Authority Services

Do library administrators understand the concept of authority control??  Hey, I'm in cataloging and I still have issues in understanding all that is involved with authority control and the services that we have outsourced in this area.  I do know that we need it.  It's not a maybe, it's a necessity.  We unfortunately have a library administrator who doesn't truly understand the need for authority control and doesn't appear to have any interest in learning.  There's a mental wall blocking out any sense of rationale on the subject (one of among many subjects).

Should we care??  I keep telling myself don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff, but we are being led in a direction that makes no sense at all.  Do we do authority control ourselves, as we did in the past or do we just forgo this activity?  Lacking the staff we may just have to do sporadic checking and move on.  We have enough issues with the catalog without adding this to the pile.  Don't sweat it.  Keep telling myself don't sweat it.

It's the gifts

It's not the materials we are purchasing that need original cataloging, it's the gifts that we add to the collection. We are in the process of cataloging Fetish& which has pictures of good luck charms/fetishes that attendees of the 1997 MTV video music awards presentation brought in to be photographed. Such an odd item, that may have some relevancy in an academic library, but only some.

Maybe I shouldn't complain, it's keeping us busy and we are learning to expand our skills by stretching our brains to catalog unusual items.

Artists' books are another area that is stretching my brain. Trying to edit or create records for the odd sorts of materials that are artists' books-- expensive artists' books. These materials are always a challenge.

There's still work to do

Just a few thoughts to pass on.

Outsourcing of work to create efficiencies doesn't necessarily mean we don't have work to do.

Non-catalogers and library administrators are not recognizing and acknowledging that there needs to be a lot of time devoted to the maintenance of the catalog and to the individual records that make up the catalog. So, there may be services/options to automate a variety of processes, including cataloging, but there still needs to be ongoing maintenance and revision of records to ensure that URLs are connecting properly and the database is clean. We can continue to add records through automated processes, but that leads to duplicate bib records that need to be cleaned up and other related issues.

This also applies to the work related to electronic resources that are being purchased to replace paper periodicals and monographs. There are services such as Serial Solutions to aid in the management of these resources, but vendors are constantly making changes that they do not necessarily notify us about. Someone is always going in and cleaning up holdings information and resolving connectivity issues that need to be fixed at our end.

These services are great, but they don't run properly without ongoing oversight by a real person or persons.

A related thought. Just because you take "professional" librarians off the reference desk doesn't mean there is no reference desk. Someone else needs to come in a take on that responsibility in some manner. Work is shifted and adjusted, it doesn't disappear.

Annual posting

Looks like it's been over a year since I last posted an entry to my blog. I just read a couple of my previous postings and initially wondered who wrote this. Then I realized that I wrote it over a year ago. It appears that my writing style changes when I start to blog. Not necessarily a better writing style than normal, just a different style. Maybe I think someone is actually going to read the posting, so I change to what I think might be a more acceptable style. Hey, do I sound academic? literate? somewhat literate? Questions to ponder until the next installment.