Many thanks to Nancy Poehlmann, Head of the Humanities and Special Collections Cataloging Unit at the Florida in Gainesville for this post. Nancy will be posting about cataloging topics.
I find LC’s decision to delegate the creation of subject headings and name authority headings to those of us beyond the walls of “the” Library (and yes, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, staffers at LC really did say that) very interesting. Their decision may have arisen from negative circumstances, such as budget cuts, and Congress’ insistence that LC become the Library “of” Congress and stop acting like our national library. This last decree, with its concomitant scaling back of setting policies or choosing unpopular policy shifts (series treatment being a prime example), left many of us feeling abandoned by the library that had created the policies and procedures with which we ran our own libraries. However, with the expansion of this pilot project, I see a very positive response to filling that vacuum, by allowing more cooperative cataloging and (dare I dream) even policies and standards being set by groups, not individual libraries, no matter how big or important.
Although the pilot project is confined to Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) members, as well as to genre/form headings in moving images and radio, this movement is a step forward, and actually quite swift for LC, since it created the first internal MARC authority record for MARC tag 155 in September 2007. While the radio headings may be helpful only to specialized collections, the moving image headings will be of use to many catalogers, whether at academic or public libraries; the proposed expansion of creating these headings in law, literature, music and religion will impact even more catalogers, including those at corporate and special libraries. I find it very exciting that catalogers from all areas and types of libraries will be able to contribute headings that will allow them to serve their public better.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to check the NEFLIN Workshop Schedule for upcoming Cataloging training.
1 comment:
I didn't know LC was opening the genre headings up, but this is really exciting! Since we're both at UF, I know Jim Liversidge has lots of radio related materials in the popular culture collections and it's exciting to think some of those could be used in developing the genre headings for everyone to use. This is really exciting!
(by Laurie Taylor, from UF)
Post a Comment