Understand the system of standards and methods used to control and create information structures and apply basic principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge.
Change has been a theme thus far, running through this portfolio’s content. Even the very basis of information organization and representation in libraries is currently being challenged. A sea change is afoot. As systemizations as essential to libraries as MARC are looking toward overhauls to make their web facing presence more viable, as with the implementation of MARC XML, it is difficult to grasp where exactly changes in cataloging will take the profession. AACR2 too is in the process of being supplanted by RDA in the realm of cataloging rules in order to allow better asset management in the digital realm, which was unimagined when AACR was established. At the same time parallel information organization systems are being developed and overturned in the realm of digital collection management as is the case with many sets of metadata standards.
With this confluence of change I decided to pursue a somewhat different path in fulfilling this competency, rather than take a class specifically cataloging, during a period when most organization standards seem on shaky ground, I decided to pursue more generally applicable work in the realm of indexing, abstracting, and thesaurus design which provide a solid basis for information organization without delving too deeply into one incipient or fading standard too deeply. This seemed wise both in the realm of career path, and because it will allow me to adapt more readily to the standards of the future, whatever they may be.
Working knowledge of this area of library science is important for more reasons than simply having the knowledge base to create records that can be adequately searched for within a retrieval system. Knowledge of the vocabularies and structures underlying retrieval systems, whether they are thesauri, the control vocabulary used in MARC, or other metadata forms, can aid in one’s ability to create more precise and powerful searches and improve the ease of retrieval.
Evidence
As a public desk employee, my exposure to cataloging has been limited, but my expertise has been frequently utilized in translating subject headings into Spanish, or choosing the best fit from a variety of subject terms within the cataloging process. I have also frequently called upon my Library’s technical services department to correct errors in article use in Spanish titles and rectify various author authority issues within an item's MARC entry to aid in better access to material records by the library’s patrons.
In LIBR 247, Vocabulary Design, I was tasked with the objective of creating multiple thesauri. This necessitated the creation of controlled vocabularies with associated hierarchies. The largest of these thesauri construction projects involved a thorough analysis of facet creation, hierarchies and related terms. Also important to this construction was the development of a well-defined vocabulary and the use of well-chosen natural language identifiers to aid users in connecting queries to the proper controlled subject terms.
Another object of LIBR 247 was to abstract and index a scholarly article. In this assignment I was charged with determining the proper terms for indexing an article from the ERIC digital library in such a way that it would make the article retrievable through the controlled vocabulary of its respective database. In this assignment my process of abstracting and indexing was compared analytically to the professional abstract and index associated with the document in ERIC.
