Education for Cataloging and the Organisation of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum

Citation

Trickey, K.V. (2004), "Education for Cataloging and the Organisation of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum", New Library World, Vol. 105 No. 1/2, pp. 87-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800410515318

Anything on education for cataloguing is to be welcomed, however I do have certain reservations about this chunky tome. My sense of it is that there is a great book in there – however, it would need to be only about 150 pages in length. Too many of the contributions have that sense of “Thank goodness – a chance for a soft publication to get on the research list”. Some of the examples of research have that painful “research because we can do it” approach where correct methodology overrides a sensible concern for what is actually being done.

The publication is organised into a series of main sections: “A matter of opinion”, “The context”, “Education for specific purposes”, “Alternatives for instructional delivery”. Each section has a series of papers clustered round the broad theme.

Clearly no review of cataloguing education would be credible without a contribution from Michael Gorman, who has championed the education from his position as practitioner, sage, etc. for at least 20 years, and this is completely appropriate to open the first section – “A matter of opinion”. As is to be expected it is a good piece as Michael punches his formidable academic and expert weight and totally demolishes the claims of William Y. Arms. My appetite whetted, I moved on to Sheila Inter’s contribution, which was an interesting review but rambled a bit and lacked focus. Hoerman’s contribution “Why does everybody hate cataloging?” was a personal view from an experienced practitioner and a good read, whereas Holley’s view was slightly too personal to be helpful.

The next section – “the context” – turned out to be disappointing. Wilder’s brief paper on the demographic time bomb facing the profession in the USA – too many senior (in age) cataloguers and not enough new blood moving through the organisation – mirrors the position in the UK. The paper was brief and to the point. The two papers that follow by Daniel Joudrey, a doctoral student at University of Pittsburgh occupy 84 pages and explore the range of courses in cataloguing offered by US library schools and the textbooks used. The methodology is academically sound – but the gaps in the overall thinking are too large. Just because a course (module) is offered as part of a programme (specifically when it is an option) it does not mean that it actually happens. The research was based on desk reviews of Web sites. The next significant question is, if the module did run how many students enrolled, and what were their outcomes? The paper on text books has the same sort of weak link: just because an item is on a reading list, it does not mean to say it is being used. You are unable to glean that even from issue statistics, although the probability of use would be higher! These are useful doctoral seminar papers – a ten or 15‐page abridgement would have been more appropriate in this publication.

The section “Education for specific purposes” was disappointing, Ingrid Hsieh‐Yee’s paper was high on rhetoric in the section on “Cataloguing education in the digital world” but the section on “A sample program for cataloging and metadata education” was too vague to be useful. Too many of the objectives stated for the expert level started with “To understand” – if I tried that in a course outline for LJMU I would be in real trouble! This sounded like education for a senior cataloguing technician – not a librarian. Janet Swann Hill tried to round this section off with a paper entitled “What else do you need to know? Practical skills for catalogers and managers”, which wandered round ancillary skills in a fairly unstructured way – although some of the “travelling” was interesting!

The final section “Alternatives for instructional delivery” offered some interesting topics. The initial contribution by Gertrude S. Koh (Innovations in standard classroom instruction) collapsed into the academic paper mold by opening with a four‐page digression (Historical perspective on innovations in classroom instruction). Eventually we got to the substance of the article, which was about using mentor cataloguers for student assessments – a good idea that could have been covered in detail in far less pages. The brief article by students involved in the process added some flesh to the project. When I then got to the article written by two of the mentors, I was expecting it to be followed by an article from the computer system, reviewing how it was for them! These 35 pages could have been reported in about 15, with no loss of detail. Ealine Yontz’s semi humorous paper (“When donkeys fly: distance education for cataloging”) would have been fine as a conference presentation but was too laboured (you need to see the photograph of a cuddly toy – Eeyore with wings – to fully appreciate the joke in the title). The two papers on the provision of online teaching materials by OCLC could have been more interesting without the painful analysis of performance, which detracted from the presentation of information – but added to the academic credibility of the author.

The paper by Hixson and Garrison (“The program for cooperative cataloging and training for catalogers”) sounded dire but was delightful as the authors explained the development of the role of PCC and its various constituent bodies (BIBCO, NACO, SAOC and CONSER) in the development of appropriate training for record creation. It explained the dissemination of this training to allow for regional training expertise to be developed. Just ten pages, packed with useful information, leaving this reader with a sense of optimism in the work of PCC to help underpin the bibliographic future that library educators seem to be neglecting.

There is a Buddhist story of a Zen master who would take his students to meditate at night in the open air, and he would pursue his practice in silence, expecting his students to intuit his meaning. One of the exercises he would carry out was to point at the moon with his hand, and then watch the reaction of his students. Those on the path to enlightenment would look at the moon, which is where his hand was pointing. Lesser students would fix their gaze on the hand of the master, and learn nothing. Sadly too many of the contributors to this volume are too busy trying to sort out what their own hands are doing to even raise their head to the hand of the master – which leaves Michael Gorman as the only one actually looking at the moon!

As an educator and trainer in this subject area I found this overblown volume hard going as I scoured the extensive text for innovative thinking about the major professional issues facing cataloguing as a professional path. The advancing crisis in the profession in the USA is evident, and sadly this thinking will not inspire the next generation. I currently deliver more information on cataloguing in the context of professional training than I do to undergraduate or post‐graduate students, so I can but wonder if the future of cataloguing lies outside the former library schools? The development of quality materials that Library of Congress, PCC and the OCLC online packages are developing for in‐service training indicates change. Link this with the growing requirement for these skills, which are seriously in demand in the market place as evidenced by the developing market for training in these arts. Will this progressively mean that boring old “cat and class” will be the professional skill that the discerning information worker develops after they begin their professional career that converts them into real librarians?