Philip Hider
Cataloguing and classification, or nowadays more commonly referred to as ‘collection access’ or ‘metadata librarianship’, or similar, has been a core activity of library operations for as long as librarianship as a profession has existed, i.e., well over 100 years, yet for a long while now has been perceived as being somewhat on the back foot, especially with collections going increasingly online, and with libraries increasingly prioritising ‘front desk’ services when allocating their limited staff resources. I last surveyed the state of play for the ‘cat & class’ branch of librarianship in Australia a decade ago, and this year thought it was time to update those findings, to identify any continuing or new trends. A total of 86 responses were received from a mix of libraries (academic/research, public, special, etc.), indicating at least that there was still cataloguing to be surveyed. While the results suggested that the squeeze on cataloguing and metadata services continues, it was not all doom and gloom, with some new kinds of materials being catalogued and work going into making the library catalogue/discovery system more culturally inclusive in its description of collection items. Many respondents articulated the issues their library’s cataloguing endeavours faced in very clear terms, which I tried to reflect in my write-up of the survey, published as ‘At a Crossroads: Cataloguing Policy and Practice in Australian Libraries’. The article’s available as open access.
This was a really interesting read, thank you for sharing it. Working in a public library, I was actually pretty shocked by the amount of time spent on cataloguing activities that you identified, especially considering the staffing, time and budget constraints that I am sure we all feel in our libraries.
Reading this, I found myself wondering whether the ongoing investment in traditional cataloguing is maintaining its relevancy, particularly, at least, in my field in a public library with collections that largely mirror retail inventories (such as fiction, children’s books, and bestsellers). I feel as though it is becoming harder to justify the complexity of cataloguing workflows when commercial book platforms (like Dymocks or Booktopia) manage similar metadata with far more agile, user-friendly systems.
This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate the interoperability of using shared infrastructure across the industry and maintaining bibliographic integrity, but I wonder whether radical pragmatism has a place in this discussion.
I’m curious whether you see scope for public libraries, in particular, to explore alternate metadata approaches that are less reliant on traditional cataloguing infrastructure, and whether it would help to mitigate the effects of limited resourcing. Thank you again for your work on this topic; it feels like a critical conversation as we consider what kinds of discovery systems best serve our users in the years ahead.