I’ve found that the last couple of weeks I have had a meeting, training session, trip out the office, etc etc nearly every day, and I’m a cataloguer!  Most people would expect cataloguers to sit at the same desk all day every day, and to not have much variety in their jobs.  Well, not me, not here.  I wanted to pick a day where I was predominantly cataloguing (ie doing my main job) to document; maybe I was using the wrong tack and should have picked a day where I was all over the place, after all its all about giving people a realistic impression about that a ‘day in the life’ of a librarian is really all about.

A quick peruse over the diary reveals that last Tuesday I took part in a session testing PRIMO (or Library Search as we will be branding it), going through a worksheet designed to test some problem areas; Wednesday we had, what we call, ULS Briefings – its a chance for (primarily) site/subject/cataloguing librarians to get together and listen to some presentations about various things that are going on within our library service, or that relate or impact on our service.  So we heard about the support for international students, and about ULS international engagement, plus a talk about students curating an exhibition in our special collections department, and an update on our Stores project.  We were treated to Welsh cakes in our refreshment break too.

Thursday I had a Cardiff Libraries in Co-operation (CLIC) Staff Development Group meeting.  We talked about the upcoming National Libraries Day, and our day of library tours for library staff that was taking place on the Friday.  We also made a lot of arrangements for a session on marketing that we will be running in May.

Exhibition in Welsh Government building

Friday, as it was our ‘library tours’ day I went over to the Welsh Government building where they were holding an exhibition on the different libraries in Cardiff, promoting these services to their staff.  Its a secure building so I had to ensure my name had been put to the security staff, and that they knew I was due that morning.  I didn’t set off any alarms, though one of my colleagues managed to cause problems later!  As things were fairly quiet they also gave me my own little tour of their library too.

I think I also managed to do some cataloguing that week!

This week hasn’t been much better as I’ve already clocked up three meetings, and have another scheduled for tomorrow, plus a library tour of the Welsh Assembly Government Library (plus Senedd) on Friday (they couldn’t fit their tours in with last week’s session).  But yesterday I spent in our special collections section, cataloguing private press books -  a proper cataloguing day – and a chance to ignore most other distractions being away from my desk!

Email has a big impact on my life (most our lives?), and there were several days when I began with the intention of working on one particular thing, and then got knocked off course and had to follow up a whole host of other things.  This was true of Friday where I had decided to catalogue books for the Human Genetics Historical Libary (one of the projects I am involved in); and ended up sorting out invoices for refreshments for a Cataloguing day event I am organising, which led to sorting out the programme, and catching up with booking forms, etc.

This wasn’t really a proper ‘day in the life’ blog entry, but a taster of a week in the life of a ‘cataloguer with interest in staff development’.

Today, however, I introduced myself to a new tool – (and perhaps that is the way forward).  It was Hoot Suite.  I’ve been using Twitter since cpd23 made me take the leap into using it, and I only ever access it via my pc at work, or my netbook at home.  I don’t have a smart phone, though can get internet access on my phone if I need to, so generally don’t use it that way (incidentally I rarely use my phone at all, I only got my first mobile last March, and still haven’t used up the first £10 I put on it!).  Anyway, I generally use Twitter for ‘work’ purposes, and am not jet setting round the country to warrant accessing it anywhere else than my pc.  As a consequence of this (I think) I haven’t looked at any of the other ‘tools’ that go hand in hand with it, such as Hoot Suite or Tweet Deck.

I recently set up a Twitter account for an organisation I am involved with  – Pentreffest (its all about European social dance), we already had a facebook page, and a mostly defunct Myspace page too.  We want to advertise our events, and communicate with the people who come along to them, or who potentially might come along.  At an informal meeting last night, someone mentioned that there was a tool that would enable pre written messages to be sent out at a timed interval.  So for instance I could set up messages about all the events we have organised for the coming year, and then have them timed to appear about a week before the event.  I could do this all in one go, rather than having to remember to do it every month etc.  Thus saving me time, and ensuring we were organised!  Although I was vaguely aware that ‘stuff could be done’ with Twitter, I’d never even sorted having my tweets co-ordinated with my facebook page.  I’m sure Twitter afficionados are probably despairing of me! 

So, I had a look this morning at what was on offer -  I went first to Tweet Deck, but my browser wouldn’t support it (and this was at work, so I doubt anything I have at home would be any better); so then I had a look at Hoot Suite, and although it recommends I upgrade my browser it did at least let me set up an account.  I’ve still got a lot of playing around to do, and I secretly yearn for a cpd23 blog telling me all about it, but an initial attempt let me compose one message and send it to multiple social network sites.  I’m pretty sure the ‘timed message’ thing is on there, so will have a look at that tonight.  Its a new tool to play around with, and I’m pleased with myself for sorting it out.  It may be something fairly basic to many people out there, but some of us are a few steps behind!

In the meantime, anyone who is interested in European social dance (French, Breton, Swedish etc) please find me/us @Pentreffest

Conversations with Cataloguers in Wales (6th March 2012, Cardiff University)

Preparations for this event are rumbling along at a fine pace.  I finally sorted out a poster which can be viewed here: posterccw  after having several discussions with colleagues about designs/pictures etc – even something simple can take time.  Booking forms have also been sent out to people who previously expressed an interest, and I’m hoping a few more will see the publicity and want to come along.  I chose the image because it looked like a heated debate/conversation that cataloguers might have; it is by Eric Gill who also designed the font I used on the poster  (I’ve recently been reading  Just my type by Simon Garfield, so have a new eye on fonts at the moment).

I’ve currently got three books on the go; I tend to read at lunchtime, and am going through a phase of having ‘lunchtime classics’.  At the moment it is the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.  This stemmed from a ‘project’ I set myself’ in 2010 when I assigned myself a list of 40 classics books I had never read.  I compiled the list partly by looking at ‘top 100′ lists etc that were published by the BBC and people like that.  I’d always done fairly well on those lists, better than average, but still there were plenty of gaps.  So I read things like Of mice and men, Vanity fair, Huckleberry Finn, Watership down, Jude the obscure, etc etc.  By the end of 2010 I read about 28 of these 40 (I did read other things that year too), since then I’ve been less strict with myself and have opened up my reading a bit more again. However I am still on a mission to finish the list one day, hence I have developed my ‘lunchtime classics’.  This partly stemmed from the fact that last year I started reading War and peace, and frankly it was too big to cart around in my bag to work and back, so I just left it in my desk to read at lunchtimes.  Following on from that was Gone with the wind, that too was pretty hefty, and as mentioned about I’m currently on The count of Monte Cristo.  One problem I am finding at the moment is that I am quite busy, even at lunchtime, and want to blog, chase things up on Twitter, etc, so my lunchtime reading is going a bit slowly.

Anyway, I also read on the train coming home from work, and have another book at home to read too.  The book on the train has to be not too large to fit in my work bag.  During last year I had a brief sort of my books and picked out some that had been sitting on the shelves for years, and weren’t really grabbing my attention; I’ve decided to discard them (give to friends/charity shop), but thought I would give some of them a go first.  My current train book is The siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell, its a booker prize winner, but I can see why its been languishing on my shelves for years, because it is really not grabbing me.  I’m over a third of the way through, and am actually debating giving it up.  I very rarely give up on a book, its a sense of pride to complete books, even the ones I don’t particularly like.  I will probably persevere, but is this a waste of my time?  Should one stop reading a book if one isn’t enjoying it?  Life’s too short? etc etc.  Or should one complete a job one has started, as you never know when you might be surprised, and its shoddy not to???

My third book, my ‘home’ book, which is normally a ‘cosy’ book, or something I can’t put down, happens to be a non-fiction book at the moment,which is most unusual for me.  Its, Just my type by Simon Garfield and is a book all about fonts!  It was brought to my attention by a colleague who’d heard it on ‘book of the week’ on the radio.  She mentioned it because one episode talked about the Doves Press and their ‘drowned font’ which I subesquently blogged about on the SCOLAR blog I write for too.  This was interesting to us, because we had been cataloguing books by the Doves Press recently.  The book as a whole looked interesting, and I got it for Christmas, and am only feeling slightly nerdy about enjoying a book about fonts!  Prior to this I read A feast for crows by George R. R. Martin, book 4 of A Song of Fire and Ice.  I am waiting for book 5 to come out in paperback (most impatiently!).  The first book was televised by HBO earlier last year, as Game of thrones - I was hooked by the tv series, and even more enchanted by the books.

This week I’ve also started taking part in the Orange January Giveaway on the Magic Lasso blog.  Yesterday’s ‘challenge’ was to talk about your first library card, and what books you took out.  There were some great replies, and it is fascinating reading about people’s memories of attending libraries as small children.  Many seemed to mention memories of impressive buildings, and it set me wondering what today’s children will remember of their early library visits.  My first library was probably of Victorian architecture, there was a separate children’s library to the adult library, and I remember it being really big (probably not quite as bit as I recall).  Although the buildings were adjacent (linked even, maybe part of one big building), it was great to have a proper children’s library, a separate space to the adult one (although the adult library had ‘baby/toddler’ books availble), and there seemed to be a huge choice of books to read.  I remember my Dad encouraging me to read the Swallows & Amazons series (and I loved their covers with the hand drawn pictures and maps etc), he also got me to read Biggles!  The library is no longer housed in this lovely building, it got moved to a shopping centre a few years back now, although the building is used as an arts centre/musem/gallery I do believe.

Although I loved the old building the library was housed in, it would probably seem very old-fashioned now, but I do hope today’s children still get to form great memories of their libraries – that’s if the councils don’t shut them all down

A similar but more expanded version of this is coming later in the year (May/June) when CLIC will be tying in with Cardiff University’s Information Services to have a ‘Do something different day’ when library staff across Cardiff will be able to spend a day, or half a day, working in a different library/sector.  I’ve talked about this idea before and its a great opportunity to find out what its really like working somewhere else, without having to commit yourself to more than a day.  It was always good when it was run within CU, but opening it up to the other libraries and sectors in the city will bring a whole new host of oppportunities.

Aside from these ‘taster’ days, we are also going to run a session on ‘innovative marketing on a low budget’ (probably in May) as we believe its something that would be useful to many of us; especially in these days of austerity.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, a few of us from the CLIC SDG are going to put together a poster presentation for the CILIP Cymru Conference taking place 17-18th May in Cardiff.   The conference for Welsh library, archives and museum staff is normally hosted in Llandrindod Wells, so we’re lucky to have it down here this year, and I’m sure many of us will be volunteering to help out too.

Phew, on top of all that I better get some cataloguing done as well

From, The duties & qualifications of a librarian: a discourse pronounced in the general assembly of the Sorbonne, December 23, 1780 by Jean Baptiste Cotton des Houssayes.

Being helpful to users…

“He will never seek to steal away from the notice of all into some solitary or unknown retreat.  Neither cold nor heat, nor his multiplied occupations, will ever be to him a pretext for evading the obligation he has contracted to be a friendly and intelligent guide to all the scholars who may visit him.” (p. 39)

Collection management and cataloguing skills…

“He will therefore not admit indiscriminately every book into his collection, but will select such only as are of genuine merit and of well-approved utility; and his acquisitions, guided by the principles of an enlightened economy, will be rendered still more valuable by the substantial merits of an able classification.  It is impossible, in fact, to attach too much importance to the advantages resulting from an intelligent and methodical order in the arrangement of the library.  Of what utility would be the richest treasures if it were not possible to make use of them? Wherefore this complete arsenal of science, if the arms it keeps in reserve are not within reach of those who would wield them?  And if, as is said, books are the medicine of the soul, what avail these intellectual pharmacopoeias, if the remedies which they contain are not disposed in order and labelled with care? (p. 43-44)

Librarianship knowledge in general…

“A librarian truly worthy of the name should, if I may be permitted the expression, have explored in advance every region of the empire of letters, to enable him afterwards to serve as a faithful guide to all who may desire to survey it.” (p. 37)

From, The life of Sir Thomas Bodley, written by himself ; together with the first draft of the statutes of the public library at Oxon (1647)

Leave the books how you find them…

“Moreover, as it may be lawful and free for all comers in (being qualified in such sorts,as we shall after declare) to peruse any volumes, that are chained to the desks, in the body of the library, not forgetting to fasten their clasps and strings, to untangle their chains, and to leave as they found the books in their places: (whereas otherwise for their negligence, they shall be punished by the Purse, at the will and arbitriment of the Vice-Chancellor).” (p. 81)

Cataloguing hints & tips!

“Another chief point of the Keeper’s charge, is to range all his books, as well of the bigger as lesser fold, according to their Faculties: to assign to every Faculty their Catalogues and Tables; and to dispose of every table the authors therein names, according to the alphabet: Where besides the author’s name, and the title of his work, he must be mindful to express inwhat kind of volume the same was printed, with a note of the place, and year of that edition. For it so fareth often with a number of students, that the knowledge of some one of these petty particulars, may turn them in their studies to some singular advantage.” (p. 73-74)

Mayan Calendar - will end before the 2013 copyright begins!

Yesterday I catalogued a book with a copyright date of 2013 (its currently December 2011); I have been assured by people on Twitter that they have been receiving 2013 books for the last few months.  Now, firstly, this can be rather confusing to library users.  We quite often get requests asking us to correct the ‘wrong’ dates on books on the library catalogue, and we have to point out that actually the date isn’t wrong, and that we have to put the information that is on the book itself; so, no, we can’t just put this year’s date because its more convenient!

Secondly, what implication does this have for the actual copyright?  I am speaking in ignorance here (I admit!), but if the copyright doesn’t start until 2013, what are the rights before then?  Can a student merrily photocopy the whole book without reprisal?  I am guessing copyright law is more complicated than this, but would be interested in hearing what ‘future’ dates actually mean.

Why do publishers do this?  Why use dates that are over 12 months in the future for their books, is it supposed to make the book look more ‘new’ or ‘up-to-date’?  A few months difference wouldn’t be so bad, but 13, 14, 15, 16 months is getting ridiculous.

At the moment it just feels like one of those annoying ploys or gimmicks, much like when the supermarket rearranges its shelves in a bid to make you discover new things to buy, when actually you just end up stomping round the shop, frustrated because not only have they moved/hidden all the things you want to buy, but they’ve actually secretly reduced their range even further (especially when it comes to vegetarian or organic food!).  But that’s another rant altogether!

The following comments are my impression of what the speakers were talking about, and my own thoughts and feelings about the issues – so apologies if I accidentally misrepresent anyone.

The three speakers from academic libraries in the morning curiously enough had in common that none of them were in post when ‘Shelf-ready’ began to be introduced at their institution, though to be fair Janet Pryce-Jones, chief cataloguer at Birmingham City University had been in her current job since 2005, and David Baron, Bibliographic Services Manager at Leeds Metropolitan University in his job for the last four years.  Not that this matters, but I had wanted to hear from people who had been through a potentially disrupting process from the beginning (especially if jobs were lost, or people redeployed).  In many respects though, the first question should be, just what is ‘shelf-ready’ exactly?

I think many (most? all?) academic libraries today probably have many of the initial processes of ‘shelf-ready’ already operating.  We have date labels, book plates, barcodes, library stamps and non-activated RFID tags added to our books by our primary book supplier, and when most of the speakers were listing what ‘shelf-ready’ meant, these are the things they included.  But of course all these current additions still don’t actually make our books ‘shelf-ready’ – its the final stages that (in my head at least) really count – having your books arrive with the spine label  – because they have been classified by the supplier.  This to me is the crux on the matter, whilst we may have been outsourcing aspects of the processing to make our internal processes less fiddly/speedier – outsourcing the cat and class is a whole different matter.

So when some of the speakers mentioned that they had invested in the shelf-ready concept for many years, even as early as the 1990s, I interpreted this to mean that they had been out-sourcing processes, rather than out-sourcing cataloguing, in the early stages.  But isn’t this just the next logical step you may cry?  Isn’t this what we/they have been working towards?  I’m afraid, as a cataloguer, I shudder that this indeed may have been the long term plan.

BCU has in some way addressed this issue, unwilling to lose complete control over classification and record selection, they now do this at the point of ordering.  Anything they cannot classify from the record, they flag up, and classify when it arrives instead.  In many ways I admire this approach, good for them, I thought – however on longer reflection it still saddened me – classifying from a record instead of an actual item in your hands?

Listening to the morning speakers it became apparent that the relationship between you (the library) and the vendor/supplier, was what you could make it.  The main supplier mentioned was Ingram Coutts, who also presented in the afternoon, but I am sure there are corresponding points with other vendors.  You need to fill in exact details of what you require, certain things can be accommodated, certain things can’t (don’t expect them to ship shelf-ready books to all 23 of your libraries with their 23 different classification schemes, multi-coloured labels and large AV collections).  Indeed as Andrew Coburn pointed out in the afternoon, you have a responsibility to sort out your own processes.  But you can tailor arrangements to a certain degree – as we saw with BCU classifying at point of order.

It was also apparent that the implementation of EDI makes a big difference too.

The main positives appeared to be: a speeding up of through-put, books reaching the shelves quicker, and a reduction in backlogs.

The main negatives appeared to be: loss of control over classification, loss of control over bibliographic records/lowering of standards of bib records (unless following the BCU route), not everything can be done (AV, special collections etc), authority control problems, returns (can’t really return a fully processed book), additional costs.

As one speaker (David Baron) put it: “When it works well, it works very well…but when it goes wrong it can be horrible”

Whilst Janet -Pryce Jones noted a personal drawback:  ”We spend most of our time at computers and don’t see many books.”

As a cataloguer I am very concerned about this loss of control over classification and bibliographical standards, which I was sad to see didn’t seem to matter to some people at this event.  One speaker admitted they didn’t really check the records when the books arrived, and that they weren’t particularly bothered if details such as pagination or authors/editors were correct.  I was too stunned at this point to comment on the day!  My colleagues were equally horrified.  One conclusion that we came to was that there wasn’t really a comparative institution to ours at the event, we are a Russell Group University with a strong emphasis on research, as well as undergraduate courses; and frankly it does matter if pagination details are wrong, or if subject headings are missed off a record.  If students are taught properly to search on a library opac, they will get better results with a more accurate and detailed record.

In the afternoon we heard from Andrew Coburn, Acquisitions and Cataloguing Manager for Essex County Council.  From this presentation I gained a new perspective on ‘shelf-ready’, as it worked for public libraries.  He provided two definitions of ‘shelf-ready’ which rang true to how I was thinking about the issue earlier -

Then: “Stock that arrived so that you just had to fit a security tag and add it to the catalogue before sending it to the branch.”

Now: “Stock that arrives in the branch and is put straight on the shelves.”

As I thought, our concept of ‘shelf-ready’ has changed over the last decade, and for public libraries at least I could see how it made a lot more sense.  In general I would say their classification schemes are probably a lot simpler that in an academic research library.  You certainly wouldn’t have a Dewey class mark that ran to 20 numbers after the decimal point (Not saying that we would either!!! However we don’t truncate as many places do). 

They can also order in advance and can have a book on the shelves on the day of publication; which is a big plus point for popular items such as Harry Potter books and Terry Pratchet novels.  Something which they would be unable to do if processes and cataloguing was done in-house.

The so called idealised process of having books go straight to the shelves, has also taken a leap further at the University of Central Lancashire who have just won the BIC/CILIP RFID Innovation Award 2011.  Basically their ‘shelf-ready’ RFID tagged books arrive at the library, get put into their sorting machine which automatically updates their catalogue  to show them available for loan, and sorts them for shelving.  They claim a student can get a book within an hour of it arriving at the library.  The machines are taking over…

So, for some institutions, public libraries in particular, I can see the benefits.  Many of us probably need to look at our processes in general, whether going down the route of full ‘shelf-ready’ or not, and bringing in standardisation across libraries within an institution is useful too (though not always completely possible).  However, as a cataloguer at a research University I still have many concerns over standards; and believe that with the right processes in place internally we can get books on the shelves within comparable time-frames to some libraries using ‘shelf-ready’.

If everywhere gets rid of their cataloguers, there will be less records available, a potential lowering of standards, and a general deskilling in this area of the profession.

I’d like to say a big thank  you to Katrina and CIG for putting on this event, to the speakers for presenting,  and allowing me the chance to hear about how ‘shelf-ready’ has been implemented at several places.  I still have lots of worries and queries (none of which I could adequately formulate in my mind to ask on the day!), but hope I am a few steps further to understanding what is at stake here.

I’m really enjoying the work, although there’s been a bit of a steep learning curve, even with these books; extra fields to add, new vocabulary to get my head round in describing things, and lots of attention to detail (even more attention to detail than normal!).  I’m finding the Presses fascinating, and want to go off and do bits of research on them all, though there isn’t really time.  Luckily there is time for a bit, especially when it can be tied into a blog – and we do have a special blog for SCOLAR which I am able to contribute to.  I’m hoping in the next couple of weeks to add a few posts on some of the Presses we have been doing, and will possibly sneak a few pics onto this blog as well.  I love the whole idea of the Presses, small run enterprises, interested in beauty, art and literature rather than mass production; giving poets and illustrators wonderful outlets for their art.  Although I do wonder at times who could afford them!  Often these books are printed on hand-made paper, which gives such lovely impressions of the cottage-industies behind them.

Many of the books we have in our collection have been signed by the author, the illustrator, or even the printer, which adds another lovely slice of history to the book.  I’m hoping to do a blog on the signed books at a later point; so far the most ‘famous’ one I’ve spotted since we started cataloguing them, has been T. S. Eliot  – that was quite exciting, and I know there are many more in there.

The illustrations are often quite beautiful, engravings or woodcuts done specifically for the publication, and looking at the collection as a whole you get a good impression of the illustrative art movement from the end of the 19th century up to the 2nd World War.

I’m looking forward to continuing to work on the Presses, and to be able to blog about some of them in more detail.  As there are several of us working on them its not possible to handle everything, so I am relying on my colleagues to alert me to anything particularly interesting that they come across too!

However, the reason it was rushed (aside from nerves!) was because the event was over-running.  I was the last speaker and I didn’t start until about 15 mins after the event was supposed to have finished!  As one of the organisers I was painfully aware that we were over-running most of the way through, and that we didn’t have any of those ‘red’ cards to flash at anyone.  Its an obvious thing to do, give speakers warning that they have 5 mins left etc, and then tell them to stop – but without jumping up in their faces to do so.  Why didn’t we do it?  Well, we’ve never had a problem before as far as I can remember at previous events, though we did have more speakers than usual.  Its never been an issue, and when it became one we weren’t ready.  Ok, so that is a lesson learned for next time – be prepared!

But as a speaker, what should I have done?  As a speaker who was also an organiser I knew about the time problems, I knew that people might not be able to go to the library tour we’d organised if we overran by much more, and that people might even have to walk out in order to get back to work on time.  So, even though I knew no-one else had been made to cut their talk short, and even though I presumed many of them may not have realised they were overrunning, I didn’t want to take too long with mine.

I tried not to gabble (and I don’t think I did!), but I tried to be as speedy as possible within reason.  I probably would have made more eye-contact if I’d had plenty of time (but I probably need to work on that too, I rely on notes and have not developed the ability to just ‘talk’).

If I hadn’t been part of the organising team would I have thought, ‘sod it, I’m taking as long as I want’…Probably not, as I’m a timid mouse really, and would still have been aware that I was the last in a long overrun morning.  But what exactly is the etquette in these circumstances?  It wasn’t my fault as a speaker that I was starting late, but is it my responsibility to be slightly speedier in my delivery? 

My talk fitted its alotted 15 mins, and I didn’t have to miss things out, but I would have been a bit more relaxed without the time pressures, and would have come across as less rushed.

Last time I gave a talk I had a disastrous time as there was a virus on the conference equipment and my powerpoint wouldn’t run at all, so I just had to speak (from my copious notes!) without all the lovely pictures and graphs I had prepared.  I’m beginning to think my presentation attempts are jinxed, and its not giving me any confidence!