Creative cataloguing

Brunella Longo says: "cataloguing is going to be transformed in a process more and more technologically driven but, at the same time, it will become incredibly more discretional and creative" (I am quoting from her piece here: http://bit.ly/titleproper) and while I am all in favour, as I have said before, of cataloguers using their judgement and common sense, it was "creative" that brought me up short. I don't think of creativity in cataloguing as an unmixed blessing (in snippier moments I have used it as a term of abuse: "Hmmm - bit creative, that"). Too often it looks more like sloppy thinking or a skewed perspective that with hindsight appears perverse.

Brunella also says, "It is not just how good you are at cataloguing rules learned through your librarianship school or how good you are at managing cataloguers, copy-cataloguing services and paraprofessionals on a job rotation basis". Well - isn't it? (I admit to being biassed, as this is pretty much how I spend my working days).

While none of us want to be unquestioning drones, and many of us will think that some of the rules we use are not as helpful as they might be, the fact is that by using the same standards and applying them consistently, we help each other and our users by providing data that can be recognised and shared across services. Surely mavericks end up creating silos?