Submitted May 2022
Sarah Wallbank – University of California, Irvine – wallbank@uci.edu
Joshua Hutchinson – University of Southern California – joshuah8@usc.edu
Library catalogs are the primary means by which people search for and discover library materials that fulfill their information needs. The Acquisitions and Cataloging staff who work in the technical services area of the library are traditionally viewed as behind-the-scenes workers who maintain the record of a library’s holdings. Library outreach is traditionally seen to be the exclusive domain of the public services area of the library, where librarians interact directly with community members, students, and faculty by promoting library offerings and services. Since the 1980s and 1990s, the evolution of catalog technology, cataloging standards, and cataloging practices have allowed library catalogs themselves to reach broader audiences for their holdings and to make the interaction with the catalog more accessible and inclusive. This paper will argue that cataloging is fundamentally about outreach as it pertains to the modern library—it makes library material more available to wider audiences, helping patrons to refine their research and to locate resources in an environment that is user-friendly and accessible.
Focusing on academic libraries and using a variety of examples including unique material from archival collections, small-run artists books, open access resources, one-of-a-kind materials as well as more widely available material, this paper examines how cataloging-as-outreach is able to increase the discoverability of materials to larger and traditionally underserved groups of people, including those who may not hold academic or other professional certifications. It also considers the ways in which cataloging can end up as an exclusionary activity due to cataloging practices. Technical Services staff, defined here as acquisitions and cataloging staff, perform outreach as part of the job of building and enhancing the catalog, and in other ways, bringing their skills and knowledge to more traditional forms of outreach.
Cataloging as outreach, in great part, grows out of the potential provided by the development of library catalog technology, which over the last few decades has moved library search and discovery interfaces increasingly into line with the online user experience that people have become accustomed to in commercial search engines. New faceting and filtering capabilities have allowed cataloging to better take advantage of an increasing number of controlled and specialized vocabularies in order to increase the visibility of specialized collections. There are now vocabularies that provide increased filtering access to features such as the performance medium of musical scores, the demographic group of an author, or the special illustration methods of old books. Catalog records can include information that triggers open access icons, which promote the use of open access materials and signal to library patrons that this resource is available to everyone regardless of library affiliation.
This paper looks at cataloging as a form of outreach from a variety of viewpoints. Among the distinct areas that the literature has focused on are: (1) the history of cataloging and the evolution of the library catalog; (2) outreach by technical services; and (3) exhibits as a particular form of outreach.
There is a rich seam of library scholarship focused on the history of cataloging, and there are innumerable articles and scholarly works investigating some aspect of the history of library cataloging. However, for the purposes of this paper the recent history of cataloging (defined as 1990 onwards) is most relevant. In some ways, the recent history of cataloging is the history of bibliographic records at an inflection point. Until recently, the library catalog was seen as being constructed of bibliographic records that represented titles on the library’s shelves. In the past 30 years, however, the construction of the library catalog, as well as its reach, has been reevaluated.
The 1990s saw the beginning of the period in which the conception of what a bibliographic record was began to change. By then, cooperative cataloging standards were on the rise, which meant that libraries not only shared common standards for what to put in these records, but also that they were often sharing the records themselves. These records were fairly minimal--they still took their cues from printed card catalog cards.1 As libraries began to embrace a digital future, the concept of the library catalog began to evolve, and by the mid-2000s librarians and technologists began to speak of a ‘next generation’ library catalog that was less like an inventory list of what was in the library building, and more like a finding aid.2 Calhoun, Cellentani and OCLC reported on the needs and expectations of library ‘end users’, including the importance of metadata quality.3 However, as the concept of the library catalog evolved, the idea of the bibliographic records that made up a significant portion of the catalog didn’t significantly change. Clarke writes that “The idea of the bibliographic record… enabled significant advances in American library cataloging. Yet as other components of libraries changed, such as resource types and technological tools, the model of the bibliographic record remained static.”4 Bade also focuses on the bibliographic record, writing that an obsession with quality records and the concept of a ‘perfect bibliographic record’ does no favors to the profession and is a meaningless concept that obfuscates the real purpose of cataloging: to serve patrons.5 “Yet as other components of libraries changed, such as resource types and technological tools, the model of the bibliographic record remained static”.6 The fundamental underlying structure of the bibliographic record remained unquestioned and unchanged for nearly 100 years. This is beginning to change as librarians and catalogers rethink not just the contents of their bibliographic records, but also the structure of those records themselves. In a fully networked environment, there is less of a need for library catalogs to be self-contained entities, and more ability to include data from other sources in the display and searchable metadata for catalog records.7
Integrally linked with the discussion of the bibliographic record itself is the evolution of the catalog technology that stores and provides access to the information. The OPAC, the Online Public Access Catalog, had become widely deployed in the United States by the early 1980s. At the time, It was a great improvement over the card catalog and library users viewed it favorably.8 By the early 2000s, web browsers and Google were fundamentally changing user expectations of the information search experience with such tools as the simple search box, proprietary search algorithms, and relevance ranking. Libraries have had to confront the fact that their users have substantially moved their information searching to Google and other web search engines.
In the 1990s and through the 2010s, a variety of papers and reports started to reconceptualize what a library catalog is, and what it should become in order to meet the changing needs of scholarship. Among the important works in this field are Lease Morgan’s, A ‘Next Generation’ Library Catalog9 and Breeding’s, Future of Library Discovery Systems10 in which they write about the future of library catalogs, what was then called ‘next generation’ library catalogs, and what developed into the current Integrated Library System (ILS) and discovery layer. Antelman, Lynema, and Pace wrote that the library catalog needed to evolve, saying that it currently had “represented stagnant technology for close to twenty years” and that “[a]s a result, the catalog has become for many students a call-number lookup system, with resource discovery happening elsewhere.”11
Clark concurred with this judgment of the library catalog as a stagnant technology, pointing in particular to the construct of the bibliographic record (a single entity that represented the complete bibliographic description, rather than making use for instance of linked data technology, which would transform the catalog into a series of linked pieces of information).12 The bibliographic record is an outdated remnant of the card catalog era. Rather than focusing on the quality of individual catalog records, instead, “[c]ataloging should aim to satisfy user needs”.13
While cataloging is a form of outreach, it’s not the catalog itself that performs outreach: “Users of the library do not need bibliographic records at all, perfect or not. What they want is to find what they’re looking for”14 and “The cataloger’s commitment to useful (accurate, consistent and sufficient to a purpose) bibliographic information is the basis of communication with the users in libraries”.15
Technical services staff outreach involves both types of outreach as mentioned, both working within the catalog to improve the user experience and expand access, and also contributing their expertise to more traditional outreach efforts. The simplest approach to incorporating Technical Services staff into outreach efforts has been to incorporate them into traditional public services outreach roles and the literature discusses technical services staff working on the reference desk, becoming liaison librarians, assisting with library programming, and participating in instruction.16
However, there are increasing opportunities for technical services staff to bring their own skills and knowledge in metadata, collection organization, and technology to outreach activities. Technical services staff can provide instruction in technology and collection organization. The University of Illinois at Chicago, for example, created the Information Technology Arcade, through which librarians offer individual and group instruction on all aspects of creating technology solutions.17 Technical services staff also provide their expertise to community groups and campus units on best ways to organize their collections. The knowledge of information resources acquisition and management found in technical services can be used in instruction to enhance students’ understanding of the increasingly complex information landscape in which they learn and work. Harrington & Scott describe designing and presenting an instructional session at a university student leadership conference as an instance of this form of outreach.18
Knowledge of cataloging and metadata has become an important part of these outreach efforts. Technical Services librarians offer metadata services for digitization projects to their communities, providing advice and training on metadata creation and, at times, creating the metadata for projects. Cornell Technical Services, in 2002, planned on offering metadata services as part of a suite of services focused on creating digital collections19, and The University of Alabama’s Alabama Digital Humanities Center works with digital humanities scholars to create metadata customized to the needs of their research collections.20 Participation in the library catalog itself has been used as outreach at American University Library, where the library has added the collections of small libraries from different campus units to the library’s catalog, with the library providing cataloging and system expertise. Incorporating these small, scattered collections into the main library catalog has increased exposure & discovery of the units’ resources and promoted collaboration and good will across the campus.21
Exhibits are another opportunity for Technical Services staff to bring their knowledge to provide outreach, both to library patrons (current and potential) and to other library staff. Technical Services staff who participate in exhibit curation contribute significantly to that effort due to their specialist skills, and also develop their own skills in a way that they are unable to do when working in the library catalog.22 Brown writes about an exhibit curated with rare books in the library of Michigan State University, and some of the lessons gained from the curation experience. The goal of exhibits is to publicize resources “that can get lost in a large collection… promote special collections, rare and other valuable items” and that “library exhibits give meaning to collections.”23
Exhibits are able to do what catalogs do not and cannot: provide context and meaning to the resources they contain. Catalogs don’t provide context and narrative, whereas this is the essential role of an exhibit. . Brown also writes that “[b]efore a viewer can be informed, stimulated, or intrigued, he or she must first be persuaded to stop long enough to be engaged by the exhibit”24 — another example of how different an exhibit and the library catalog are, a point further emphasized when Brown writes that another purpose of exhibits is to convey the meaning of library collections, “inviting visitors to take a closer look and ask questions”.25 Brown also writes that “exhibits help present what libraries value and embody”26 and that “exhibits serve the dual purpose of advertising and teaching for libraries”27 – key outreach jobs that exhibitions typically serve.
Fabian et. al. consider library outreach more broadly, with exhibits one among four examples of outreach that they consider. They explain how outreach strategies were “used to attract diverse, underserved and expanded user populations to University Libraries resources and events”.28 They write that exhibits are one strategy used to “promote library collections and services and to advance library outreach goals”.29 They discuss how exhibits can be used to attract new constituencies to the library’s resources and services, and that exhibits are “outreach vehicles” and “educational opportunities”. They point out that as well as the outreach aspect to library patrons, they are an excellent opportunity to “build relationships with professorial faculty, librarians…” and other collaborators.30
Not only are library exhibits or exhibitions a way of reaching current library patrons, they are a way of reaching beyond the library both on campus and off-- turning potential patrons into exhibition visitors, and turning associated faculty into collaborators.31 Fabian et. al. note that “a good exhibit can make a library friends and earn it respect from the full range of its creators, collaborators and visitors. It can draw people into the library who might never come otherwise, build positive perceptions of libraries and librarians, and build relationships across diverse groups and constituencies. A good exhibit is a demonstrable act of intellectual engagement and scholarshiIt can be the very best kind of showing off and outreach”.32
The literature points to the development of library technology as well as technology in general as providing reason for an increasing role for technical services in outreach activities. The catalog itself can play an important part in outreach to users and technical services expertise becomes more valuable in conjunction with more traditional forms of outreach activities.
As the literature review has shown, there are multiple forms of cataloging outreach. This paper will focus on three forms of outreach that make direct use of the library catalog: First by ensuring that the catalog is accessible and understandable to all patrons; second by ensuring that needed and desired information is in bibliographic records and is searchable; and third by including records for accessible resources in the catalog. All three of these things together amount to a significant outreach effort that ensures that the catalog is a useful and relevant tool that remains a valuable tool for library patrons both current and future. Technical Services librarians, therefore, are engaging in outreach by making sure that the main tool for library discovery is useable, offers enhanced information, and contains a wide variety of resources.
Moving the catalog beyond the ivory tower-- making language more accessible
In this section we will be examining what cataloging does-- and can do-- to make the library catalog more open and accessible to wider audiences through the use of language and other structural issues. Some of the issues we will examine include: problematic subject headings; the descriptive language used in catalog records (for instance outdated abbreviations and unfamiliar terms including s.l., s.n. which describes a resource without publication information); the user-facing language used in the catalog interface (such as ‘request options’, ‘concurrent users’); and whether providing additional or enhanced content (such as tables of contents, etc) are useful enhancements that expand the reach of library catalogs and promote libraries’ unique and distinctive collections.
All of these issues work towards answering whether libraries can do more or better jobs in cataloging in order to reach potential (rather than current) patrons, and what aspects of cataloging we are currently engaged in that are the opposite of outreach-- that are restricting access to those who are already using the library, while building the library catalog in such a way that it remains impenetrable for those who don't know how to use it. Part of this gate-keeping function restriction simply results from the fact that library catalogs and systems are generally not organized like Google and other online systems that users are familiar with. OCLC, a cooperative organization of libraries that runs tools such as WorldCat and produces leading library research, published a report on what users want from a library catalog and stated: “end users’ expectations of data quality arise largely from their experiences of how information is organized on popular Web sites.”33 The end user’s experience of the delivery of wanted items is as important, if not more important, than their discovery experience. In addition, end users rely on and expect enhanced metadata content including summaries/abstracts and tables of contents but that is not consistently available for all titles in the library catalog.
One of the significant examples of how library catalogs use language that may inhibit use of library resources by a wide group of users who may not be familiar with this mode of use, is through the use of problematic subject headings. Subject headings are a controlled list of headings applied to catalog records that help to describe the topical aspects of content that is described by catalog records. The purpose of subject headings is to ensure that there is some consistency in description-- that two resources in the library catalog about the same subject use the same subject headings rather than different language to describe the same topic. The most common vocabulary used to describe subjects is managed by the United States Library of Congress and is called “Library of Congress Subject Headings” (LCSH). For instance, a book and a documentary film, both about the American Civil War, should use the LCSH heading “United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865” rather than “American Civil War”, “War Between the States”, “War of Northern Aggression”, or “Civil War”. The history of LCSH can be traced back as far as 1898 and throughout that history some headings have been established which used language that was exclusionary.
Recently, we have seen an example of an exclusionary subject heading that was eventually changed following a lobbying effort by library patrons, students, and librarians. The LCSH “Illegal aliens” was established in 2008, and became the subject of a long-running campaign to change the heading to one that used neither term (‘illegal’ or ‘aliens’). This has been the subject of documentaries such as Change the Subject which ably articulates the very real search and discovery issues that are faced by library patrons when catalogs make use of this exclusionary language. A number of locally-driven library efforts have successfully changed the language in their local catalog but these have very much been the exception rather than the rule-- the structure of LCSH is such that most libraries use it unchanged. In November 2021, the Library of Congress announced that the heading “Illegal Aliens” would be changed to “Noncitizens” and “Illegal immigration.”34 Although this change has been generally welcomed in the cataloging community, there continues to be debate over whether the retention of the word ‘illegal’ is still exclusionary, so there may continue to be local changes to the newly approved terms.
While these changes were being debated by those who manage the LCSH vocabulary, individual libraries were able to make changes in their local catalogs. Those institutions that do change the language locally usually choose one of three strategies: add additional access points; replace problematic language in the metadata; or replace display language in the catalog’s front end.35 Some libraries made the local decision to change the catalog display in order to show users other terms such as ‘undocumented immigrants’ even if the record in the underlying catalog metadata retained the language ‘Illegal aliens’. Examples of libraries that chose this route include Villanova and the University of Texas.36 Others made the choice to change the language in the local catalog record, even if that constituted a break from the authorized LCSH term. The language in the library catalog matters.
In addition, the language that’s used for the catalog matters: the user experience is affected when the catalog uses language that patrons may not understand. For example, library specific terms such as S.l. S.n. (abbreviations for the latin terms “sine loco, sine nomine” which were used when the place of publication and the publisher of a book were unknown), links to other catalogs that don’t explicitly say that the user is staying within the library ecosystem, and links to interlibrary loan without explaining what that term means, can all help to make the catalog a mysterious and exclusionary tool.
Furthermore, the way that people use the catalog has changed, and while much about the library catalog technology has changed with it, much about the content of library catalogs has not. As people do more keyword searches and less browsing by call number libraries have responded at varying speeds about including useful metadata such as tables of contents, summaries and other information that can greatly enhance the discoverability of catalog records. This has also led to great differences between what’s included in the library catalog for print resources (traditional bibliographic records) while electronic resources may have completely different levels of cataloging-- ranging from lower quality records to far more detailed records at the article or chapter level, depending on the quality of records acquired from the resource supplier.
Changing Catalog technology: enabling outreach
Changes in library technology have allowed the catalog to provide access to more resources and to provide a more sophisticated search and discovery experience. Improvements in the technology of the catalog, in and of themselves, have the potential to improve outreach by making access to the catalog, and the library’s holdings, easier and more intuitive. The newer systems also allow scope for catalogers to investigate new tools to improve the user experience. An increase in the creation and use of specialized defined vocabularies and thesauri amongst catalogers and metadata practitioners can be seen as one response to the new system capabilities.
The development of discovery layer functionality has improved the traditional integrated library system (ILS) model. Library OPACs (Online Public Access Catalogs) are being replaced with Library Discovery Services, web-based systems that aggregate bibliographic information and access from several sources, including the library catalog, but also knowledge bases, link resolvers, and, increasingly, shared consortial catalogs. Both the older and newer systems can effectively search the catalog, but modern discovery layers do so using newer methods of searching and refining results that are easier and more intuitive to use. They are flexible and better reflect the standards of web browsers that patrons are familiar with. Discovery layers allow patrons to facet and filter a set of results to find resources in a more granular way, while also increasing the range of what can be searched – article level metadata, the full text of online resources, and other resources as well as the catalog records. These changes make the experience of using the catalog less confusing and frustrating for patrons. Patrons can use the faceting tools that they are accustomed to from web browsers and experience less frustration learning a different, more complicated system. The experience is, at least, a neutral one and, at best, a positive and productive experience using the discovery service.
Discovery services rely on faceting and filtering to narrow search results for users. Once someone executes a keyword search on a topic, they can filter by a number of facets such as date range, resource type, or language. Data to populate the discovery layer comes from numerous sources, many of which are outside the control of catalogers. Beyond the traditional library catalog, discovery layers contain data and metadata from full text databases, link resolvers, and knowledge bases, much of which is provided by vendors and automated processes. Recognizing this potential and the need to respond to new desires/needs of the public/users, catalogers have been evolving some of their traditional metadata tools. One major response has been in the area of defined, or controlled, vocabularies. These are important tools in search and discovery, collocating resources based on similar subjects, genre, or other characteristics. Vocabularies are developed both by the established organizations, such as Library of Congress, and by informal groups of interested catalogers who develop vocabularies for specific resources such as artists books or video games.
LCSH has been reworked over recent years to break out genre terms, demographic terms, and Medium of Performance terms for music from topical terms describing the subject matter of materials. These terms all exist in the Library of Congress Subject Headings vocabulary. However, genre terms reflect the form of an item, not the subject of an item.
Use cases include:
● Demographic terms can be used to identify particular audiences for a resource, not the subject matter.
● An important aspect of choosing music is the medium of performance. A violinist is looking for a score for violin, for instance, not piano.
● Demographic terms used to describe the author of a work of fiction, in conjunction with the genre of that work of fiction, can be used to help isolate specific categories of works.
Increasing the number of vocabularies has enabled catalogers to increase the level of specificity in their catalog records, which is a crucial first step to increasing the level of specificity available in patron searching.
This trend can improve outreach, but also presents new challenges and may even inhibit outreach efforts. These are challenges for catalogers. For instance, the use of Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT) terms can enhance discovery, but there is also some serious disagreement about including unnecessary or intrusive information such as gender in catalog metadata. Some librarians see great benefit in allowing users to search by demographic terms such as the ethnicity of an author, while others note that including this information in catalog records presents new ethical challenges for the cataloging community that leaves many undecided about whether to fully implement these new fields and vocabularies.37 There are two key issues: one is that a cataloger does not necessarily have access to the full range of demographic information– including this goes beyond what has generally been considered to be cataloging practice: recording and describing information that is presented on the resource. Additionally, including this information may be incomplete or may infringe on a creator’s or contributor’s privacy, differ from how they describe themselves, and additionally may present safety issues.38
As the range of materials in library collections increases, some organizations besides the Library of Congress have developed specialized vocabularies to provide improved access to specific types of resources. For example, there are vocabularies to describe video games (maintained by University of California, Santa Cruz and Stanford),39 and rare books (maintained by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), a division of ALA),40 as well as tools such as the Homosaurus which is an LGBTQ vocabulary designed to supplement LCSH.41 The fact that these vocabularies are being created and maintained by organizations besides the Library of Congress represents a democratization of cataloging, but it also means that there has been a significant loss of control and consistency. Having a decentralized cataloging landscape means that some of these vocabularies are not widely adopted across the cataloging community. It also means there is a significant loss of centralized guidance-- for instance, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging commissioned a report (delivered in 2016) which made recommendations on the use of gender terms in authority records (which describe people);42 in 2022, the committee approved the recommendation not to use the MARC 375 field in personal name authority records, which is used to record gender, and to delete these fields when encountered.43
These catalog enhancements allow library patrons to search by specific demographic terms, for instance allowing the library to highlight works by people of color. Allowing catalog users to filter by (for instance) “African American authors” or to limit the results list to works created by Indonesians allows the catalog to be searched in ways never before possible. However, at this point, there are still some things preventing the full and wide-spread adoption of these terms: (1) there is inconsistent use of these terms and fields in library metadata (for instance, older records don’t contain this information, and many cataloging departments are not routinely adding it); (2) few libraries have turned on the ability to do this searching or faceting (even if it is available with their catalog tools). This slow rate of adoption (both by metadata creators and by those managing catalogs and discovery layers) can be read as an indication that there is not very much demand or desire to have these tools available to those using library catalogs.
In summary, there have been a number of positive trends that make use of new and improved technological tools. These enable greater access to library resources through the library catalog. These changes mean that the method of cataloging as a form of outreach is adapting and evolving. However, there are growing pains, as catalogers, programmers, and those who design library catalogs figure out how best to exploit these new tools.
Cataloging as outreach - OA cataloging
Libraries choose resources for their collections based on the needs of their existing patrons. Academic libraries generally choose scholarly resources, with an emphasis on supporting the academic programs that are a focus of teaching and research at their institution. There is growing availability of open access resources which reflects changes in scholarly communication and academic publishing models. Libraries can choose to include open access resources in their library catalogs, thus supplementing their paid or subscription resources. By including these resources in their catalogs, libraries are embracing these new publishing models and curating the resource selection that is available to patrons.
Academic libraries are increasingly choosing to include open access resources to their electronic resource offerings. By including open access resources in its catalog, a library signals support for open access publishing models and for the faculty who are promoting these models with their publishing choices. It is a form of outreach that demonstrates that this relatively new form of publishing is not some aberrant type of resource, but recognized scholarly resources and, as such, part of the catalog. In the case of open access resources, cataloging is a more significant part of collection development than with traditional resources. Cataloging is what enables the library to tell patrons what is in the library’s collection, and to tell potential patrons that the library offers access to useful resources. Besides physically browsing the stacks, the catalog is the primary means for patrons to explore and interact with the physical collection of resources, and the main way to discover electronic collections. Open access also has the potential to widen the library’s reach by providing more resources than its budget might ordinarily allow and provides resources to people who are not affiliated with the university, since these are openly available.
It is important that the open access status of a resource be visible to patrons. This is important so that patrons can easily determine if and how they have access, and also in order to increase awareness and acceptance of open access publishing among the academic community. Faculty and students may not realize, and cannot actively support, open access with their choices if these resources are not easily identifiable. Beyond providing good descriptions of the resources themselves, identifying their open access status in the library catalog is part of library outreach efforts. Library catalogers have an important role in defining OA resources and in encouraging OA publishing and citation, which is a stated goal of many academic institutions such as the University of California and and Harvard. The OA2020 initiative, which was founded in 2015 in order to plan concrete actions towards an “open information environment”, states that one benefit of open access is that librarians “[t]ake a central role in scholarly communications on behalf of their institution in the emerging open access environment”-- inherent in this is promoting OA publishing within their communities, by providing and facilitating search, discovery and access of OA resources.44
The cataloging field has been developing methods for making this information visible in the catalog, in tandem with the development of open access resources. Cataloging policy and recommendations have changed, as the tools available to catalogers have developed. Initially, catalogers were encouraged to make notes about whether a resource was open access in a general purpose part of the catalog record. Later, the cataloging community developed specific fields of the MARC record that denoted open access status; this enables OA status to be determined more easily and efficiently by catalog systems.45 This enables catalogs to use this metadata to display publicly visible OA indicators, such as the green open lock icon. For example, Ex Libris’ widely-used Alma and Primo systems can display the OA icon based on the 506 field, and it can filter search results based on this status.
The University of California Libraries system has been re-evaluating its treatment of OA resources in light of its 2021 systems migration to a consortial library system. This provides the opportunity for the University’s library system, which has already spoken with one voice in support of Open Access resources, from its Faculty Senate OA policy in 2013 to the May 2021 update on OA and academic journal contracts and the 2021 transformative agreement with Elsevier, and subsequent transformative agreements with other journal publishers. to have their unified catalog reflect the importance of OA material and to treat this material consistently.46 A common policy is in the process of being formulated on how to identify the open access status of records in the library catalog so that patrons (students, faculty, staff and those unaffiliated with the university) will have a consistent method of identifying these electronic resources that are free and open to all-- ensuring that cataloging plays a role in enhancing access to these resources that other parts of the library and university have dedicated so much effort to creating/transforming. The consortium has also decided to use the built-in Central Discovery Index, which ensures that the library catalog will include large amounts of OA material, bringing it within the library ecosystem for UC patrons.
Exhibits
The UCI Libraries use exhibits as a tool to highlight library collections, attract attention to library activities, and as a form of user education. Exhibits are presented in a variety of areas: there is one large library exhibit in the lobby of the main library, these usually last about 6 months; there is a an exhibit in the lobby of the Science Library, which has more variable time frames; and there is an exhibit outside of the Special Collections reading room, where exhibits usually last for approximately a month. In this Special Collections exhibit space, from October 25-December 10th 2018, the cataloging department collaborated with the Special Collections Department to present an exhibit entitled: Cataloging Oddities: New Forms, Altered Forms and Strange Forms.
This exhibit aimed to present some of the new special collections acquisitions that presented challenges for cataloging due to their physical form. These were all materials that catalogers had seen crossing their desks, had presented challenges for cataloging, and also struck the catalogers that their library colleagues should physically see the material rather than simply expect that they would be discoverable through the library catalog. In a way, this exhibit was a formal way of accomplishing the same thing as taking a new acquisition to a colleague and saying “look at this!”
However, there was a second goal of this exhibit which was equally important as highlighting the material: highlighting the work that catalogers do to describe that material. The audience of this exhibit was primarily non-cataloging library colleagues, and this exhibit provided an excellent opportunity to show those colleagues what it is that catalogers do, by using the example of these unusual titles. Showing what aspects of cataloging are difficult with unusual material proved to be a good way of displaying the value of cataloging -- of providing excellent resource description and of translating a physical object into a catalog description. In this case, cataloging is a way of taking a visual object-- something that is very visual in nature-- and describing it in a structured way that foregrounds its unusual attributes so that it may be discoverable to all those interested in it, either due to its form or its content. Displaying the material helped to show the significant differences that might exist between a traditional book and an object, but which might be obscured by relatively unobtrusive or minor differences in the catalog record.
In this way, the exhibit served two different outreach functions: first, to promote the newly acquired material in the special collections department; and second, to serve as outreach for the cataloging department itself. While there is existing literature about the idea of hosting outreach events within the cataloging department, there is little about the cataloging department leaving to perform outreach around the library. This was a significant departure for all members of the exhibit team, but one that was felt to be worthwhile. Thus, there were really two subjects of the exhibit: first, the material itself; and second, the catalog records describing that material. The exhibit helped to connect the two-- to make the link between the catalog record and the object it describes in front of the eyes of the viewer.
The exhibit was curated by four members of the cataloging department: two cataloging staff, one library school intern who was also a PhD student at UCI, and a cataloging librarian. Some of the material exhibited included modern artists' books, altered books, a watch that contains two of Shakespeare’s sonnets, works of contemporary poetry that take unusual forms, and more. All of these items, though well-described in the library catalog, are much better seen to be understood and appreciated.
The traditional view of library outreach is that it is something done by public service units, education and outreach or reference units and liaison librarians. In the last few decades, however, technical services librarians have seen that there is a role for their skill and knowledge in outreach. There is also a role for the catalog itself. In our increasingly online, digital world, metadata and information resource organization and management have increased in importance and these are areas where library technical service’s expertise can be effectively utilized for outreach. Technical services librarians may participate in producing library exhibits that highlight collections or which focus on a topic in which a technical services librarian is knowledgeable. They may also participate in such outreach efforts as assisting in giving new faculty tours of the library or offering internships to library school students. More technical services focused outreach includes training people to organize their own collections or doing it for them, being part of digital humanities projects with digital humanities researchers, and providing metadata training and provision for digital projects. The work that these librarians do within the catalog itself is an integral part of the library’s outreach efforts.
In conclusion, cataloging is a form of outreach. It helps library resources reach more people, and reach them better. The methods of cataloging are changing. Maintaining the library catalog, accurately describing library resources, and providing library patrons with the tools needed for resource discovery– broadly speaking, the work defined as ‘cataloging’-- has changed significantly in the past few decades. It will continue to change.
This change enables new methods of outreach– having the catalog description reach new people in new ways, and also allows description of new and different forms of resources to reach people. Cataloging no longer need stay within the library catalog. It’s moved from the drawer of a card catalog, to the electronic catalog terminal, to the catalog on the internet, and
now is available to all on the internet as part of the internet. Where it will be in the future remains to be determined, but the metadata in the catalog is getting prepared for it.
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