Rapid Cataloging: Three Models for Addressing Timeliness As an Issue of Quality in Library Catalogs

Invisible Labor, Invisible Value: Unpacking Traditional Assessment of Academic Library Value

“…It is also possible that technical services work such as original cataloging requires more time to ensure quality and accuracy of description and data entry-a long-documented tension in cataloging work. 38 Reference, instruction, and other front-facing academic library work tasks are bounded by time in ways that technical services are not. For example, shifts at a reference desk may be bounded by specific start and end times and instruction sessions are usually of consistent lengths (for example, 90-minute "one shot" sessions), whereas technical services work does not include any inherent time boundaries, only prescribed deadlines that can be shifted.…”

Utility, library priorities, and cataloging policies

“…However, in presenting an example of the way she presumes digital era library users work, Marcum makes the unfortunate choice of a single user-an undergraduate student who wants to remain in her "cozy dorm room" to research and write a term paper (pp. [2][3][4]. Given the choice of the library catalog and the digital resources available therein, or Google, the student is likely to turn to the latter search tool as her first, and perhaps only source.…”

“…In another study comparing records without Library of Congress subject headings to those that contained them, Tina Gross and Arlene Taylor found that more than 33% of records without subject headings would not be retrieved by keyword searching [17]. And the classification-on-receipt practice has come under sharp criticism from some catalogers even outside of Cornell, with one author noting that items given such treatment become "lost in the stacks," and that the entire process undermines professionalism and threatens serious scholarship [2].…”