Library and Information Science Commons^™

Telling The Technical Services Story: Communicating Value (Presentation), Rebecca Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Technical Services isn’t the hidden discipline it once was. Despite some cross-departmental interaction, misconceptions about the work are all too common. It’s incumbent on technical services staff to take a proactive approach by communicating to others their value to the library and institutional mission. This session spotlights successful initiatives and gives you the guidance to bolster communication within departments, across the library, and campus-wide.

The Library Language Game: Information Literacy Through The Lens Of Wittgenstein's Language Games, Kathleen A. Langan

Communications in Information Literacy

Labeling information is a precarious and risky enterprise. Catalogers have the task of fitting unique concepts within established and rigid language frameworks while also minimizing personal bias. The way information literacy librarians interact with labeled information also influences how users interact with information. Labeling moves beyond the role of categorizing, it also contributes to meaning making and knowledge building. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations serves as a philosophical footing to illustrate how the labeling of things, in this case information, shapes the way we give things meaning. Critical librarianship and philosophy of information theory add to the discussion by considering how personal …

Homeward Bound: How To Move An Entire Cataloging Unit To Remote Work, Andrea Payant, Becky Skeen

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Utah State University Libraries Cataloging and Metadata Services (CMS) unit, including student workers, transitioned to remote cataloging in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The presentation will outline the process undertaken by supervisors to evaluate and modify services and workflows to continue cataloging service during the time when the library was shut down.

‘Theses’ Going To Be Good!: A How To Guide On Dealing With Large Complex Cataloging Projects, Paul Daybell, Becky Skeen, Liz Woolcott, Melanie Shaw, Seth Westernburg

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Utah State University Libraries undertook a complete barcoding and cataloging of their Theses and Dissertations. Due to irregular cataloging policies, only 1/3 of the collection had been cataloged. Using a workflow-driven approach, the cataloging team of student technicians and catalogers used a combination of automations, batch processing, and a relational database to pull existing record information and build new, improved records. Presenters will discuss the process developed, the tools that were used, and the outcomes of the project.

Who Knew We Had This Stuff?: Collaborating To Expose Decades Of Hidden Collections Through Cataloging Before Processing, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Matthew Leavitt

Faculty Publications

Unprocessed collections are a barrier to access that many manuscript repositories face. Our goal is to provide at least basic access to collections that have been hidden for decades. Acknowledging that our current workflow might take as long as ten years to catch up on our backlog of unprocessed collections, BYU's Harold B. Lee Library is rethinking workflows to re-emphasize user needs as a top priority. In an effort to better share resources across the library to solve this problem, catalogers are taking the first stab at archival description for backlog collections. We have developed procedures to provide a collection-level …

Spark A Conversation On Metadata Inclusiveness, Sai Deng

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This session introduces the context for metadata inclusiveness and presents some of the efforts the speaker has been involved with, including helped create the Inclusive Metadata & Conscious Editing Resources List as a member of the Sunshine State Digital Network (SSDN) Metadata Working Group, and organized “Embracing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Library Cataloging” for the ALA Core Interest Group Week in Spring 2021. It focuses on describing cases, examples and other resources from the SSDN Resources List, so as to give librarians and staff members in Technical Services at the University Central Florida Libraries a better understanding and …

Exploring Tech Tools And Productivity Apps, Lauren Puzier

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Technology is continuously changing, and there are always new tools and mobile apps to test out. There are tools for everything from productivity, audio, communication, content creation and design, coding, automation, VR, video, etc. As many libraries have shifted to remote operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, daily workflows have changed. The NMRT Online Discussion Committee asked members what tools they have found useful in their work at the library or home over the past year. Members shared tools they were interested in trying and which apps help their daily workflow.

Cataloging Broadsides & Posters, Becky Skeen

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Catalogers are increasingly responsible for creating metadata for a variety of unusual items. These may be part of a library’s special collections department or interfiled with the general collection. Luckily, technical services librarians have developed a number of guidelines for cataloging these special formats. This is the fourth installment of ULA’s technical service’s round table cataloging webinar series and will focus on how to catalog broadsides and posters following format specific guidelines and standards.

Modeling Black Literature: Behind The Screen With The Black Bibliography Project, Brenna Bychowski, Melissa Barton

Library Staff Publications

The Black Bibliography Project (BBP) plans to produce a bibliographic database of printed works by Black writers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. With the support of the Beinecke Library and a grant from the Mellon Foundation, project co-PIs and codirectors Jacqueline Goldsby and Meredith McGill collaborated with a team of librarians from Yale to develop the data model for their database. Drawing on Beinecke’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection to pull case studies, the team of librarians developed a Linked Data model for BBP in an instance of Wikibase and trained and supported a group of graduate student …

Law Library Blog (January 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Learning From Each Other: Reciprocity In Description Between Wikipedians And Librarians, Angela Yon, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Librarians, archivists, and museum professionals are increasingly realizing the value of using and contributing information to Wikipedia through projects such as edit-a-thons and the 1Lib1Ref project. As the amount of knowledge in Wikipedia and Wikidata grows, the benefits to libraries in partnering with Wikimedia projects to enhance their own bibliographic records and catalog search results also increase. Conversely, librarians have created an immense number of bibliographic and authority records that Wikipedia and Wikidata editors can use both as resources in and of themselves and as examples of various approaches to metadata and knowledge creation. Despite some challenges there are numerous …

Digging The Issues And Concerns In Subject Access Towards Discoverability Of Information And Resources, David A. Cabonero, Judy Ann P. Jandoc, Jeazel T. Cabalo, Wina B. Dominguez

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

There is an information explosion in this computer age due to the rapid developments of information and communications technology. As a result, research and studies are quickly published because of faster printing and open access publishing. With these, access to information and resources is somewhat compromised. Without access, these collections are meaningless to educators, researchers, scholars, and other information users. Thus, this study prompted to determine the: 1) level of familiarity in the fundamental principles of subject cataloging; 2) level of usage familiarity of: a) grammar and code of relationships, b) types of subject headings and subdivisions, and c) authority …

Cataloging Manuscripts And Archival Collections, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

Catalogers are increasingly responsible for creating metadata for a variety of unusual items. In the Beyond Books: Cataloging Special Format Items preconference at ULA 2019, participants learned how to catalog manuscripts/archival collections, artists’ books, zines, and posters. This webinar will reprise the Manuscripts and Archival Collections segment of that session, educating participants on when it’s appropriate to catalog special collections material archivally as a collection versus on an item level. Whether you have finding aids to use as a base for your catalog record or you are working directly with the materials, guidelines for using DACS and RDA for manuscript …

Customizing The Connexion Client To Work For You, Rachel S. Evans, Emily Williams, Kelley Ansley

Presentations

OCLC’s Connexion Client has a number of built-in tools to help catalogers save time and energy through customizations that provide controlled automation and ensure consistency. We’ll review a few of these tools, specifically Text Strings, Key Maps, and Macros, along with some resources that provide additional shortcuts.

Conference Roundup: Smart Cataloging - Beginning The Move From Batch Processing To Automated Classification, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

This article reviewed the Amigos Online Conference titled “Work Smarter, Not Harder: Innovating Technical Services Workflows” keynote session delivered by Dr. Terry Reese on February 13, 2020. Excerpt:

"As the developer of MarcEdit, a popular metadata suite used widely across the library community, Reese’s current work is focused on the ways in which libraries might leverage semantic web techniques in order to transform legacy library metadata into something new. So many sessions related to using new technologies in libraries or academia, although exciting, are not practical enough to put into everyday use by most librarians. Reese’s keynote, titled Smart Cataloging: …

Review Of Arranging And Describing Archives And Manuscripts, Cory L. Nimer

Journal of Western Archives

A review of Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, by Dennis Meissner.

Linked Data For The Real World: Leveraging Metadata For Cataloging, Rachel S. Evans, Robin Fay, Linh Uong

Presentations

Will the promise of linked data actually save us time? How will catalogers and machines work together to streamline recording of data and authority maintenance work, allowing catalogers and metadata practitioners to focus more on data stewardship and less on being data scribes? Will Real World Objects (RWOs) and linked data help bridge the gap between traditional cataloging and the larger semantic web communities of practice, ensuring that library metadata supports our users’ search behaviors, those FRBR User Tasks? Or will it just provide more maintenance work down the road? This session will explore the potential of linked data and …

Telling Your Story: Articulating Your Value As A Technical Services Librarians, Leslie Engelson, Christina Torbert

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

If you can translate your skills and achievements so others see their value and impact, everyone wins.

Whether justifying the need to fill an open position, writing a tenure or promotion narrative, or even carrying on a conversation with a colleague, librarians who work in Technical Services are often challenged to articulate what they do and the value it brings to the institution they serve. In this webinar we will discuss:

• The challenge of defining value in the context of technical services
• Assessment measures that determine the impact of technical services “products” on users
• Connecting the impact of technical services …

Review Of Ethical Questions In Name Authority Control, Itza A. Carbajal

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is a new and thoughtful addition to the metadata and cataloging field of study and practice. Consisting of eighteen essays written by a number of libraries, archives, and information scholars, this edited volume investigates and responds to a number of ethical questions regarding name authority control.These include topics such as the privacy of the creator, use of geographic names for contested lands, critique of the use of gender in authority control systems, as well as considerations around multilingualism, to name a few. While the title mostly appeals to a particular field of work and …

Richardson Collection Of Toy And Movable Books, Cindy Cline, Katie Caton, Alyssa Coon

Library Presentations

This presentation will focus on the Richardson Collection of Movable Books, including: what are movable books, how is the collection processed, and review different fields in the bibliographical records. We will also provide a preview of our new LibGuide for the collection.

The Zine Union Catalog, Lauren S. Kehoe, Jenna Freedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lauren Kehoe and Jenna Freedman have been working on the Zine Union Catalog, aka ZineCat or ZUC, since their Introduction to Digital Humanities course in Spring, 2017: MALS 75500, Digital Humanities Methods and Practices. ZineCat is the home of a union catalog dedicated to zines. A union catalog is a resource where libraries and other cultural institutions that collect materials can share cataloging and holdings information from their individual collections. The most familiar union catalog is probably WorldCat which is used to locate books, journals, CDs, DVDs, and other materials in the world’s libraries. ZineCat facilitates researchers' discovery of zine …

Cleaning Up Messy Records: Uncovering Match-Points In Ils And Repository Data, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Evans shared the process and learning takeaways from a recent project, comparing and cleaning up the data in both a repository and library catalog for items from a single collection. This post discusses the need for knowing how to pull good lists and the benefits of solid control fields in the data from multiple different systems. It also shared candidly the challenges one faces when fixing errors and attempting to make fields more consistent for platforms with very different records and standards.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The …

Best Practices For Cataloging Objects Using Rda And Marc 21, Julie Renee Moore, Robert B. Freeborn, Scott Dutkiewicz, Sarah Hovde, Jessica Janecki, Jessica Schomberg, Trina Soderquist

OLAC Publications and Training Materials

This best practices document is intended to assist catalogers in creating bibliographic records for objects, which RDA refers to as three dimensional forms, according to RDA instructions. This document provides guidance for the most common object situations encountered in libraries. Each section includes examples that reflect the RDA instructions. A list of resources and a selection of full MARC record examples illustrating common situations encountered in cataloging objects (of various types) completes the document. The Objects Task Force especially worked on the examples to provide a variety of materials that fall bibliographically under Objects. The Task Force found at least …

Diversity, Inclusion, And Social Justice In Library Technical Services, Rhonda Kauffman, Martina S. Anderson

Published Works

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries recently embraced a large-scale initiative to incorporate the values of diversity, inclusion, and social justice (DISJ) into library practices. In early 2017, the MIT collections directorate task force on DISJ released a report with recommendations for embedding DISJ values into the daily work of archives, technical services, preservation, scholarly communications, and collections strategy staff. This chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities in undertaking a sustained effort to achieve DISJ specifically within technical services. The authors highlight how technical services staff can use their unique position within libraries to dismantle existing structures of …

Going Beyond Book Displays: Providing Safe Spaces For Lgbtq Youth, Lisa Gay-Milliken, Jeffrey Discala

STEMPS Faculty Publications

School libraries should be a space where students of all ages feel welcome and safe. I (Lisa) can speak from experience when I say this is not always the case, not in the 1980s and not today. Even in the school library, a place I now cherish, I was fearful of ridicule and harassment. I was frustrated because I did not see myself—a young, questioning, and confused lesbian—in any of the books. Gay and lesbian characters didn’t exist on those high school shelves. “But that was the 1980s,” you say. It hasn’t gotten much better for much of the LGBTQ …

Transforming Acquisitions And Collection Services, Michelle Flinchbaugh, Chuck Thomas, Rob Tench, Vicki Sipe, Robin Barnard Moskal, Lynda L. Aldana, Erica A. Owusu

Purdue University Press Books

This book explores ways in which libraries can reach new levels of service, quality, and efficiency while minimizing cost by collaborating in acquisitions. In consortial acquisitions, a number of libraries work together, usually in an existing library consortia, to leverage size to support acquisitions in each individual library. In cross-functional acquisitions, acquisitions collaborates to support other library functions. For the library acquisitions manager, technical services manager, or the library director, awareness of different options for effective consortial and cross-functional acquisitions allows for the optimization of staff and resources to reach goals. This work presents those options in the form of …

Oclc Expenditures Fy19, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

This report lists the total amounts invoiced to the University of Rhode Island Libraries by OCLC during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019.

Costs are broken down by invoice date and category and include all library locations (RIN, RIU, and RIX).

We pay two fixed monthly fees for each location: one for cataloging (FIX9832) and one for interlibrary loan (FIX9836).

Total OCLC expenditures for FY18 were $95,678.02. Following is a breakdown of selected OCLC expenditures.

Total OCLC Billings by branch:

RIU — $87,800.92

RIN — $5,759.50

RIX — $2,117.60

Total OCLC Billings by function:

Cataloging — $50,123.22

Interlibrary …

Alma Normalization Rules: The Basics And Beyond, Julene L. Jones, Susan Wynne

Library Presentations

Alma normalization rules are a powerful tool for editing and enhancing bibliographic and holding records, in batch or individually. This presentation will describe how to read and write normalization rules for beginner and intermediate users. We will cover the syntax and logic of normalization rules, how and why to add a rule as a process, common use cases and real-world examples, and best practices and tricks we’ve learned along the way. No programming experience is necessary for this session. At the end of the session, attendees will understand the basic syntax of normalization rules, how to interpret a normalization rule, …

Carts In The Hallway: Cataloging And Special Collections–A Partnership For Success, David Schuster, Rachel Turner

Library Scholarship

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how Binghamton University Libraries has changed the workflows and channels of communication between Special Collections and the Technical Services Department. Over the last two years these departments have worked to foster cooperative decision making in order to increase understanding of project priorities and allow for more efficient cataloging, leading to greater accessibility of Special Collections items. The article also looks at how this relationship can be expanded upon in the future, so that cataloging/metadata librarians and Special Collections staff and librarians can work together to create better access to materials.

Breaking Out Of The Box: Transforming Archival Collections And Workflows Through Collaborative Description Projects, Cindy Cline, Libby Hertenstein, Lindy Smith, Rachel Howard, Rebecca Pattillo, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

Archivists and archival collections can often be siloed into the “special” corner of their parent library: under described, underutilized, and often even unknown. Finding a path out of isolation may require taking a new look at collection management needs and considering new partners in the work. Collaboration with colleagues can result in positive ripple effects that extend beyond the initial project goals. This session will highlight three innovative description projects where archivists partnered with non-archivists to improve access to targeted collections and will detail how their collaborations transformed their archival collections, work structures and relationships, and, ultimately, their users. After …