Documentation of local policies, workflows, and procedures is an important activity for cataloging and metadata units. But creating and maintaining documentation is a huge task that is not always a high priority. Librarians at the University of Minnesota Libraries planned a documentation hackathon, CatDoc HackDoc, with three primary goals: to update a large amount of documentation quickly, to apply accessibility best practices to all documentation, and to bring new staff into the documentation workflow. This article describes the event's planning process, structure, and outcomes, and offers guidance on how others can adapt the CatDoc HackDoc model in their own organizations. transitions, both by increasing staff confidence and improving process efficiency. When good documentation is in place, new staff members should not have to "reverse engineer" procedural steps or invent (and document) an entirely new procedure where a previously undocumented one had been in place.Another critical function of documentation is to encourage consistency of practice. This is especially true when more than one staff member is responsible for the same or similar cataloging and metadata tasks. Staff who began working for the library at different times may have learned their jobs under different standards and practices or may have learned their jobs under different supervisors or lead workers. As job responsibilities, metadata standards, and library systems all change over time, it is challenging to keep everyone "on the same page." Ongoing attention paid to documentation can help alleviate this problem. 1 Accurate, up-to-date documentation is also a valuable tool for data analysis. Five decades after the invention of MARC, and 30-40 years after many libraries implemented their first integrated library system, the need for documentation showing how library data practices have changed over time is acute and growing. Thoughtfully maintained documentation can explain puzzling elements in legacy data, help identify areas for data remediation, and serve as an informal registry or key for analysis projects drawing on library metadata. Whatever the rationale for prioritizing documentation, it is important to think of documentation as an ongoing process, rather than as a project with a clearly defined endpoint. Good documentation has a lifecycle. The components of the documentation lifecycle may vary slightly, but a simple lifecycle might include drafting, publishing,
If you are looking for a book that practically promotes and elegantly advocates for library technical services employees undertaking remote or hybrid work into the future, look no further. Reading Mary Beth Weber and Melissa De Fino’s Virtual Technical Services: A Handbook brings up a lot of memories and emotions from working as a technical services librarian employed throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and at the epicenter of the 2020 uprisings. However, the scope of the book is much broader than that, touching on past crises (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, 9/11) and preparing for future crises.
From the moment that author Ana Vukadin invokes the memory of small-town murder victim Laura Palmer on page one of Metadata for Transmedia Resources, the reader is transported into a world of intertextuality, transfictionality, and various fictional worlds that seem stranger and yet just as familiar as Twin Peaks. Using liberal amounts of examples from popular culture and literary canons—from J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter to the Wachowskis’ Matrix—Vukadin goes down the veritable rabbit hole of transmedia resources, explains why transmedia resources matter increasingly to libraries, and outlines best practices in describing and organizing the metadata for transmedia resources. Resplendent with modeling examples and illustrations from fictional worlds, the subtle differences in and complexity of transmedia resources becomes clear.
kalan Knudson Davis (kkdavis@umn .edu) is the Rare and Special Collections Metadata Librarian at the University of Minnesota and has served as cokeeper of the DCRMR text since 2020. Jessica Grzegorski (grzegorskij@new berry.org) is Head of Cataloging at the Newberry Library and has served as co-chief editor of DCRMR since 2021.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.