The speaker REflects on their experiences researching and writing the "Cataloguing" chapter in British Librarianship and Information Work 2016-2020, and looks at both the importance of, and the philosophy behind, recording the history of metadata creation. The first part of the talk will give a brief introduction to the speaker and their role, and a short history of the publication in question. It will then cover the speaker’s methodology and its limitations, and highlight the difficulties faced in tracking down information recorded publicly only in ephemeral or regularly updated websites. They will also touch on writing style and the challenges of writing from a past perspective, given the current pace of change. The second part of the talk will look at what the speaker learned from the experience, and what benefits a chronicle of the recent past can provide for the future. They will explore attitudes to change and the passage of time, and the role of recording history in making sense of life. Finally, they will think about the relevance of recording history in our specific field – how updating subject headings for inclusivity needs to be recorded to understand past injustices and changing views, for example – and the loss of detail if changes are recorded at a high rather than granular level. Paper presented at the CILIP Metadata and Discovery Group (MDG) Conference & UKCoR RDA Day (6th - 8th Sept 2023 at IET Austin Court, Birmingham).

1. What? How? WHY?
CILIP Metadata & Discovery Group Conference 2023
#CILIPMDG2023

2. Library Collections Manager – Scholarly
Communication and System Services
Kingston University

3.  Librarian
 Cataloguer
 Scholarly Communication-ist
 Rat-fancier
 Poet (number of poems written: one)

5.  First appeared in 1929 as The Year's Work in Librarianship, published by The
Library Association.
 Published yearly (with a few gaps) until the 50s, when it moved to a quinquennial
pattern.
 1986-1990 last volume published by CILIP.
 Ashgate published a catch-up 1991-2000 volume in 2007, edited by John Bowman,
then a 2001-2005 volume.
 Later volumes have been self-published by editor John Bowman.

6.  Editors of C&I approached July 2021 by John Bowman.
 Writer Cataloguing chapter of previous volume (Neil Nicholson) unavailable –
would we be interested?
 After some hesitation and reflection, I agreed!

7. Part 1: Reasoning

8.  Agreed it felt important to record what had been done
 Well-placed to contact experts and access records
 (Misplaced?) confidence in writing ability
 Professional Development – contribution to Chartership portfolio

9. Part 1: Research

10.  No use at all.
Embarrassing
events
Roman Emperors
Memory Usage

11.  Events may be remembered according to generic scripts rather than as individual
happenings.
 Memories degrade, so we use the saliency of a memory to estimate when it
happened. This may mean events about which we have a lot/little knowledge are
estimated as happening too recently/distantly.
 Women may be culturally conditioned to date events more accurately than men!

12.  Massively useful as starting point (although tried to confirm details at original
source).
 Obviously useful for committee membership and roles, and for events with which
committee members were involved.
 BUT - bias towards MDG and interests of committee members, and a resource not
readily available to all.

13.  RDA toolkit news posts archive.
 JISC NBK and Plan M – Blog posts archive.
 Library of Congress MARC pages – footers for each field very helpfully include
summaries of changes with dates.
 Wayback Machine.

14.  Checked details where related to individuals or where unclear, particularly Jane
Daniels on Cataloguing Ethics details.
 Public libraries – BDS, work colleagues and their contacts.

15.  Education – websites useless for historic course offerings.
 Directly contacted librarianship schools – not a complete picture, not always
helpful answers.

16. Part 2: Writing

17.  Starting with "The rules" as previously.
 New sections: Discovery, Regional Groups, Cataloguing Ethics, UK Metadata
Ecosystem, "New ways of working".

18.  Primarily a factual reference work (list of references a key element).
 Some opinions allowed to creep in.
 No jokes.

19.  Written in first half of 2022...
 ...but couldn't refer to anything that happened after 2020.
 Particularly challenging with regard to Plan M and COVID.

20. Part 2: Reflections

21.  Reference work vs critical analysis
 Reassurance that it has been recorded.
 The research reinforced how ephemeral information on specialist events and
initiatives can be.

22.  Changes to MARC field rules well recorded.
 Changing a problematic subject heading, e.g. LCSH Blacks to Black people.
History of changes "recorded" through non-preferred terms, though no dates of
change?
 Universal vs granular recording of change. Is meta-metadata useful to researchers
in assessing scale of historical useage?

23.  Memory is fallible and generally bad on details, and information on (even quite
recent) specialist events, initiatives etc is often hard to find and/or liable to be lost.
 How important is it that we tackle this?
 How can we most effectively do so?

24.  Bowman, J.H. (2007), "British Librarianship and Information Work 1991‐2000", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 9, pp.
830-830. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710831301
 Cohen, Gillian (1996), Memory in the real world. 2nd Edition. Psychology Press, Hove, ISBN 0-86377-728-7.
 Keates, Philip (2022) Cataloguing. In: Bowman, John, (ed.) British librarianship and information work 2016-
2020. Lulu Press, Inc. ISBN 9781471798689, https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/52649/