That seems to have been my catchphrase this week, I've said it to my LRC Support Tutor (the term we are using for Library Assistants) as we left almost every day. A lot has been sorted out but I still have to do lists long enough to need indexes!
I started the week off meeting with the Finance team to learn their systems. I felt the weight of my new budget holding responsibilities. I spent the rest of the day cataloguing, completing the policy for Independent Learning Sessions (a new initiative where each Level 2 and 3 class will have an hour week in the LRC supported by LRC staff) and creating lists of recommended websites for leaflets.
Tuesday was a dark day. I spent much of it wading through spreadsheets to try to understand my budget codes, and wading through processes and piles of paperwork. I also put in my first book order. Due to the refurb we are installed in a classroom at the moment, so not only am I learning new processes but I'm learning them outside of their natural habitat. To be honest it all got a bit much. Although, I also had a long chat with my former boss/mentor which was lovely, I still went home with the hump.
Wednesday was a new day! To start the day the LRC team were trained on the new printer/photocopier (the same model is already used elsewhere in the college). In the process of this print services reiterated their concern that the new printer won't fit in the space allocated to it in the new LRC. Worrying. Later I got a call that the mobile shelving was completed, so went along to the LRC with the H&S manager, refurb project manager and Head of Estates to have a demo and sign it off. It was the first time I'd been in the LRC since starting work here and it looks fantastic! There was a bit of squealing via the Twitter! In fact other staff saw how excited I was and the words 'sad' and 'geeks' were used. But then they haven't seen the shelves. In the afternoon my predecessor came in to answer my queries on the handover notes and other paperwork which was great and alleviated much of what was troubling me on Tuesday.
On Thursday I got IT to start the process of rebranding the libr.. sorry I mean LRC intranet pages. One of my team is working on typing up the corrections and reformatting the leaflets that need to be ready for induction and for uploading on the webpages. I spent much of the morning sorting out odds and ends that came up out of meeting with my predecessor yesterday. In the afternoon I had my official welcome from The Principal, although she has called in to visit a few times already. She's a big library advocate and has been very involved in the refurb. I then did some more work on our induction material, it's really coming together.
This morning I started by nagging IT a bit about the webpages. met with Print Services to look at the proposed printer space, and we feel confident it should fit, phew! I then met with Health and Safety to discuss risk assessments and potential problems on the horizon with the new shelving. the H&S manager said that he was surprised when he met me as he thought I'd be an older lady! This was partly a librarian stereotype and partly because of the degrees after my name. I was wearing a cardi, what more do people want? This afternoon I finally met with the head of IT who answered my questions. However he did say that there was a potential problem with the new monitors arriving, but we still *should* have them in time for the start of the new term.
As you can see it's been a pretty quiet week! I think I'm starting to get used to the commute too. Next week is our last week before the LRC is put back together so I want to get all the induction materials and leaflets finalised and the intranet pages as complete as possible. I also need to think of names for the bays in the LRC. At the moment they are down as Green 1, Green 2, Grey 1 and Grey 2. As I tweeted, I've been thinking about authors, local birds, or perhaps local well known people, can I get away with a Syd Barrett Bay?!
Showing posts with label cataloguing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cataloguing. Show all posts
Friday, 13 August 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Changing standards and the future of cataloguing in UK HE libraries
This week I went to this event put on jointly by the University College & Research group (UC&R) and the Cataloguing & Indexing group (C&I) at CILIP Headquarters.
Firstly, the food was fantastic. CILIP have really stepped things up: parma ham, mozzerella and tomato salad, lovely. Sadly this was the only tweet I sent from the event because my mobile's IE was being lame.
The first talk was 'DDC23 Standard on the horizon' by Caroline Kent from the British Library and Chair of the DDC Editorial Policy Committee. The CILIP DDC committee is a group of volunteers who reread the editors' new DDC schedules which are published every 7 years to reflect the significant changes in the world of knowledge. With the increasing use of WebDewey this work cycle may change, as it allows for more regular updates. There is debate as to how often WebDewey should be updated, to ensure that users get regular updates without disrupting their work (for example if you half catalogued an item and returned to it the following day to find the schedule changed!) Caroline suggested that beyond DDC23 the print edition may be viewed as being in support of WebDewey, although the printed schedule will always be important as WebDewey is expensive and not all libraries who use Dewey have consistent access to computers.
Caroline spoke about the international use of Dewey (Dewey is used in 130 countries, there are 20 official translations). Translations give the opportunity to enrich areas of the schedule, for example expanding areas of local history and geography although we would be unlikely to need them in the UK (unless we were working in a very specialised collection on, say, Swedish History). An area of discussion within the translations has been archaeology and ancient history (930 and 940), as it reflects the world known to the Romans, so it doesn't include for example Poland as the Romans never went to Poland. The translations aren't identical but they do match which allows a user to find their relevant section in an unfamilar collection or a foreign land. I experienced this myself when I was visiting libraries in Australia.
I have used Dewey for years in various workplaces and really enjoy the discussions around its use and how the schedule changes. Caroline spoke about how old knowledge is removed, for example how within Home and Family Management they have recently removed children's games that no longer exist. They are always careful to use generic terms rather than trademarks which can be difficult for example around computing. A hot debate in the production of DDC23 was around changes to Table 1 from 'Kinds Of Persons' to 'Groups of People', as sociologically speaking a group is seen as self selecting.
The second talk was by Alan Danskin, the British Library's Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator and the chair of the C&I group. His talk was on 'Changing standards: from AACR2 to RDA'. RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the successor to AACR2 as of June 2010. RDA was designed for the digital world, and as such handles a variety of media and offers a less cluttered display. It handles granularity well and maps to other schemes (Dublin Core, MARC21 etc).
It was a great evening and reminded me of one of my favourite library quotes: "Librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession." (Kephart 1890).
As always, it was great to meet with other professionals and network, although I had to verbally tender my resignation from the UC&R London chapter committee as I am relocating for my new job. When I am settled I hope to get involved with special interest groups, although CoFHE might be more appropriate than UC&R, we'll see who'll have me! In the meanwhile I will continue to follow UC&R's work and to keep in touch with the colleagues I have met through it.
Firstly, the food was fantastic. CILIP have really stepped things up: parma ham, mozzerella and tomato salad, lovely. Sadly this was the only tweet I sent from the event because my mobile's IE was being lame.
The first talk was 'DDC23 Standard on the horizon' by Caroline Kent from the British Library and Chair of the DDC Editorial Policy Committee. The CILIP DDC committee is a group of volunteers who reread the editors' new DDC schedules which are published every 7 years to reflect the significant changes in the world of knowledge. With the increasing use of WebDewey this work cycle may change, as it allows for more regular updates. There is debate as to how often WebDewey should be updated, to ensure that users get regular updates without disrupting their work (for example if you half catalogued an item and returned to it the following day to find the schedule changed!) Caroline suggested that beyond DDC23 the print edition may be viewed as being in support of WebDewey, although the printed schedule will always be important as WebDewey is expensive and not all libraries who use Dewey have consistent access to computers.
Caroline spoke about the international use of Dewey (Dewey is used in 130 countries, there are 20 official translations). Translations give the opportunity to enrich areas of the schedule, for example expanding areas of local history and geography although we would be unlikely to need them in the UK (unless we were working in a very specialised collection on, say, Swedish History). An area of discussion within the translations has been archaeology and ancient history (930 and 940), as it reflects the world known to the Romans, so it doesn't include for example Poland as the Romans never went to Poland. The translations aren't identical but they do match which allows a user to find their relevant section in an unfamilar collection or a foreign land. I experienced this myself when I was visiting libraries in Australia.
I have used Dewey for years in various workplaces and really enjoy the discussions around its use and how the schedule changes. Caroline spoke about how old knowledge is removed, for example how within Home and Family Management they have recently removed children's games that no longer exist. They are always careful to use generic terms rather than trademarks which can be difficult for example around computing. A hot debate in the production of DDC23 was around changes to Table 1 from 'Kinds Of Persons' to 'Groups of People', as sociologically speaking a group is seen as self selecting.
The second talk was by Alan Danskin, the British Library's Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator and the chair of the C&I group. His talk was on 'Changing standards: from AACR2 to RDA'. RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the successor to AACR2 as of June 2010. RDA was designed for the digital world, and as such handles a variety of media and offers a less cluttered display. It handles granularity well and maps to other schemes (Dublin Core, MARC21 etc).
It was a great evening and reminded me of one of my favourite library quotes: "Librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession." (Kephart 1890).
As always, it was great to meet with other professionals and network, although I had to verbally tender my resignation from the UC&R London chapter committee as I am relocating for my new job. When I am settled I hope to get involved with special interest groups, although CoFHE might be more appropriate than UC&R, we'll see who'll have me! In the meanwhile I will continue to follow UC&R's work and to keep in touch with the colleagues I have met through it.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Careers books cataloguing
I've got quite a nice project this week: cataloguing a delivery of new books for our Careers Adviser. It's nice to have the opportunity to engage with other departments and is always good to show willing and show the LRC's worth!
In doing this I've been looking at the Connexions Resource Centre Index which our Careers Department use. It is a fairly basic system made up of symbols which are stuck on the spine of the book (we have decided not to use Dewey as the collection is fairly small). The General Information section of the index includes 11 headings such as Travel and Transport, Relationships, Health and Work and Training. The Work and Training section is broken into 23 main job families which each have their own sticker. The way that they have classified jobs into each family is quite interesting. In case you're wondering, us librarians are under 'Languages, Information and Culture'.
In other cross-department collaborations, last week I was invited to see the BTEC Business Studies students market research presentations as some students had done their projects on the LRC. It was really interesting to hear their take on things and one student in particular had some useful points. As she is one of our Student Assistants she may have had inside information but I still told her teacher how impressed I was. On the plus side, the main finding was that we need more computers, which we had already ordered.
P.S. I know it's been a while since my last post. I've not been slacking, I've been stuck in Australia due to the volcanic ash. More about that later..
In doing this I've been looking at the Connexions Resource Centre Index which our Careers Department use. It is a fairly basic system made up of symbols which are stuck on the spine of the book (we have decided not to use Dewey as the collection is fairly small). The General Information section of the index includes 11 headings such as Travel and Transport, Relationships, Health and Work and Training. The Work and Training section is broken into 23 main job families which each have their own sticker. The way that they have classified jobs into each family is quite interesting. In case you're wondering, us librarians are under 'Languages, Information and Culture'.
In other cross-department collaborations, last week I was invited to see the BTEC Business Studies students market research presentations as some students had done their projects on the LRC. It was really interesting to hear their take on things and one student in particular had some useful points. As she is one of our Student Assistants she may have had inside information but I still told her teacher how impressed I was. On the plus side, the main finding was that we need more computers, which we had already ordered.
P.S. I know it's been a while since my last post. I've not been slacking, I've been stuck in Australia due to the volcanic ash. More about that later..
Friday, 26 March 2010
Cataloguing donated Granta magazines
This week we were lucky enough to receive some donated Granta magazines. Due to the value of these items we want to make them issuable like books rather than Reference only magazines.
Classifying these has been interesting as they could fit in several shelf marks. For example Issue 101 could fit under: 828 (English miscellaneous writings) or 320 (Politics) or 070 (Journalism)or at a push under 770 (Photography) as they includes photo essays, or even under Fiction, although I am loathe to put anything with factual content under Fiction.
Considering our collection and user group (and knowledge of where our heaving shelves have space!) I've decided to put most of them under 808 (Rhetoric & collections of literature), although some issues have been put into subject areas (Issue 97 is solely fiction, issue 94 is solely travel writing).
Classifying these has been interesting as they could fit in several shelf marks. For example Issue 101 could fit under: 828 (English miscellaneous writings) or 320 (Politics) or 070 (Journalism)or at a push under 770 (Photography) as they includes photo essays, or even under Fiction, although I am loathe to put anything with factual content under Fiction.
Considering our collection and user group (and knowledge of where our heaving shelves have space!) I've decided to put most of them under 808 (Rhetoric & collections of literature), although some issues have been put into subject areas (Issue 97 is solely fiction, issue 94 is solely travel writing).
Friday, 12 March 2010
Crazy Keywords continued
This week I've managed to correct 17 pages worth of crazy keywords, which I'm rather pleased with. I've been prioritising particularly messy sections rather than going through alphabetically.
Much of it is dealing with capitalisation, name conventions and rationalising (do we really need 'Geology' and 'Geology & Earth Sciences' when each only occur once?).
Here this week's top fifteen, the ones that have made me want to hit my head against something not soft:
1.Ethnic tourist attractions
2.Famous trains
3.Etc
4.explains how key skills are asessed
5.exercises on using numbers in everyday life
6.Fiction dealing with specific issues
7.Fighting back
8.facts, worksheet quiz
9.Internet links for different subjects
10. Forced entertainment
11. Future of Champagne Wines
12. Social dimension of wine
13. Sound Story (meaning 'talking book')
14. Disctionaries (on FOUR records?!?)
15. Dodgy deals
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!
I did however have a little moment where I googled 'gases' to see if it was an artist's surname..
Much of it is dealing with capitalisation, name conventions and rationalising (do we really need 'Geology' and 'Geology & Earth Sciences' when each only occur once?).
Here this week's top fifteen, the ones that have made me want to hit my head against something not soft:
1.Ethnic tourist attractions
2.Famous trains
3.Etc
4.explains how key skills are asessed
5.exercises on using numbers in everyday life
6.Fiction dealing with specific issues
7.Fighting back
8.facts, worksheet quiz
9.Internet links for different subjects
10. Forced entertainment
11. Future of Champagne Wines
12. Social dimension of wine
13. Sound Story (meaning 'talking book')
14. Disctionaries (on FOUR records?!?)
15. Dodgy deals
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!
I did however have a little moment where I googled 'gases' to see if it was an artist's surname..
Monday, 15 February 2010
Keyword chaos: things that make you go hmm
It is half term and we don't have any students in so I am finally getting to spend some time cleaning up the keyword chaos taking place all over our catalogue.
The back story:
I work in a sixth form college in North East London. The students have a high prevalence of English as a Second Language and literacy problems. The college has existed for just seven terms and the library has under 5000 items.
The previous manager delegated all the cataloguing to the LRC assistants. During the college's short life they have had a high turnover of LRC assistants - estimates stand at around 10 different LRC assistants. The majority of these had no previous library experience. We still have an LRC assistant working here who has been here since the college opened and she can't recall having any training or being shown any guidance notes. About a month ago I found a notebook containing hand written cataloguing notes so some efforts were made to give guidance.
When I first arrived here in October I thought the problems were on the minor of inconsistencies with commas and capitalising, and unnecessary detail such as putting the title or author into the keywords. Slowly it dawned on me quite what a mess the catalogue. This was particularly resonant when we had training from the makers of the LMS and I felt embarrassed at being linked to it professionally.
My goal is that during my legacy from this role will be cleaning up the catalogue and preventing these problems in the future. I have already created and disseminated clear cataloguing training notes and put them in the staff shared drive (which I created when I realised that no such thing existed!). My manager only became aware of the depth of problems a few weeks ago and has prioritised the task of cleaning the catalogue up. She has also put a ban on paraprofessional staff cataloguing.
One of the most frustrating things is where people have followed someone elses mistake - so we had about nine Shakespearean texts all catalogued as 'Shekespeare'. Often staff have followed book publishers suggestions of keywords without questioning if it is is excessively detailed for our collection - leading to keyword such as 'Cooking With Meat and Game' in a collection with only about 40 cookery books.There are a lot of time period problems in terms of consistency of format (C1900 / 18th Century, 17C, 1600S, 1500s) and expressing accurately the item's content: '16th to 18th Centuries' is not an adequate keyword. And people creating a new keyword when an existing one would be appropriate (e.g. Business Presentation and Communications / Business Communications / Business Communication.)
Having run a report and reviewed the keywords used, the most glaring thing is that most keywords have only been used once. I'm now looking at this 112 page document and deciding where to start. My original plan was to go through from A to Z. Now I feel it would be better to focus on specific areas such as going through by each nation to cure problems such as one or two hit keyword entries for: British Army, British Artists, British Cinema, British Film, and so on by turning them into two keywords e.g. 'British' and 'Army'.
As I'm doing this I thought that I would share some of the things that make me feel like hitting my head on the wall. These are keywords that have honestly been inputted in our catalogue (they appear in this list in the format in which they were inputted):
The bizarre...
Being pursued
Being Yourself
19th c china
Ciminals
The back story:
I work in a sixth form college in North East London. The students have a high prevalence of English as a Second Language and literacy problems. The college has existed for just seven terms and the library has under 5000 items.
The previous manager delegated all the cataloguing to the LRC assistants. During the college's short life they have had a high turnover of LRC assistants - estimates stand at around 10 different LRC assistants. The majority of these had no previous library experience. We still have an LRC assistant working here who has been here since the college opened and she can't recall having any training or being shown any guidance notes. About a month ago I found a notebook containing hand written cataloguing notes so some efforts were made to give guidance.
When I first arrived here in October I thought the problems were on the minor of inconsistencies with commas and capitalising, and unnecessary detail such as putting the title or author into the keywords. Slowly it dawned on me quite what a mess the catalogue. This was particularly resonant when we had training from the makers of the LMS and I felt embarrassed at being linked to it professionally.
My goal is that during my legacy from this role will be cleaning up the catalogue and preventing these problems in the future. I have already created and disseminated clear cataloguing training notes and put them in the staff shared drive (which I created when I realised that no such thing existed!). My manager only became aware of the depth of problems a few weeks ago and has prioritised the task of cleaning the catalogue up. She has also put a ban on paraprofessional staff cataloguing.
One of the most frustrating things is where people have followed someone elses mistake - so we had about nine Shakespearean texts all catalogued as 'Shekespeare'. Often staff have followed book publishers suggestions of keywords without questioning if it is is excessively detailed for our collection - leading to keyword such as 'Cooking With Meat and Game' in a collection with only about 40 cookery books.There are a lot of time period problems in terms of consistency of format (C1900 / 18th Century, 17C, 1600S, 1500s) and expressing accurately the item's content: '16th to 18th Centuries' is not an adequate keyword. And people creating a new keyword when an existing one would be appropriate (e.g. Business Presentation and Communications / Business Communications / Business Communication.)
Having run a report and reviewed the keywords used, the most glaring thing is that most keywords have only been used once. I'm now looking at this 112 page document and deciding where to start. My original plan was to go through from A to Z. Now I feel it would be better to focus on specific areas such as going through by each nation to cure problems such as one or two hit keyword entries for: British Army, British Artists, British Cinema, British Film, and so on by turning them into two keywords e.g. 'British' and 'Army'.
As I'm doing this I thought that I would share some of the things that make me feel like hitting my head on the wall. These are keywords that have honestly been inputted in our catalogue (they appear in this list in the format in which they were inputted):
The bizarre...
Being pursued
Being Yourself
History of Champagne
Moral Status of Animals
Contacting the Dead
The excessively detailed...bearing in mind our user group and size of collection
American History of Food
AIDS: social aspects (we only have 2 hits under AIDS at all)
18th century India
18th Century painters
African American poems
Biographies of notable atheletes
Obama's speeches
Advice on Careers & Achieving Success
Literature of Special Lesbian Interest
American Supermarkets
The vague...
Answers
Approaches
Arguments
Spelling mistakes...
Growing Ou
Shekespeare
Aging
Three different spellings of Al-Qaeda19th c china
Ciminals
Contemorary Art
Disctionaries
Much of the problem is using one keyword entry where two are appropriate...
A Level / AS / GCSE + subject
Nation + anything you can think of!
To multiple keywords to express the same principle..
World War 2, World War II, World War Two, Second World War, 2nd World War, World War 1939-45, European History: Second World War
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