Training cataloguing professionals at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine: part 2

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of cataloguing training for professionals at the St Augustine Campus Libraries of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, with emphasis on the cataloguing of special formats and the overall importance of continuing education. Design/methodology/approach -The research methodology is based on a questionnaire which involved the use of a rolling survey for the periods 2005-2007 and 2007-2010, and utilized a five-point Likert scale. Findings -The findings clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of cataloguing training in the quest for professional development amongst librarians and also serve to highlight the need for greater collaboration between libraries, library schools and library associations. Practical implications -The paper considers effectiveness of training in cataloguing and thus of the skills adopted in practice. Originality/value -The study brings to the fore the importance of structured training for cataloguing professionals over a five-year period. It also provides further insights into bridging the gap between entry level and working cataloguers in a developing country.

Application of Ict in Teaching Information Organization in Nigerian Library Schools for Sustainable Development: A Comparative Study

“…Cataloguing and classification is a foundation course so, if it is taught only at the postgraduate level only a notable librarian and not a cataloguer will be produced thus Library schools are training half-baked librarians who are fully equipped with the cataloguing and classification skills. (Yacoob and Bowen-Chang (2011). This is why it is important that LIS students must be continually prepared and retrained with the knowledge and the skills of the changing information environment and this must be brought to bear in the delivery of their training programmes.…”

User services in the digital environment

“…Representatives of companies from which a new system is purchased usually train library personnel in its use. In addition, in some instances, library personnel are oftentimes sent abroad on attachments and other training programs to hone their skills or develop new ones so that the library is always on the cutting edge of new technologies (Hosein and Bowen-Chung, 2011). Moreover, the Department of Library and Information Studies (DLIS) at UWI, which is the only school in the English-speaking Caribbean that educates librarians to the graduate level, is rising to the challenge and is equipping future librarians with the requisite skills needed to function in the digital environment and its courses cover most, if not all, the skills proffered by Gbaje (2012).…”

Cataloguing Outside the Box: A Practical Guide to Cataloguing Special Collections Materials

“…The priorities of the authors chime significantly, in this instance, with those of Yacoob Hosein and Portia Bowen‐Chang (Hosein and Portia, 2011) of the University of the West Indies who, in their training of cataloguing professionals (to catalogue acquisitions such as the Colin Laird Map collection and the Michael Goldberg collection of postcards) concluded that “training is even more important for specialist cataloguers in today's digital environment with the advent of metadata, RDA standards and various mark‐up languages”, concluding that “the indigenous nature of the materials” produced a training need for original cataloguing, which requires additional levels of bibliographic documentation and research.…”