"Basic" cataloging and the training-wheel culture (with a nod to Dorthea Salo)

When I took my school's required cataloging class, I fell into cataloging because I "got" it. I enjoyed the idea of putting an item into a neatly classified box.

Admittedly, it was a naively simple understanding of cataloging.

Shortly after I finished my beginning cataloging class, I secured work as a paraprofessional cataloger at a public library. When I started, I didn't really understand very much about cataloging, but I knew that I had all of the tools that I needed to gain a better understanding.

I'd worked as a paraprofessional cataloger for about six months before I took an advanced cataloging class. The advanced class covered music, serials, e-resources, videos/dvds, and maps. By the time I took the class, I'd had on the job training on cataloging videos/dvds, music, and serials.

Basically, for lack of a better metaphor (and to steal one from Caveat Lector's Dorthea Salo), I beat cataloging with rocks until I figured out how it worked.

Speaking of Dorthea Salo, she talks about the "training-wheels" culture in this post at Caveat Lector.

Salo seems to have lost her patience with those who aren't willing to figure things out on their own, but rather wait with baited breath for the training session. She uses cataloging as a prime example of the "training-wheels" culture in action.

Library schools are offering fewer and fewer cataloging classes, it's true, which means that catalogers-in-training will be more responsible for teaching themselves the nitty gritty of format-specific cataloging.

I think that library schools owe their students at the very least a basic understanding of how library catalogs are designed to work in terms of search and retrieval. They also owe their students as basic understanding of subject analysis and classification schemes.

Knowing how these things works makes you a better librarian no matter what area of librarianship "calls" to you.

But I've never been certain that asking a person who has no interest in cataloging to create an "original" record has any significant value for the student beyond turning them off to cataloging.

If I were teaching a "basic" cataloging course, I would teach students how to "use" a library catalog. I would teach them search strategies that can be used with all catalogs, regardless of vendor. I would teach students about controlled vocabulary and how subject headings are formed. I would teach students how to read bibliographic records. I would teach students about DDC and LC in general terms, and get them familiar with what goes where.

Librarians of every kind learn a lot on the job. Why should cataloging be any different?