{"id":1015,"date":"2015-04-04T13:25:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T20:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/galencharlton.com\/blog\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2015-04-04T13:25:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T20:25:05","slug":"three-tales-regarding-a-decrease-in-the-number-of-catalogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galencharlton.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/three-tales-regarding-a-decrease-in-the-number-of-catalogers\/","title":{"rendered":"Three tales regarding a decrease in the number of catalogers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discussions on Twitter today \u2013 see the timelines of @cm_harlow<\/a> and @erinaleach<\/a> for entry points \u2013\u00a0got me thinking.<\/p>\n

In 1991, the Library of Congress had 745 staff in its Cataloging Directorate. By the end of FY 2004, the LC Bibliographic Access Divisions had between 5061<\/a><\/sup> and 5612<\/a><\/sup> staff.<\/p>\n

What about now? As of 2014, the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access unit has 238 staff3<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

While I’m sure one could quibble about the details (counting FTE vs. counting humans, accounting for the reorganizations, and so forth), the trend is clear: there has been a precipitous drop in the number of cataloging staff employed by the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n

I’ll blithely ignore factors such as\u00a0shifts in the political climate in the U.S. and how they affect civil service. Instead, I’ll focus on library technology, and spin three tales.<\/p>\n

The tale of the library technologists<\/strong><\/p>\n

The decrease in the number of cataloging staff are one consequence of\u00a0a triumph of library automation. The tools that we library technologists have written allow catalogers to work more efficiently. Sure, there are fewer of them, but that’s mostly been due to retirements. Not only that, the ones who are left are now free to work on more intellectually interesting tasks. <\/em><\/p>\n

If we, the library technologists, can but slip the bonds of legacy cruft like the MARC record, we can make further gains in the expressiveness of our tools and the efficiencies they can achieve. We will be able to take advantage of metadata produced by other institutions and people for their own ends, enabling library metadata specialists to concern themselves with larger-scale issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

Moreover, once our data is out there \u2013 who knows what others, including our patrons, can achieve with it?<\/em><\/p>\n

This will of course be pretty disruptive, but as traditional library catalogers retire, we’ll reach buy-in. The library administrators\u00a0have been pushing us to make more efficient systems, though we wish that they would invest more money in the systems departments.<\/em><\/p>\n

We find that the catalogers are quite nice to work with one-on-one, but we don’t understand why they seem so attached to an ancient format that was only meant for record interchange.<\/em><\/p>\n

The tale of the catalogers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The decrease in the number of cataloging staff reflects\u00a0a success\u00a0of library administration in their efforts to save money \u2013 but why is it always at our expense?\u00a0We firmly believe that our work with the library catalog\/metadata services counts as a public service, and we wish more of our public services colleagues knew how to use the catalog better. \u00a0We know for a fact that what doesn’t get catalogued may as well not exist in the library.<\/em><\/p>\n

We also know that what gets catalogued badly or inconsistently can cause real problems for patrons trying to use the library’s collection. \u00a0We’ve seen what\u00a0vendor cataloging can be like \u2013 and while sometimes it’s very good, often it’s terrible.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are not just a cost center. We\u00a0desperately want better tools, but we also don’t think that it’s possible to completely remove humans from the process of building and improving our metadata.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We find that the library technologists are quite nice to work with one-on-one \u2013 but it is quite rare that we get to actually speak with a programmer. \u00a0We wish that the ILS vendors would listen to us more.<\/em><\/p>\n

The tale of the library directors<\/strong><\/p>\n

The decrease in the number of cataloging staff at the Library of Congress is only partially relevant to the libraries we run, but hopefully somebody has figured out how to do cataloging more cheaply. We’re trying to make do with the money we’re allocated. Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to get a library funding initiative passed, but more often we’re trying to make do with less: sometimes to the point where flu season makes us super-nervous about our ability to keep all of the branches open.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re concerned not only with how much of our budgets are going into electronic resources, but with how nigh-impossible it is to predict increases in fees for ejournal subscriptions\/ fees for ebook services.<\/em><\/p>\n

We find that the catalogers and the library technologists are pleasant enough to talk to, but we’re not sure how well they see the big picture \u2013 and we dearly wish they could clearly articulate how yet another cataloging standard \/ yet another systems migration will make our budgets any more manageable.<\/em><\/p>\n

Each of these tales is true. Each of these tales is a lie. Many other tales could be told. Fuzziness abounds.<\/p>\n

However, there is one thing that seems clear: conversations about the future of library data and library systems involve people with\u00a0radically<\/em>\u00a0different points of view. These differences do not mean that any of the people engaged in the conversations are villains, or do not care about library users, or are unwilling to learn new things.<\/p>\n

The differences do mean that it can be all too easy for conversations to\u00a0fall apart or get derailed.<\/p>\n

We need to practice listening.<\/p>\n

1. From testmony<\/a> by the president of the Library of Congress Professional Guild to Congress on 6 March 2015.<\/small><\/div>\n
2. From the BA FY 2004 report<\/a>. This including 32 staff from the Cataloging Distribution Service, which had been merged into BA and had not been part of the Cataloging Directorate.<\/small><\/div>\n
3. From testmony<\/a> by the president of the Library of Congress Professional Guild to Congress on 6 March 2015.<\/small><\/div>\n

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