Archives
Questions & Answers
Judith Hopkins is technical services research and analysis officer in the Central Technical Services unit of the University Libraries
Could you explain your job title?
I came to the UB Libraries in 1977 as head of the Original Cataloging Section of the Cataloging Department in Central Technical Services (CTS). As the 1980s started and the libraries had to prepare for the 1981 implementation of a new cataloging code, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition, I was detached from my primary job to work with the director of CTS to prepare for the change-over. After the new code was implemented, I found I was still spending much of my time working on special CTS projects, so I suggested that this change in my duties be officially recognized. The director of CTS agreed, and he and the then-director of the libraries came up with my new title. I generally define it as "doing odd jobs." Happily for me, I still do some cataloging, usually that related to some special project or other.
What is the mission of Central Technical Services?
CTS is a major unit in the University Libraries, but it is little known outside the libraries because it does not serve the public face-to-face; instead, it provides some of the basic infrastructure of the libraries. It is divided into two departments: Acquisitions and Cataloging. CTS is responsible for managing an acquisitions budget in excess of $5 million a year; for acquiring material for most areas of the University Libraries; for cataloging all or some material for all locations except the Law Library; for checking in periodicals and other material on subscription or standing order, and for the binding of periodicals and other library materials. CTS also receives and catalogs publications received through U.S., New York State, Canadian and European communities depositories. The responsibility for maintenance of the UB Libraries catalog rests with CTS. The libraries' preservation program and mail-and-delivery operations also are part of CTS.
What is "cataloging?" How did you decide to become a cataloger?
Somewhat simplistically, cataloging is the process by which catalogs are created. It consists of several elements. Descriptive cataloging is concerned with the identification of and description of an item (book, journal, sound recording, film, electronic resources, etc.), the recording of that information in a standardized way in a catalog record and the selection and formation of access points by which that catalog record can be retrieved. Subject cataloging involves determining what subject concepts are covered by the work being cataloged and then expressing those concepts in the standardized terminology of subject heading lists and also choosing a classification number from the classification scheme used by the library. Related to both is the concept of authority control, which is the process of maintaining consistency in the verbal form used to represent each access point—including subject headings—used in the catalog and of showing relationships among names, titles of works and subjects. As for my decision to become a cataloger, I'm not quite sure exactly when that happened. When I entered third grade, we had just moved and so I started in a new school. One block from the school was a branch of the public library, and for some reason it entranced me. I teased and whined to my mother until she came with me and signed me up for a library card. In high school, I joined the library club, where we did such chores as re-shelving books and charging out books, and worked as a page at the main branch of the public library, as well as volunteering in the library of a local Catholic college for men. In college, I worked as a student assistant in the catalog department of my college library for four years. Somewhere in those high school and college years, the decision was made. I can't say I "decided" to become a cataloger; I just "knew" that that was what I was meant to be. The analytic and puzzle-solving nature of it just appealed to me, perhaps for the same reasons I enjoy reading mysteries.
Has the computerization of libraries impacted cataloging?
Definitely! In fact, cataloging was the first library function that was automated, starting in the 1960s. The epochal event was the development by the Library of Congress in 1969 of the MARC format (standing for MAchine-Readable-Cataloging), which paved the way for the information in catalog records to be represented in a manner the computer can deal with, thus leading to a great increase in the amount of cataloging cooperation among libraries and to today's online catalogs. It used to be that each library cataloged each of the books and other items it acquired. As many libraries acquired the same items, that led to a great deal of redundant effort. One of the few effective ways for sharing that existed when I started working as a cataloger in 1957 was for libraries to purchase Library of Congress catalog cards, which contained the catalog records that LC had created. Everything for which LC cards were not available had to be cataloged locally—what is called "original cataloging." This all changed when machine-readable copy became available. One library could create a record for an item, store it in a database at what came to be called "bibliographic utilities," and then every other library that was a member of that utility could retrieve that record and use it in its own catalog. That greatly reduced the amount of original cataloging each library had to do, for often it found catalog records for its newly acquired works already existed in the utility's database.
What is the most interesting job experience you have had?
One of those utilities that I referred to above was OCLC (which then stood for Ohio College Library Center and now stands for Online Computer Library Center). OCLC was founded in 1967 and its membership at that time consisted of most of the academic libraries in the state of Ohio, about 30-50 libraries. (Today it has about 46,000 members consisting of all types of libraries in all the continents of the world except Antarctica, and a database consisting of more than 50,000,000 catalog records. What all that is leading up to is that in 1969, I started working at OCLC, becoming the first librarian on its staff. The staff up to then consisted of system analysts and programmers. My job was to interpret the programmers' work to the catalogers of the member libraries and to translate the needs of the catalogers to the programmers. I also trained the catalogers to use computer terminals, wrote the first documentation for the catalogers and prepared the profiles that described their card catalogs and card specifications so that OCLC could produce catalog cards tailored to each library's wishes. In those early days, the network was used only to produce catalog cards, as online catalogs did not yet exist. Within a relatively few years, however, some libraries discontinued getting cards and started to download the MARC records into local online catalogs. Soon, more and more libraries were doing so until today all but the smallest and poorest libraries have online catalogs. The two years that I spent at OCLC were among the most exciting and intellectually challenging of my life. I think I learned more during those years than I did during any other equivalent period, including my years of formal education. And those two years made me professionally. They led to my first committees (both elective and appointive) in the American Library Association. Some years later, when I started teaching at the Library School of the University of Michigan, whenever my dean introduced me to anyone, he always ended: "And she used to work at OCLC!"
You are the listowner of an electronic discussion group (listserv) called AUTOCAT. Tell me about AUTOCAT.
AUTOCAT (the library cataloging and authorities discussion group) was founded in October 1990 by Nancy Keane at the University of Vermont. When she left that university and her successor as listowner was not able to keep it up, Vermont asked for volunteers to take it over. I contacted Jim Gerland, who then was the networking coordinator at our Computing Center, and we offered to run the list. Vermont accepted, and on April 28, 1993, I became the listowner. At that time, there were about 1,850 subscribers; today we have more than 3,800 in some 46 countries. On weekdays, we average anywhere from 25 to 65 messages a day. The advantage of AUTOCAT, as for any professional list, is that it expands the pool of knowledgeable people to whom an individual with a problem can turn for help, easily and quickly. Subscribers to AUTOCAT consist both of recognized cataloging experts and novices in their first job—not to mention library school students—but all have something to contribute. The topics discussed range from the theoretical to the very practical. Questions can be on how to interpret a rule in the "Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second edition," appropriate class numbers for a book on a certain topic in either the Dewey Decimal Classification or the Library of Congress Classification, forthcoming meetings of interest, announcements of job openings, etc. The job of a listowner is to teach people how to subscribe to the list, and resolve problems they run into after they are subscribed.
What question do you wish I would have asked?
In this era of electronic resources and search engines, is there a future for cataloging? My answer is "yes," though not necessarily in the traditional settings. Some people say that so many catalog records are found in databases like OCLC's that libraries no longer need catalogers, just clerks to search for and download the records needed by a particular library. They forget, or never realized, that those records are created and input by catalogers. If all cataloging except that done by the Library of Congress stopped tomorrow, the growth of the OCLC database would slow to a crawl (less than 20 percent of the records there came from LC). However, it is possible that the source of cataloging records could switch from individual libraries to more centralized locations: publishers, book vendors and the bibliographic utilities themselves. Whatever the sites, they will need catalogers. As for the electronic resources, anyone who has ever tried to use a search engine to find something on the Internet knows how much chaff is retrieved along with the wheat. And even if searchers had the time and patience to examine each of the thousands of items typically retrieved in such a search, they would have no guarantee that the search had found everything relevant. However, users who search a name or a title or a subject heading in a library catalog can have greater assurance that what they retrieve represents everything that the library has related to that heading. Library catalogs are far from perfect, but they embody several centuries' work and thinking on how best to organize bibliographic information for people who need such information.