Reflection

Cataloging. A key concept for all librarians to learn, but definitely not the aspect of the profession that drew me to it. In fact, I would not mind if this was not part of my job at all, but having a deeper understanding of the incredible wealth of data that underlies not only library resources but the entire internet has definitely been useful. Thanks to this course, I am capable of reading and creating MARC records, and I deeply understand the importance of transitioning to RDA in the internet age, and the challenge of a transition to a new encoding system.

I do use the knowledge I gained in this course on a regular basis; when I transitioned to my position as an elementary school librarian and suddenly was solely responsible for all cataloging and processing of new materials, I was deeply grateful that I already had this knowledge (which I had had no reason often to use in my previous position).

Because of this course I am a better steward of the shared district library catalog that I know jointly manage with the other librarians in my district. I understand how and why I can create and modify records in the system to help make them as accessible as possible to my users.