). On the rare occasion when I have to create a record myself, it's very basic. I've had other librarians ask me for advice on them and I usually tell them the most important thing is not adherence to "official" cataloging standards. The most important things are 1) can you students find the record when they search? 2) Are you cataloging in a consistent format? I feel like a lot of new librarians get so caught up in cataloging the "right way," and I often remind them that there are no cataloging police! No one will come take away your MLIS degree if your cataloging isn't up to standards!