To me, it's a no-brainer. For a library to exist in the first place, it needs a collection. If a library has no collection, nobody wants anything to do with it. Whether people like it or not, for a collection to be useful at all, there needs to be some kind of finding tool to get into it. That tool is called a catalog.
There are lots of problems with using the traditional catalog, but there are advantages also. A catalog is necessary, perhaps a necessary evil, and the people who make catalogs are called catalogers. Get rid of the catalogers, you get rid of the catalog, and then there is no way into the collection and the library itself ceases to exist. Of course, lots of changes are needed to the catalog if the catalog is to continue to exist.
That said, I would also be very interested to hear the complaints. Those kinds of comments are golden!
Jim Weinheimer
> I value them a lot. They strike me as the one necessary function of a
> library, and, at best, something of a force-multiplier for everything
> else the library does. I also think they—or more properly the tools
> and technologies of their profession—are holding libraries back.
>
> Can you go into any more detail?
>
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Shirley Lincicum
> <shirley.lincicum_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just got out of a really frustrating meeting with the director of my
> > library. I'm left wondering, does anybody out there (other than
> > catalogers) value anything that catalogers do? Or are catalogers the
> > main thing holding libraries back in this day and age?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Shirley
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
Received on Tue Feb 10 2009 - 15:52:47 EST