CSASM_Introduction
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Introduction to the Collection Support All Staff Meeting presented by the Resource Description section, 8 May 2012.
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CSASM_Introduction
- 1. Collection Support All-Staff Meeting 8 May 2012 Introduction to the work of the Resource Description section © Masud Khokhar 2011
- 2. What do we do?
- 3. ? © Tommy Hemmert Olesen
- 4. © Olga Miltsova 2009
- 5. © KIVILCIM PINAR 2011
- 6. © Michael Williams 2012
- 7. © Torbjorn Lagerwall 2009
- 8. © Anne-Louise Quarfoth 2010
- 9. © Roman Strelchenko 2011
- 12. © Adelle & Justin 2009
- 13. © Vardion 2004
- 14. English suomi français Nederlands español dansk italiano Deutsch Norsk português Svenska Русский язык ελληνικά
- 15. © British Library 2010
- 17. © Kirill Makarov 2011
- 18. © Jiri Kabele 2009, 2010, 2011
Editor's Notes
- Welcome.Thanks for coming. I hope you will enjoy the afternoon, and leave with a better understanding of what we do and why it’s important.Outline of the meeting:After my introduction, three short presentations on different areas of the section’s work, Q&A after each presentation.Break for refreshments at 1430, in common room, for 30 mins. Quiz before start of second half at 1500.Three more short presentations, then I’ll wrap things up with a short conclusion.(Then hand over to CC for strategic planning discussion.)Introduction:Some may consider cataloguing (which is what Resource Description used to be called) an activity whose time has passed.After all, in these days of Google, where all the content of the Internet is searchable by keywords, what’s the point in spending time creating catalogue records? By focussing on a selection of the work of the RD section, we aim to demonstrate that descriptive cataloguing and the associated work of authority control and subject description are as important – if not more important – than they have ever been, and vital in the 21st century world of information overload.That’s why I have chosen this picture of dawn over Osney (with thanks to MasudKhokhar), to represent the new dawn of resource description.(Conclusion - Cataloguing is dead – long live resource description!)
- So, what do we do in Resource Description?
- Obligatory cat photograph.
- Well, we catalogue books. No surprises there.
- Actually, we catalogue a lot of books! (Elena will talk more about the numbers in her later session.)
- Many of them end up here in the BSF, others are selected for open-shelf reading rooms in the Bodleian Libraries.The records we create are exported to external databases such as OCLC WorldCat, SUNCAT (Serials Union Catalogue) and COPAC (the catalogue of the Research Libraries UK members) where they can be used both for resource discovery – to let folks know that we have the materials in Oxford – and also by cataloguers in other libraries around the world, to use in their own catalogues.
- We don't just catalogue books.We also describe other resources, including periodicals...
- ...CDs, DVDs, computer software.We even catalogue rare historical artefacts ...
- Remember these? Floppy disks, audio cassettes, videocassettes ...
- Returning to the 21st century, we also catalogue ebooks and ejournals, to help readers find and access these resources via SOLO.(I’ll talk some more about ebooks and ebook cataloguing later this afternoon.)
- And ejournals.These used to be catalogued title-by-title, but now that we subscribe to tens of thousands of titles we have to batch-catalogue our collection.
- We also catalogue some fun stuff, received under Legal Deposit – including children’s books which may not be widely consulted today, but will surely be of interest to future scholars in the same way that the Opie Collection of Children’s Literature is today.(Image: Wombles pop-up book.)
- The majority of the material we catalogue comes from the UK, largely through the Legal Deposit programme.It also comes from Western Europe (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain), Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, North America (Canada and the US), South and Latin America, Australasia, India, and other counties, thanks to the efforts of our colleagues in Acquisitions Services.
- We catalogue materialsin many languages ... and more than one script.
- We co-operate with the other Legal Deposit libraries in the Shared Cataloguing Programme to create catalogue records for the British National Bibliography, now over sixty years old (not that it looks like this anymore!).(Rebecca will tell you more about the Shared Cataloguing Programme shortly.)
- In addition to descriptive cataloguing, we analyse the subject of the materials we catalogue and assign Library of Congress Subject Headings to each item....And if no suitable subject heading exists we propose new headings, to improve the usefulness of LCSH.(Edward will talk about this work just before the break.)
- In addition to growing the catalogue by adding new records, we maintain the catalogue by correcting records where necessary – for the benefit of all libraries and their readers.We also keep the catalogue under authority control.(Alasdair will talk about this after the break.)
- We teach library staff outside Resource Description to catalogue and train them to use the cataloguing software (Aleph) ... ... And we support them and all OLIS cataloguers once they have been trained, via an email and telephone helpline and face-to-face sessions if necessary.(Bernadette will tell you more about the work of Catalogue Support Services.)
- [Organisation chart for RD – Chart from Word format]We are organised into teams, but there is lots of co-operation between the teams to make the best use of staff resources in the section.For example, the Periodicals Cataloguing team assists with bibliographic maintenance of serial records, and two staff from BMAC assist Bernadette with some of the cataloguing training.SO, that’s a very quick introduction to the work of the Resource Description section. Does anyone have any questions?Now I’ll pass you over to Rebecca Alexander, who is going to tell you more about the Shared Cataloguing Programme...