In the 25th anniversary issue of Health Information and Libraries Journal, Margaret E.S. Forrest provides an overview of the role of informational professionals in user education. It’s particularly useful for those of us who have not been working in the sector so long, since it highlights the growth of IT and EBM (evidence based medicine) ...

Well, after over a week of checking the RDA site every day, today we received the announcement on the cataloguing lists that RDA full draft has been delayed (again), until (they say) 17 November: Due to complications in software development, the Committee of Principals has determined that the full draft of RDA will be issued in PDF files. [...]

Spent Friday evening at Late at the Library - an event to celebrate the opening of the British Library’s new exhibition, Taking Liberties: We take our rights for granted. Free speech. A free press. The rule of law. The power to vote in those who make the laws and spend our taxes. And the power to [...]

This week on AUTOCAT, Judith Kirk (Western Michigan University Libraries, Kalamazoo) shared the results of her recent informal survey of authority control practice.  Although the opt-in sample size was small (12 libraries) and entirely US-based, it included some interesting snippets. These two comments on the management of authority control caught ...

In a recent article in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Lynne C. Howarth and Jean Weihs provide a history of one of the hottest topics in the RDA draft - the demise of the Rule of Three. Beginning with some historical background on the main entry concept generally, referencing Cutter and the ALA Rules of 1941, they [...]

“The full draft of RDA will be available for Constituency Review during the week of November 3rd,” according to an email from the Joint Steering Committee to LIS-UKBIBS. Even more excitingly, they’re planning “to issue it in a preliminary version of the software with Browse and Quick Search functionality.” Of course, ...

Preparing this week’s lecture, I came across an interesting paper by Ling Hwey Jeng questioning the necessity and cost-effectiveness of authority control. After a brief synopsis of the main aims and objectives, Jeng concludes that In cataloging, accuracy means authoritative, standardized, and consistent accuracy. It means both completeness ...

The free seminar and masterclass programme at Online Information has been announced. There’s a great spread of speakers, including Phil Bradley, Karen Blakeman and Peter Godwin. I can only attend on Thursday 4th, when I’m presenting on Third Sector 2.0, and I;m particularly looking forward to catching Francis Mezzu’s paper ...

One of the highlights of Elisad was hearing metadata expert Karen Coyle speak. Her paper Future of the Catalog was unusual for Elisad in that no reference was made to AOD, but it was no less riveting for that, and probably very healthy for subject specialists to be faced with a wider perspective. Beginning with stats [...]

Well done to Suzanne Wheatley (View from the Hill) for spotting this personal add in London Lite this week: “To Deborah the library agency cataloguer. I saw you on a Thursday about a month ago. You’re gorgeous with amber eyes - and the rest. How about coffee and conversation and we can find out if our [...]