Crashing the party: catalogers as digital librarians

Abstract

The digital library, long anticipated, planned for, and written about, is here. While technical services librarians in many institutions have waited for the dust to settle in order to figure out their place in this new world, other library departments, such as reference, collections, and systems, have forged ahead, and in some cases overlapped into areas of expertise that rightly belong to catalogers. Ideas for digitization projects typically come from collection managers, who wish to highlight particular elements of a collection or provide access to it in a different way. Reference librarians are always looking for new ways to provide information to patrons in the way they ask for it, such as alphabetized lists of electronic journals. These projects tend to be collaborative, and the systems or information technology (IT) department is usually asked for their technical or programming expertise. Too often, technical services is left out of the loop altogether. We have skills to offer in these types of projects, but frequently we are either overlooked or are deliberately avoided. Part of the fault is our own, and part is based on false assumptions. But rather than complaining to each other that we are being underestimated and marginalized, we need to take steps to change those perceptions, transfer our skills into new areas, and invite ourselves to the party. Technical services has a history of being revolutionary. The MARC record, and the resulting cooperative bibliographic databases and online catalogs, are examples of using technology to share data in a way that completely changed how catalogers, and all librarians, do their work. Since then, however, much of the innovation in the library world seems to have come from outside technical services, and catalog librarians are often seen as reactive, if not reactionary. Of course, there are exceptions. Cornell University Library's Metadata Services unit is an excellent example of technical services taking initiative to establish primacy in an area where they have demonstrated expertise. According to their website (http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/metadataservices/), they provide "metadata consulting, design, development, production, and conversion services to Cornell's faculty, staff and community partners to increase the value of their digital resources." And while there is a noticeable increase in the number of articles on metadata and related digital topics in professional journals devoted to technical services issues, the majority of authors, workshop and seminar speakers on the topic tend to be systems librarians, programmers, researchers from standards organizations, and commercial product developers. Overall, catalog librarians are still not recognized as metadata experts. Why is this? The problem is both perception and self-perception. For too long, catalogers have been viewed as overly rigid when it comes to standards. Other library departments may have approached technical services in the past to help on a database project, only to find that catalogers "m...

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