# Presentation: 303023

## Cataloging Education: A New Emphasis for the LIS Curriculum

- ALCTS / CETRC Preconference
- Catholic University of America
- Washington, DC
- June 22, 2007

## When we think of LIS education...

- ALA Committee on Accreditation (COA)
- Accredited master’s degree
- ALA-accredited schools in North America
- 55 public and private institutions
- Undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees
- Curricular requirements
- Hours (36 semester = 58 quarter)
- Required “core” courses
- ALA guidelines

## LIS education & higher education

- Accreditation
- Regional for the institution
- Programmatic (external = ALA)
- Faculty
- Sweezey decision (354 U.S. 234 (1957))
- Tenure track and contingent (part-time)
- Boyer model
- Teaching / Research / Service
- Integration / Engagement

## LIS education & higher education

- Student cycle of recruitment, admissions, matriculation, graduation, placement
- Decentralized budgeting
- Curricular development in response to
- Mission, vision, and goals
- Accreditation
- Professional competencies
- Learning outcomes (programmatic and course)
- Employer expectations

## Involves adult learners

- Andragogy v. Pedagogy
- Life span development
- New passages
- Generations

## Adult learners

- Characteristics
- Individual and groups
- Dynamic
- Interactive
- Mediated
- Peer-to-peer
- Outcome-oriented
- Competency-driven

- Lenses
- Life cycle development
- Learning styles
- Multiple intelligences
- Emotional intelligence
- Moral, aesthetic development
- Ethnicity and race
- Gender

## Cataloging education

- Required at 9 schools
- Clarion
- Hawaii
- Denver
- Missouri – Columbia
- North Carolina – Greensboro
- Southern Mississippi
- SUNY Buffalo
- Toronto
- Wisconsin – Madison

- Faculty
- Full-time = 26
- Vacancies = 4
- Part-time = 29
- Courses
- Beginning (3 hours)
- Concentration (15 hours)
- Average = 2 courses

## Challenges to cataloging education

- Tensions of competing masters
- Evolution of cataloging
- Recognition of integration with reference, archives, and special collections
- Convergence of technologies
- Responsiveness to employers

## Challenge 1: Tensions

- Institutional demands and mandates
- External accrediting body
- Alumni
- Employers (actual and potential)
- Students
- Current
- Potential

## Challenge 2: Cataloging evolution

- Organization and description of resources
- Types pf resources
- Print (multi-format and multilingual)
- Digital (“born” and made)
- Media (DVD, VHS, download, etc.)
- Sound (CD, vinyl, older formats, download)
- Cartographic (paper, electronic, digital)
- Cultural heritage (archives, records, and assets)

## Challenge 3: Integration

- Cross-training of staff
- Outsourcing
- Acquisitions, standing orders, approval plans
- Cataloging, processing, “shelf ready”
- Staffing
- Collapsing of full-time professional positions
- Increasing paraprofessional positions to technical and public services

## Challenge 4: Convergence

- Technologies
- Supporting public and technical services
- Requiring technical skills and competencies
- Maintaining and repairing equipment
- Search strategies
- Approximating Google, Yahoo, etc.
- Visualization of library catalogs
- Impending arrival of *RDA*

## Challenge 5: Employers’ expectations

- Theoretical knowledge
- Technical skills (hardware and software)
- Cataloging competencies
- Bibliographic description, authority work
- Classifying
- Subject access
- Workplace competencies
- Communication (written, oral, and multilingual)
- Flexibility (work independently and collaboratively)

## Solutions and partnerships

- Communication
- Mentorships
- Students
- Research
- Next steps

## Solution 1: Communication

- Professional groups
- National
- Regional
- State
- Community of catalogers
- LIS educators

## Solution 2: Mentorships

- Internships
- Paid
- Unpaid
- Practica
- Mentorships
- Service learning

## Solution 3: Students

- Support education for cataloging staff
- Work with sponsors and hosts
- Serve on boards / groups
- Seek out learners
- Paraprofessionals
- Library school students
- Professional development

## Solution 4: Research

- Reflects shared questions
- Involves using problem-solving in the “real world”
- Informs practice and teaching
- Involves all of us

## Next steps

## Step 1: Contact your library school

- Get to know the cataloging faculty
- Offer to collaborate
- Internship / practicum
- Mentor students
- Visit classes
- Work with faculty and alumni
- Serve as an advisor

## Step 2: Volunteer

- Join ALCTS
- Volunteer for project and committees
- Contribute training and educational materials to clearinghouses

## Step 3: Participate

- Participate in conversations
- Join listserv
- Speak up!
- AUTOCAT
- OCLC-CAT

## Step 4: Contribute 

- Contribute your best ideas
- Work with us
- Preparing catalogers
- Recruiting potential LIS students
- Educating the community of catalogers

## Questions?

-  Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, Ph.D.
- Library & Information Science Program
- Morgridge College of Education
- University of Denver
- 1901 E. Iliff Ave., #122
- Denver, Colorado 80208