Very interestingly, it seems to me the messages in this thread so far have expressed very well the reasons why you need project management and change management skills to start up new processes in cataloguing and re-design the workflows, either internally or / and with external partnerships or copy cataloguing services.

It is not just a matter of updating cataloguing skills, speed up the training or people motivation or alignment of your procurement to revised rules, new technical standards and another module of your LMS.

It is a huge organisational change that should be managed scaling up and reviewing the existent cataloguing processes in the context of the service that any single library or cataloguing centre provides (cooperation and sharing additional options cannot substitute your own institution identity and unique mission).

These cataloguing processes and procedures have been managed for almost 40 years quite statically, as efficiency and universal bibliographic control were the only goals of libraries' work. Especially after the engineering approach or process approach took over in many academic and large institutions in the last 15/20 years, lot of cataloguing activities have become not different from processes managed in retailing or manufacturing, with less focus on the design of intellectual products and services.

It is not going to be the same in the future. You have to qualify your catalogues as products that make a difference in your institution "value proposition". For instance, think about the authority control debate and new ISNI standard, or the current excellent discussion that is going on RDA-L about what does it mean managing "conference names" in a new way, respecting the form in which a resource represents itself... Not just a matter or productivity.


Brunella Longo
Information Management Adviser, Project Manager Prince2 Practitioner, Independent Scholar
7 New College Court
London NW3 5EX
T +44 (0)20 72095014 - 77229184 / +44 (0) 75 49921488 (mobile)
http://www.brunellalongo.info (http://www.brunellalongo.it)