Future of Catalog Librarians and Cooperative Cataloging

Schuitema, Joan E. “The Future of Cooperative Cataloging: Curve, Fork, or Impasse?” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 48:2, 258-270.

In summary: I thoroughly enjoyed the description of historical patterns in cooperative cataloging, and the reasons we’re having difficulty determining what the future might hold for professional catalogers, as well as cooperative cataloging.

The same issues seem to have arisen with each generation of catalog librarians: complex, yet time-consuming and costly rule structure vs. need for standardization; increased publisher output outstrips the pace of cataloging; cataloging copy provided at point of distribution creates fear of job loss among catalog librarians; changing technology forces catalogers to work in new ways. I found it helpful to see a description of the differences between past challenges and today’s situation.

Ongoing economic constraints mean libraries will continue to streamlining local processes. Our integrated library systems allow us to more easily combine acquisitions and cataloging tasks. Our day-to-day bibliographic description is increasingly being done by vendors, who have recognized the economic and practical benefits of their services in a world where the production of electronic information will forever outpace a library’s ability to keep up with the bibliographic description.

Because of the Internet’s content and interface options, users no longer go to the library catalog first. In the hard and social sciences users want access to information in digital format. The humanities are also increasingly favoring digital over print. Along with endless variety of digital content comes an increase in metadata creation by everyone from catalog librarians, to skilled library vendors, to folks sitting at home in their slippers. Metadata creation and distribution is increasingly beyond the control and sole domain of the highly-trained cataloger. At the same time, good metadata is more important than ever for discovery and access in today’s complex information environment.

What is the impact of these changes on career catalog librarians assigned to work exclusively in the traditional MARC-based/AACR2 cataloging environment? We have lost our identity as the primary experts for organizing knowledge. Schuitema makes a good point when she says, “Indications are that the products we have been producing while still scalable in terms of providing access to print materials if significant changes were made, will no longer meet the discovery needs of our clientele seeking information in today’s expanding digital environment.” I’m thinking that in our world, where libraries will likely continue to suffer funding constraints, where the demand for digital resources will continue to increase, where new infrastructures are evolving to store digital information, we catalog librarians must learn new metadata schema for a wide range of digital information types, must develop new ways to adapt our current skills and experience to the dynamic environment where production of digital resources will always be vastly larger than print, and must define who we are professionally through active participation in these changes.