Every morning for the last ten years I have been greeted when opening my email by the day’s list of posts from the Listserve cataloguers' list Autocat (or catalogers' list if you are American. It was my boss in Essex Libraries, Andrew Coburn, who first suggested that I should subscribe to the list. I think I have only posted on it once. It sits there comfortably in my inbox, linking me to the community of cataloguers all over the world (mostly eccentric Americans,) and letting me know of exciting jobs I could apply for in Ohio or Delaware. Often I scroll through it fast, and just as often, I confess, I just delete it without reading it. It is good to know what cataloguers are discussing but after a while you feel you can sort of predict what will appear. However I was delighted this morning to read a post there by Julie Swierczek, a cataloguer in McKillop Library, Newport, Rhode Island, on the value of employing a cataloguer, which cheered my heart. It was written in response to a member who wrote asking for help. Julie has given me permission to reproduce the post as follows:"Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:10:03 -0400
Subject: Re: Help! "Elevator speech" for keeping a cataloger
Abby,
I often explain the importance of cataloging this way: If you don't have good quality cataloging, then you might as well take all the new materials the library receives, stick them in a giant bin, blindfold your patrons, and let them just grab random stuff from the bin and call it 'research'. This is basically what happens with a bad catalog. The patron just grabs what near at hand, and much of what is purchased is lost forever because there is no good metadata for finding it.
Now, some administrators might thinks that's fine, because they have this mental image: patrons browsing the shelves, like they are traipsing through the local big box bookstore on a Saturday afternoon, with overpriced caffeine beverage in hand. But that is not what a lot of patrons are doing in a library. Maybe one of them just found out her mother has cancer, and now she wants books on cancer. Every last one of them. She wants them RIGHT NOW. She can barely see through her tears. So some nice reference librarian sets her up at a corner table and starts bringing her armloads of stuff. That librarian, and that patron, need to be able to look up every single thing you've got on the subject. If you have substandard cataloging, a lot of that might slip through your fingers. And not all of it sits on the same place on the shelf, either, so you can't count on shelf browsing to find it all. You've got to use the catalog, too, to look at what's checked out, or at what you might be able to get from other libraries.
If you don't have a good catalog, you might as well use the new acquisitions for a bonfire. Burn the books; at least they'll provide heat, so you'll get some use out of them.
There are many reasons for having at least one well-trained, knowledgeable cataloger on staff:
1. Vendors don't catalog everything. You will have to catalog some things, including in particular those local items that are of interest to the local population, like self-published works or rare items. You can wait until the end of time, but you will never find copy for those items. You could pay an outside firm to handle those items, but that tends to be much more expensive than buying, say, shelf-ready books for commonly available items.
2. You will have rush requests for items that do not yet have copy available for them. You can either catalog them yourself, or make the patron wait - which is bad customer service.
3. You will need to do maintenance on the catalog records you already have. You can outsource some of that, but even knowing how to fill out the form to contract with an outside vendor requires lot of cataloging expertise. If you don't have anyone on your staff who knows how to do that, you will never know if you are getting the right service at the right price.
4. On a related note, how can you tell if a vendor or outsourcing cataloging agency is doing a good job for your institution, if no one at your institution has any expertise in cataloging? You could be getting substandard records, or bad authority loads, or could be having a serious catalog meltdown, and not even know it. I don't mean that this would happen because the vendor or agency was out to fleece you - you could have simply chosen the wrong options (like telling them you need MARC-8 data instead of Unicode). Does your boss know whether the catalog is in Unicode or MARC-8? Does your boss know how to construct a 9XX field in an OCLC record for export into your local database? Does your boss know how to then look up the item in the local database that was just exported, and verify that ALL of the fields were exported correctly? No? Then you need a cataloger.
5. Don't need a cataloger? Then you're sure you're sticking with your current ILS vendor, for life. And your current acquisitions system, for life. You won't have anyone on staff with enough expertise to work with a vendor through a migration. Your ILS vendor folds and moves you to a knew product and everything falls apart? Good luck fixing that without a cataloger.
6. Has your boss heard of RDA or FRBR? FRAD? FRSAD? If RDA is adopted, how are you going to make sure that the new RDA records and the older records all play nice together? Are you going to rely on your vendor for that? How much do you think is a fair price for your vendor to charge to help you change to the new rules? Have no idea? You need a cataloger. Even if RDA is not adopted, there are going to be changes to cataloging rules in the future. (The rules are not fixed in stone.)
7. Having a library without a cataloger is like having an accountant who doesn't know how to do taxes.
8. What has your cataloger done for you lately? Got any cataloging statistics? Any reports of interesting projects or problems that the cataloger has fixed? I do a lot of troubleshooting for other library staff, particularly when it comes to running reports in our ILS. I also lead training sessions for our staff, particularly as we move through testing phases of a new 'discovery interface'. I regularly inform them of new subject heading changes that are relevant because I know they are hot topics. We have several staff workshops a year, and I review catalog searching tips and tricks for them at those sessions. I read cataloging information from database providers and explain to the other staff how the new records will (or will not) play nice with the other records in our catalog. I explain why our government document records are a little different than our other records, since they're from an outside vendor. (I explain these things as often as they need explaining, since I am asked the same questions a few times a year. That's okay; my job is also an educational one.) I have been slowly adding tables of contents into anthology records, since our reference librarians have indicated that this is highly valuable to them. I maintain a blog about new materials at the library, since we don't have an RSS feed of new materials. I move things from one location to another in the library collections, and re-label them accordingly. I rush catalog materials to make our patrons happy - often within minutes, if the patron is in the building. I work with colleagues in our consortium to help maintain cataloging standards in our shared catalog. I maintain a wiki of cataloging documentation, so that if I am suddenly abducted by a UFO, the next cataloger will know what I was doing and why. I process the authority control report that is sent by the consortium's central office. These are just some of the cataloging jobs I do. (I am also a subject selector and liaison, the manager of the print serials collection, and I wear about 20 other hats, too.) But if you don't need anyone to do all those things - as well as the cataloging itself! - then go ahead and fire your cataloger. But if you want people to be able to find things, and if you want to have a decent catalog and a decent library, then you need a cataloger.
Having said all that, I have to admit that I am a paraprofessional cataloger, currently working on my MSLIS. So, I think it is possible to find a paraprofessional who can do professional level work. However, how is your institution going to know that is hiring a decent paraprofessional cataloger, if you don't have a cataloger on staff to judge his/her abilities and wok product? (In my case, authority control is done by our consortium's central office, so if I were wreaking havoc on the catalog, someone would have been able to figure that out quickly, and could have argued that I should be fired.) You are much better off hiring a professional cataloger with some experience. Also, this profession should stop shooting itself in the foot. There are appropriate roles for paraprofessionals in a library organization, but directors should top acting as though all positions can be filled by paraprofessionals. (If the director needs to save money, then s/he can take a pay cut and move to paraprofessional status. Cataloging should be left to professionals.)"
Thank you, Julie, what wise words. If only the world knew this instead of only the echochamber.
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