Introduction of work:

In my capstone, I set out to assist my university in establishing new student assistant positions in technical services. These positions would be tasked with original cataloging and other responsibilities that are typically managed by a metadata librarian at smaller institutions. In larger institutions or those with an LIS program, these tasks may be handled by graduate student assistants, but it is very uncommon for any institution to utilize undergraduate work for these tasks. Beginning with my leading of undergraduate student internships prior to LIS-685, I recognized that students were not only capable of this work, but that it could fix many of the departmental work shortages facing departments as well as provide the students with a skillset and education that is frequently hard to access unless you are already working towards an MLIS degree. 

Reflection and final report:

This project was greatly enabled by the education and training given to students. Students I work with learn of information in its forms, description, and ethics. This began with readings and discussions based on:

• “Information as thing” by Michael K. Buckland 

  • ​This work helps to demonstrate to students the various forms that information can take, physical and intangible, how anything can be considered information, and the inclusion of such objects in information institutions. An example I always bring up in discussion is how music can take a variety of forms, such as live music, a sound recording, or sheet music. This reading also helps to dispel preconceived notions in students of the library as a place of books rather than all forms of information. This is most helpful to my first year student workers who may not have much prior experience or knowledge with libraries or who have their primary idea of libraries shaped by media representations.

• “Cataloging” by Daniel N. Joudrey 

  • This second reading helps to introduce the history of cataloging, its place in libraries, and the various terms used when discussing metadata. Students learn about the beginnings of card catalogs and the shift of libraries to using OPACs and ILS’s. This also helps me to show them our library’s catalog, the ILS “Ex Libris Alma” and how things like technology are constantly shifting in the library world, as we’ve only used this service for eight years (previously working with an OPAC known as Millennium). IFLA’s  FRBR and FRAD are introduced as models for what we need to catalog as well as RDA, a rule set by which we catalog, and MARC, the standard in which we catalog. This helps to illustrate how interlinked library cataloging systems are and will help show them the language for tasks like updating older records from AACR2 to RDA.

• “Understanding metadata: What is metadata, and what is it for?” by Jenn Riley 

  • While this chapter primarily covers similar topics to Joudrey, it’s helpful in teaching students the various types of metadata: descriptive, structural, preservation, rights, technical, and markup languages. It also helps to show how metadata is used outside of information institutions. While not as prevalent in teaching students for the work they will do here, this helps them to think about the different applications of metadata, how the skills they learn here can help them in other fields, and can help them if they choose to pursue metadata as a career path.

• Chapters 4 and 5 of “Organizing library collections: Theory and practice” by Hoffman 

  • These chapters introduce students to ethics of cataloging, such as the ALA code of ethics and the ALCTS guidelines for librarians in technical services, and “Bibliographic control as a form of power”. However this applies to learning description  as well, as it helps to introduce specific controlled vocabularies such as LCSH and cover some of the ethical issues with them. I also help to touch on these in the discussion, highlighting that national systems like these are slow-moving and often tied to politics. Similarly, I show students that other systems can be used to help cover these gaps, such as the Queer controlled vocabulary Homosaurus.

As well as my own instructions and guides on:

• Navigating OCLC’s list of MARC Fields (https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/0xx.html) 

• Using Library of Congress authorities to find names and subjects (https://authorities.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First)

• Generating Cutter numbers using Kyle Bannerjee’s Cataloging Calculator (https://calculate.alptown.com/)

• Copy-cataloging from OCLC Connexion

• What local subject headings and encodings to use for specific collections/items

• Commonly used LCGFT and LCSH subjects in our collection

• Converting a record to RDA with proper ISBD punctuation, noting these in the LDR and 040 fields.

• Individual guides on writing/encoding 245, 250, 264, 300, 520, and 505 fields.

These readings and training help students to complete the following tasks within the library:

• Converting prior data if present from AACR2 to RDA

• Noting characteristics of the item itself such as size, page count, illustrative content

• Noting creator data such as name and other contributors if present

• Noting Title, Series, and Edition information if present

• Noting descriptive content such as summaries/abstracts (if available from a publisher website or the back cover) and table of contents, which they encode should there be multiple authors associated with parts of the work

• Applying LCSH and local subject headings to works

• Creating item and holdings records attached to generated MARCs

• Record identifiers of all records handled in a spreadsheet for further inspection

• Take note of MARC fields needed that they are not confident in creating or where they think more professional attention is needed.

The given readings would be followed by discussions, and assigned every week or so. These would be given so that students would be able to digest the material and reflect on them. This would be aided by the day to day work of copy-cataloging and original cataloging which would help them to see how these concepts manifest in hands-on work and draw their own connections. The degree to which students were interacting with records was also expanded upon, slowly over time. Initially working with strictly importing records and filling in diacritics, they would sequentially began working with 264s, then 505s and 520s, then 250s, and so on. This helped students to gradually demystify records in a way that let each of the elements get their own period of focus.

The project's effectiveness was checked and monitored under careful supervision by way of metadata review and student interviews. The student interviews, conducted once every month, were meant to monitor wellbeing and ensure that workload and learning did not interfere with the student’s core undergraduate learning or add stress to their school life. For review of records, I looked over and analyzed all the records on the student’s tracking sheet to ensure quality, fix errors, and fill in what they could not complete as they progressed through training. To help provide the students with an ample amount of materials to catalog and work with, as our influx of orders isn't a steady supply, I had students recatalog older items in the collection. Nearly all of our items we received before 2017 have poor metadata, frequently still written in AACR2 as a majority predate RDA, and critically damaged and disconnected due to the system migration from the university’s previous OPAC. Immediately, upon teaching students to better understand cataloging and training in tasks related to making substantive edits to records, we saw a massive increase in productivity that far offset the time required for training and teaching. To better showcase the varied work that students and myself were now doing across our records, I began tracking the different degrees to which we were enhancing items as well.

 

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During the three months working with the student departmental performance spiked as seen from the above numbers. While not measurable, our metadata quality also increased. Having students bring different perspectives and their own knowledge has helped perform subject analysis on some records that I would be incapable of alone, due to a lack of educational background in fields like literature or science.

Conclusion:

Much of what transpired during the project was to be expected, though the students somewhat exceeded my expectations in terms of quality of subject headings. I had anticipated that students would be capable of doing this from prior student workers going beyond my expectations and from working with undergraduate interns. The work with interns in particular helped me to realize how much students could learn if you provide them many of the same learning materials and hands-on training graduate students receive during their entry-level metadata coursework. With a greater length of time, students could receive a less rushed version of the reading schedule and this could be combined with a wealth of hundreds of materials to create records for with which to hone their abilities.

 

I ended up following the initial proposal's timeline quite closely, and a timeline I'll look to follow for future student teaching. Work and lectures were given at a pace that adequately matched the students' capabilities to digest information. It also provided me sufficient time to review their records and still complete other unrelated tasks that were required of me. The biggest change had to come in the form of my own tracking, as seen by the above table's changes. Previous methods were not properly able to convey the varying degrees by which the department changes records, and as such not properly convey the growth in student skill.

For the future of this work, I will still be supervising students at Hollins. I will continue to teach and monitor student development in cataloging closely as more students enter and the current students further grow. Student ability and learning is not monolithic, so I also hope to continue to learn teaching methodologies in a way to suit more learning styles. I also hope to continue to monitor cataloging literature so that I can continue to adjust student learning material and continue to refine this process. Additionally, while I have built up a base of google docs to inform the step by step processes of working on various fields and within the ILS, systems will change, and I do not have documentation for every field. Most notably is the creation of LC call numbers, a lesson I did not have the chance to give yet. I plan to go over this with my students when they return from their winter break, after they’ve had a reprieve to readjust to departmental workflows.

Ties to PLOs:

2.2 Assessment / 4.4 Assessment of Instruction

The statistics and student wellbeing of this project was closely monitored throughout the entirety of this project. Assessing student work and calculating departmental work outputs were roughly one third of the capstone worklog. How students felt about the workload and  the lessons regarding metadata were also carefully monitored through monthly interviews. 

6.2 Engages in Strategic Planning

This unit will continue on as a part of Hollins University’s technical services department, being integrated into the workflows of our daily cataloging duties. The creation of documentation and metadata training will help streamline this program to run even easier in coming semesters. In addition, this aligns with other library educational goals, such as the university’s new GLAM concentration. Without this program, there would be no opportunities for metadata education at Hollins, as there are no trained metadata staff teaching courses at this time. 


6.3 Team building / 7.3 Collaboration within a Library or Information Organization

This project centers around the creation of a working unit within the library consisting of myself and student workers. Both my work and their work are highly interconnected, with a part of my duties being to check their work and make sure we maintain quality in our metadata output. Having this unit in place will also help prepare the library to more easily undertake larger metadata projects that may be unforeseen, and be more ready for large shifts such as technical migrations.