Remembering the card catalogue

I was struck yesterday by this comment in an account of a visit to the Courtney Library in Cornwall:
"From a cataloguer's perspective this is the most fascinating aspect of this Library; there is no computerised catalogue for printed books".
I have said before on this blog that I am a very old person. I spent the year before my professional course, and the three years after it, working with big union card catalogues, so to a large extent I cut my professional teeth on them.
The first job people that like me were given, was withdrawing cards for items no longer in stock. The logic for this was, that if you took out the wrong card, it could be put back again. Only when you had proved your care and diligence in withdrawals were you allowed to file cards in to the catalogue, because a mistake there might not be found for a long time, if at all.
What I learned, and learned very quickly, was that a mistake in an entry, whether that mistake was a simple typo or a failure of authority control (not that I knew then that that was what it was called) meant that cards for the same entity were not filed together; equally, that cards with consistent entries filed next to each other and meant that lots of stuff by or about the same thing were brought together (I didn't know that this was called collocation). It was a very simple way to demonstrate the basic principles of a catalogue.
While I'm not advocating card catalogues as a better tool for today's world than their online equivalents, I wonder if it is as easy for new or aspiring cataloguers nowadays to get an understanding of the way catalogues "work" without such a pragmatic and hands-on experience.
Opinions, anyone?

"We don't pay you to be altruistic"

There is a huge difference between using other people's data and being truly co-operative. Most people nowadays seem to take, but not to give back - and my manager was criticising me, not completely seriously, but not completely in jest either, some years ago, for taking extra pains to get something right so I could contribute it back to a shared database so other people could reap the benefit.

Discussion around RDA, and economic exigency, has often touched on the necessity nowadays of being able to take data from as wide a range of sources as possible, to save cataloguing time and effort. There is, rationally enough, a consequent acceptance of the "good enough" rather than the pursuit of an absolute gold standard. I used to be quite fundamentalist about this myself when younger, regarding a deviation from the standard as not error, but sin. I've mellowed over time.

Because of our dependence upon derived records, indeed, standards are coming to be seen as comprising consistency not with universally-agreed rules but with the style of your principal source of records and, to use a UK example, I have heard people say that they catalogue "according to BDS". (This is not to decry the work of my colleagues there, which is excellent). It does, however, reinforce the idea that you take the best records you can find, and tailor your own house style to them.

The emphasis is so much on taking and accepting, and editing as little as possible, that the idea of sharing has rather gone out of the window. And arguments have been made that if RDA allows a greater scope for cataloguer's judgement, then sharing is no longer possible - noone is going to want your version of the record anyway.

What I don't understand is why, if we are being looser about standards, this isn't going to make sharing easier. What is wrong with making something a bit better, even if you don't make it perfect? Can we, actually, afford not to be altruistic?

Building a career on laziness

It worked for me - building a career on other people's laziness.

Most people don't want to spend time checking data, or working on data repairs - it's not exciting or glamorous, even if it teaches you an awful lot about the way the database works.

Most people don't want to go to boring routine meetings - but even the dullest meeting has other people at it who might turn out to be really interesting.

Most people don't want to engage with detail, with a mass of routine tasks, with the daily repetitious grind, and they'll be delighted if you offer to help them out with it. And cataloguers are naturally good at this sort of thing, after all - we've got the eye for detail, we can manage a whole heap of tasks, we can sort stuff out, we can spot patterns in things and fit things together - we've got that sort of mindset.

So it always surprises me that more people don't want to get involved in what seems to be the boring stuff, but is actually the stuff which teaches you an awful lot about the way your system, your organisation, fits together and works (or doesn't work). I've heard all sorts of excuses - I'm too busy, I haven't got time, I'm stressed enough already, why should I, it's not in my job description, why can't someone else do it. Some cataloguers even shun this sort of thing because they think that it feeds the stereotype and that cataloguers too should be dealing with ideas and strategies and policy.

Of course we should. Even if what I am advocating seems like the very opposite of high-visibility cataloguing, I don't want cataloguers to get stuck in the mud. But one of the ways to get influence and respect is to be able to sort out other people's problems, contribute ideas which help them achieve what they want to do, come up with ideas for developments which fit well with what's already being done and take it a bit further forward. These are the things which come out of knowing how things work and having a mastery of the detail, of the underside of stuff.

I think we should engage with our inner geek and take advantage of any opportunity to get involved with what's going on around us, even at the lowest level, and make that the first step on the ladder, because knowledge really does become power.

So, next time one of your colleagues is complaining about having to do something really really boring, offer to help out by doing it for him; he'll thank you for it, and you'll be doing yourself and your future a power of good.

Sorting the fact from the fiction

I've had a bit of a break and was bemused and amused in equal measure on my return by the correspondence that has been going on amongst the RDA-L list members about main entries for fictitious characters who purport to have written books. To put it briefly, if a book presents itself as having been written by a character who we all know doesn't really exist, we still have to make that fictitious character the main entry. So, "The Hums of Pooh" will appear under Pooh's name even though we all know that Pooh didn't really write them and AA Milne did.

I've bleated about this before and it still strikes me as moderately daft. We don't classify by title (we don't do we? Please tell me you don't put "Leaves of grass" in botany) but do our best to find out what the book is really about - and therefore why shouldn't we make an equivalent attempt to discover and reveal the true author? Yes, we should also make it plain that the book seems to have been written by a fictional character, either in the statement of responsibility or in a note, because that helps and informs the reader - just as we make a note if a book is not at all about what the title makes it seem.

What bothers me, though, is that we are adopting this new rule - copying what it says on the title-page without any questioning or any application of common-sense - at exactly the same time as we are all jumping up and down trying to explain the importance of what we do, how we mediate and manage and moderate information to add value for our users. I think I'm going to find that quite difficult when I appear to believe that "Me Cheeta" was written by an ape.

Crispy bacon

We often lament that cataloguing is a specialism, a niche activity, that not many people want and for which there is little or no market.

On my way to work, I often see a white van delivering to the various sandwich shops and delis along my route. On the side of the van is emblazoned, "Crispy bacon and cooked sausage specialists". Now I wouldn't have thought there was that big a market for crispy bacon, it wouldn't have occurred to me that a firm could have built a reputation and a business on it. But that white van has been making its deliveries for years now (in fact, they have extended the business, they used to be just, "crispy bacon specialists").

It cheers me up. A world that supports the crispy bacon trade surely has room in it for specialist cataloguers too!

Administrative? Who, me?

One of the reasons for the lack of posts lately is that like many, if not most, library authorities at the moment, mine is engaged in restructurings, rumours and threats of redundancies, ever-changing plans and plots, to the point that now we begin to long for any conclusion at all, even the worst, as long as it puts an end to the uncertainty. It is all very time-consuming and tiring and noone is going to come out of it well.

One of the latest plans for restructurings - it was only yesterday, but there has probably been another one since - showed Bib Services being merged under the overall title of "Administrative Services".

Now, "Support Services" I could have borne with a reasonable degree of equanimity - we provide support and a service. That's what we do.

But there's something about "Administrative Services" that really puts my back up. There is, I suppose, nothing wrong with being an administrator - but to be part of an administrative service? Doesn't that sound petty and mean and unimportant and, well, downright unprofessional? A way of demeaning and belittling bib services into something which involves form-filling and pen-pushing and counting paperclips? The sort of bad name you'd give a dog before neglecting and finally shooting him?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, just as long as it wasn't called an administrative service.

Tell me, am I being arrogant? Am I just tired and overwrought and a big glass of wine and half an hour with Monty Don will make me feel better?

You say, "Resource discovery technology"; I say, "Catalogue"

This is a response to the post on the High Visibility Cataloguing blog here:
http://highvisibilitycataloguing.wordpress.com/why-cataloguers/challenging-metadata-surrogacy-processes/ . I would have added a comment, but I just knew that I would have gone on too long!

You see, I agree 100% with Venessa's desire to raise the profile of cataloguers and I agree that it is something that desperately needs doing. I agree that we are seen as "antiquated gatekeepers" and I'd go further and say that it isn't only authoritarians who see us that way. When she says that we need to rethink who does what, or that we should challenge the legacy of our predecessors, I'm right there and cheering.

I differ with her in two respects, firstly, that in my opinion she doesn't go nearly far enough in redefining roles; and secondly, that I think that we shouldn't rely on changing words to make us sound good.

"The systems librarians is now an integral part of the cataloguing team". No. No. Cataloguers and systems librarians are becoming the same thing. I make no pretence of being a technician (start talking to me about servers and I'm thinking of Wimbledon), but a cataloguer deals with data, creates data, edits data, manages data, exploits data. Cataloguers are getting in touch with their inner systems librarian, and that's the way it has to be. Cataloguers aren't being asked to take on bulk editing, or digitization - that's what they should be, and are, wanting and needing to do, and deciding to get involved with on their own initiative. If cataloguers wait to be asked, then we'll soon be extinct. Cataloguers need to be "re-skilled"? Nonsense. We've got the skills, all we need is the courage to use them.

"Should we even still be using the term ‘cataloguing’ for what our role will be in the future?" Yes, there's nothing wrong with the word. Metadata is data about data - and it's what you'll find on a catalogue card. The added value that we bring is largely brought from rules and rulers, whether or not the cataloguer is sitting in a dark corner.

I don't have the word "cataloguer" in my job title, but I quite often introduce myself as, "the nearest thing you'll find round here to a chief cataloguer". I said exactly that in a meeting last week. And bless him, a senior manager spoke up and said, "Oh no, you're much more than that - you're one of the innovative people". That doesn't stop me being a cataloguer - I hope it makes me a good one, but a cataloguer is what I am and a cataloguer is what I'll remain. Not a metadata manager.

We'll redeem cataloguing when we explain what we do and why it matters, not when we change the name.