Good morning everybody and thanks for this initiative. I have been involved in cataloguing, indexing, abstracting standards and practices for more than 25 years now (arghh! I am the oldest here? I am 47) and designed and implemented cataloguing / classification processes and procedures  in diverse contexts - both educational and commercial. 

I thought cataloguing rules for about three years in Italy after graduation when the first *modern* national code was introduced in the early '80s.  The pioneering effort to separate  authority control activities from ISBD - descriptive cataloguing practices was a bit of a challenge at that time,  very formative, in order to better understand and manage automation of catalogues. Then I used diverse set of rules and schemes in private contexts.  I felt I had to restart everything from scratch studying and teaching Metadata principles and Dublin Core standard while I was running my own consultancy and training company in 2003-2005 (some materials should be still accessible for... self-memories :) and self-promotional reasons at http://www.pantarei.it/metatu).  

As I have always been also an Independent Scholar I think I have had the fortune  to understand quickly the evolution of the sector - so far.  The most important lesson I have learned  is that you have to learn... how to unlearn quickly if you want to progress and stay up to date, especially working in the private sector.

I am currently studying some aspects of new cataloguing standards (RDA, FRBR and ICP) and records management and my main goal is to understand the difficult bits in their  implementations from an organizational / project management point of view. 

Lovely to meet you all here and looking forward to reading your messages later Today or Tomorrow. 
 
Brunella Longo
http://www.brunellalongo.it