If you’ve ever discovered something in Library by doing an online search, chances are you have a cataloger to thank for making that possible. Cataloging, simply put, is the process of creating and maintaining metadata to describe an information resource (books, journals, multimedia, etc.). This metadata includes everything from basic information about a resource (title, author, publisher, format, physical description, etc.), to detailed and complex subject analysis which is then used to classify and organize resources, and make them searchable by keywords and topics.
The Library’s catalog represents a long term project as old as the University itself. Local data powering the Library’s current discovery platform, OneSearch, represents decades of work from catalogers and librarians, which has been updated, revised and preserved through several different generations of technology and standards. What started out as physical card catalog housed in cabinets, has evolved into a web scale discovery system integrating millions of distributed online resources with our local collections.
Throughout all of these changes, what’s remained consistent is the dedicated stewardship from our catalogers to make everything work. One such cataloger, Leigh McDonald (Head of Resource Description), recently announced that she will be retiring later this summer. Leigh has been with the University since 1987, and has had an immeasurable impact on the library’s catalog project, shepherding our data through various standards and systems over her decades-long career.
So if you ever searched for a book, or used any version of the library’s catalog search tool over the last few decades, chances are Leigh McDonald had something do with making that possible. Please join us in congratulating Leigh, and thanking her current colleagues in the Library’s Resource Description Unit, Leigh Ann Martin (Metadata Librarian) & Jonathan Tuttle (Special Formats Cataloging Librarian), for everything they do to maintain the library catalog and make our collections discoverable.
~ Jonathan Shank, Head of Budget, Acquisitions & Discovery