Swings and RoundaboutsFitting cat & class into

the LIS curriculum

Kathleen Whalen MossCIG Annual Conference 2006

kwhalen.incline@virgin.net

Teaching Cat & Class

Is it ‘the baby we threw outwith the bathwater’ ?

Or are we seeing a renaissance?

What do the experts say?

The findings from semi-structured interviews,

a web surveyand telephone interviews

conducted July-September 2005 provided material for an MA dissertation for Manchester Metropolitan University

Where is it taught?from:“We’re one of the few places that teach cat & class as a core element in postgraduate studies.”

to:“We couldn’t be offering much less…”

and all stops in between

Finding Cat & Class in the curriculum:

Organising KnowledgeInformation Retrieval

Organisation & Retrieval of Information

Organisation of Bibliographic Data

Cataloguing & Classification

Why teach cat & class

“I think if you don’t understand how a catalogue is constructed you can’t interpret it to people who are using it.”

‘It’s what makes us different’

What do the students want?

“It’s one of the small considerations why they come here.”

“Our students expect to learn cat & class.”

“It’s an inappropriate use of resources, pandering to a nervousness on the part of some students.”

Who is teaching cat & class?

“ We are going to increasingly have people teaching on our programmes who have not had practical experience themselves.”

How is it taught?

“A problem in some respects is the pace of the course, because we get some students who pick it up quickly, some who have experience, and some without any library background at all.”

Theory vs Practice?

“I think the students can take a certain amount of being told about things, but they actually like to do – a lot … what they do is more enjoyable and it stays with them longer.”

Will metadata provide a cat

& class makeover?“Metadata is an increasingly hot topic … in a way Dublin Core, though wildly imperfect, has taught a lot of people to understand how you need this kind of thing.”

The bad news• RAE pressures and falling student numbers help diminish traditional LIS instruction

• Departments are unwilling to find money for working materials such as Dewey and AACR2

• There is a worrying shortage of educators able to teach cataloguing & classification

• Modularization reduces class time for instruction

The good news

• Cat & class instruction is increasing in the curriculum

• Post-professional tuition, often at universities, keeps cat & class alive

• CILIP is seen to support cat & class in the curriculum

• Metadata initiatives lend credence to cat & class

• Cooperative schemes may help fill gaps in tuition

“In the mid-80s we thought the emergent technology

would cause cat & class to disappear. That was wrong

-- a) the profession still

want it, and b) it is

still needed.”

In conclusion

Further Reading

• BOWMAN, J. H., 2006. Education and training for cataloguing and classification in the British Isles. Cataloguing & classification quarterly [online]. 41 (3/4) [cited 15 August 2006] http://catalogingandclassificationquarterly.com/ccq41nr3-4.html

• BROUGHTON, V., 2004. Classification – come back all is forgiven. Library + information gazette, 17 December, p. 1.

• BRUNT, R.M., 2004. The education of cataloguers. Catalogue and index, 153 (Autumn) pp. 1-7.

• HILL, J.S., ed., 2002. Education for cataloging and the organization of information: pitfalls and the pendulum. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.

• POULTER, A., 2003. Metaviews: metadata research and teaching in the UK and Ireland. Journal of Internet cataloguing [online]. 6 (3) [cited 11 January 2004] http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/research/publications.php

• RUPP, N. and BURKE, D., 2004. From catalogers to ontologists: changing roles and opportunities for technical services librarians. The serials librarian 46 (3/4) pp. 221-226.

• TRICKEY, K., 2004. Revive the lost art – or we’ve only ourselves to blame. Library + information gazette, 26 March, p. 1-2.