I did a masters in Librarianship about 15 years ago, and there was a compulsory module in cataloguing and classification which covered the principles of AACR2 and Dewey (plus I think a token week on Dublin Core). We wrote out AACR2 records on paper, complete with punctuation – something I’d never done before and have never done since! However, it’s the part of the course which ultimately proved most useful to me in terms of understanding the principles of cat and class which underpin library systems – I could have learned in other ways, but it was a fast and thorough introduction, and gave me enough of the basics to figure out what I’ve needed in various jobs.

 

As an aside, my husband is a computer scientist who has never worked in a library but works as a web developer for a library systems vendor and I am always amused that he knows his way round MARC far better than me. I do wonder that if cataloguing training is important (which I think it is) it’s just as important to learn about concepts such as relational database design and data warehousing to understand the strengths and limitations of library cataloguing standards?

 

Frances

 

 

Frances Machell

Head of Collection Management

Library Services

University of Birmingham

Edgbaston

Birmingham

B15 2TT

 

Tel: 0121 414 7251

Email: [log in to unmask]

Twitter: @uoblibservices

Website: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/library

 

The contents of this email may be privileged and are confidential. It may not be disclosed to or used by anyone other than the addressee, nor copied in any way. If received in error please notify the sender and then delete it from your system. Should you communicate with me by email, you consent to The University of Birmingham monitoring and reading any such correspondence.