Beginning Cataloguing News, June-July 2025
A check-list for people working outside MARC; book of the month; exhibition of the month; news and events; and a quote on not believing everything we're told.
UK Heatwave
It’s taken me longer than it probably should to realise that if I’m issuing a FREE training download at the end of each month, it’s better to issue the newsletter on the first Friday rather than the last Friday, so, with apologies to American colleagues and clients for adding to their inbox on a national holiday, here’s the first Beginning Cataloguing News in its new time-slot.
This month has been especially busy with private clients, and I’ve spent quite a few days in the heat of Central London rather than at home in the cool of the Beginning Cataloguing Office and Garden. Never have I ever been so grateful for the air conditioning system on the Elizabeth line, as it carried me into town in the heat of the summer. 36 degrees Celsius has been the hottest day we’ve had so far, and I know that even clients in Scotland have seen the thermometer nudging the 30s this year.
I hope that wherever you are and whatever the weather, you are having a good season and managing to maintain work:life balance.
FREE Download on Cataloguing Outside MARC
This month’s FREE anniversary download is a checklist that you may find useful if you work on a system that doesn’t use MARC. After a brief discussion of why organizations may not be using the main library exchange format, there’s a list of questions that I find useful when thinking about these things.
You can download it from here until 31 July 2025 - it’s the fourth in our series of monthly free activities to celebrate our fifth anniversary.
Anniversary Year Online Courses
The small group of people who have been attending our anniversary training sessions have decided to take a break until September, so I’m just listing the initial training modules. We’re just two people away from its being viable to run a repeat of the training on Corporate Bodies and only three away from Foundational Principles being viable to run. So if you’re tempted, do go ahead and sign up and I’ll be in touch when we have enough participants to schedule a session.
Expressions of interest are open for the following courses. All you need to do is complete the Google form for the course and once there are enough statements of interest I’ll send a Doodle poll so we can find an afternoon that suits everyone.
Foundational Principles in Cataloguing
This course looks at the principles that underpin our cataloguing activities, including Ranganathan's Laws, Cutter's Objects, Means and Reasons for Choice, the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM), the Cataloguing Code of Ethics and, of course, the International Cataloguing Principles (which are currently on constituency review). As always, there is a practical focus, and we will look at concrete examples in which we can see these fundamental ideas in practice today. By the end of the session, you will understand not only why you make the cataloguing decisions you do, but how your decisions are aligned with our wider professional thinking.
Sign up here (Google Form). Do remember to tell me you are a newsletter subscriber so I can give you your £5 discount.
Corporate Bodies for Beginners
This course covers the basics of MARC 110/710 and 111/711, so looks at what is a corporate body, when corporate bodies can be main entry (11X) and when they have to be added entry (71X) – even if they are designated author on the cover. We’ll spend most of our time dealing with organisations and government departments (110/710) and only a little time looking at conferences (111/711).
Sign up here (Google Form). Do remember to tell me you are a newsletter subscriber so I can give you your £5 discount.
Note: This is a rerun of this March’s course, using the same training materials we used, so please don’t sign up if you already attended. If there are enough people interested later in the year, we will run the course on Feeling Comfortable with Corporate Bodies, which will build on this beginners’ course.
Reading the Metadata
After a positive response at the NAG Forum, this new topic from Beginning Cataloguing covers what being able to read the metadata allows library staff to understand that they otherwise might not. Of value to those new to acquisitions work and copy cataloguing, we hope it will also be of interest to library managers and enquiry desk staff who have not yet had the opportunity for cataloguing training. We’ll look at the structure of a “record”, how the public display may offer clues those without metadata literacy may miss, “strange” abbreviations and terminology, and a few of the puzzles that looking at the input screen (with its “scary” MARC codes) might solve. You won’t leave knowing how to create your own metadata set, but you will have an enhanced understanding of what the cataloguer meant to tell you (and the world) when they wrote their catalogue entry.
Sign up here (Google Form). Do remember to tell me you are a newsletter subscriber so I can give you your £5 discount.
More 2025 Anniversaries
Although Beginning Cataloguing launched in March, it celebrates several significant anniversaries in June, including 4 years as social media lead for the Friends of Julian of Norwich, and 3 years as editorial consultant for ALA Digital Reference.
This June I was happy to be reappointed as Secretary to the RDA Steering Committee, and will continue in the role when my initial 3 year term ends in December. As I said in the official announcement, working on a complex electronic publication like the RDA Toolkit to implement RSC Decisions documents has been a steep but rewarding learning curve, and I’m glad to be able to continue in this part-time, freelance contractor role.
Exhibition of the Month
The British Museum has included a wealth of manuscripts, printed books and sketchbooks alongside the artworks in Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road.
The physical layout of the display aims to take exhibition-goers “on a lyrical journey through Edo Japan, exploring the natural beauty of the landscape and the pleasures of urban life.” Cases show the artist’s techniques of working, from sketches through to finished paintings and prints. These include his famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which I can’t help reading as an early artist’s book - replaying Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) in my mind as much as Hokusai’s Thirty-six and Hundred Views of Mount Fiji. We are never truly free from our own terms of reference, are we?
Hiroshige’s influence is an important theme. He left his sketchbooks to his students, actively encouraging them to build on his work, and the final rooms of the exhibition includes art that has drawn inspiration from him. Van Gogh features prominently, as a Western artist with whom we are all familiar and who was so impressed by the composition of The Plum Garden at Kameido that he traced it (and the tracing survives and is in the exhibition).
Whether you are new to Japanese Art or its something that you already know and love, this exhibition really has some wonderful books alongside its prints and paintings, and so is a bibliophile’s dream.
If you can’t make it to London, there’s a substantial amount of online material, including a blog article from 2020 drawing on Hiroshige and other artists’ works to create a ‘Historical city travel guide: Edo (Tokyo), early 19th century’.
Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road is open at the British Museum until 7 September 2025.
Book of the Month
There are so many brilliant books being published this summer that I thought it would be hard to choose my book of the month. Then, having and enjoyed read the eARC of What Happens in the Dark, I heard Kia Abdullah speaking about her love for the old Limehouse Library in a panel at Capital Crime, and the decision was clear.
What Happens in the Dark’s main character Safa Saleem has that undefinable charisma that makes for the perfect investigator. A reporter booted off a prestigious national title and working for her local newspaper, Safa has a complex back-story in which she feels responsible for the death of her mother but is nonetheless aware how fortunate she is to have a comparatively stable home life with one of the world’s most loving fathers.
Having known love and support from a good, honest man, Safa finds herself investigating two stories of violence against women, and specifically the shame some women are made to feel when they are subjected to attack. Safa’s childhood friend is put on trial for the murder of her husband, and the court of public opinion does not believe her claims he abused her for three years prior to his death.
Meanwhile, in her own East London Bangladeshi community, elderly women living on their own are being targeted by a serial criminal who breaks into their homes and assaults them knowing they will feel too much shame to report the attack to the police.
At the same time, Safa’s protege at work, Tim, is making a name for himself writing a feature on toxic masculinity and the appeal of a specific Internet guru to boys as young as eight and men as old as eighty.
Trigger warnings, obviously, for misogyny, sexual assault and violent death. None of it is gratuitous, though. This is a novel that exposes injustice and systemic misogyny and certainly does nothing to glamorise it.
Other News that Caught My Eye
I’ve not read it yet, but the latest edited volume by Paul Gooding, Melissa Terras and Sarah Ames has gone to the top of my professional To Be Read shelf: Library Catalogues as Data: Research, Practice and Usage was published by Facet on 29 June (and has a discounted price for CILIP members): https://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/page/detail/library-catalogues-as-data/?k=9781783306589
The next Public Session of the RDA Steering Committee will include a presentation by Dr Michalis Gerolimos on Official RDA at the National Library of Greece. FREE to attend, but registration required. Details at https://www.rdatoolkit.org/rsc/michalisgerolimos/2025july
The latest issue of Catalogue & Index was published on 17 June, including a range of articles dealing with the use of AI in cataloguing and metadata work: https://journals.cilip.org.uk/catalogue-and-index/issue/view/52
There’s also a call for the next issue, which is seeking articles on ‘non-MARC cataloguing’ - i.e. cataloguing using other exchange formats, documentation work in / for archives and museums, and even Linked Data projects. You can find details in the latest MDG Bulletin: https://email-cilip.org.uk/6WFS-2HC6V-48/sv.aspx
The Group’s call for conference papers is still open:https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201298&id=1113783#programme-div
Finally, if you are in or near Cardiff, you may be interested in the latest Uncataloguing Workshop led by colleagues in UK CoR (the UK Committee on RDA): https://www.cilip.org.uk/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1958691&group=
Quote of the Month
