LTS Leaders Recognized
Anna Korhonen
Two Library Technical Services (LTS) leaders from Cornell were honored on Sunday, June 25, during the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans at the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) annual award ceremony. Both Karen Calhoun and Martin Kurth were awarded a 2006 ALCTS Presidential Citation for their roles in implementing elements of the Library of Congress Action Plan that arose from the Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web. Karen was honored for chairing the ALCTS Library of Congress Action Plan Task Force, and Marty was recognized for chairing the group that implemented Cataloging for the 21st Century, a series of five continuing-education workshops designed for practicing catalogers.
Marty receives his award from Bruce Johnson, the president-elect of ALCTS, and Carol Diedrichs, the past president of ALCTS.
Karen accepts her award, presented by Carol Diedrichs, Bruce Johnson, and Rosann Bazirjian, the president of ALCTS (right).
How CUL and Marty Got Involved
In an interview about his role as chair of the Continuing Education Implementation Group (CEIG) earlier this spring, Marty, the head of Metadata Services in LTS, described the training initiative that originated from the above-mentioned conference that was sponsored by the Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate in November 2000. This invitational meeting of authorities in the cataloging and metadata communities had been convened to discuss outstanding issues involving better discovery and access for electronic resources. One of the resulting recommendations of the conference was the Library of Congress Action Plan to improve bibliographic control of Web resources. ALCTS assumed a leading role in completing the training components of the LC Action Plan. Karen Calhoun, Cornell’s AUL for technical services, was appointed chair of the ALCTS Task Force for the LC Action Plan. The task force commissioned a study that recommended a series of five workshops for practicing catalogers to provide them with training and skills to catalog Internet resources. ALCTS then formed a new group, CEIG, to implement the workshop series. Marty was assigned to chair it in September 2003. That is when his three-year journey into continuing education for Web-resource catalogers started.
"Cataloging for the 21st Century”: A Series of Web-Cataloging Classes
The series of five workshops is designed to demystify the cataloging of Web resources for practicing catalogers. It was commissioned by LC and is offered by LC’s Cataloging Distribution Service. Marty, as the chair of CEIG, has led the editorial board responsible for finding course developers and trainers and signing off on workshop content on behalf of LC, which then sells the content to anyone interested in offering the training locally. Three of the five modules are ready and have already been offered to the library communities. The first course in the series is Rules & Tools for Cataloging Internet Resources. The second module, Metadata Standards and Applications, was developed by Diane Hillmann and offered by Diane as a pilot course at Cornell earlier this year before it debuted officially in Chicago in May. The third module, Principles of Controlled Vocabulary and Thesaurus Design, was offered first in Denver in May. The fourth is Metadata and Digital Library Development, developed by CUL’s David Ruddy. It will be offered this July in Washington, D.C. The fifth module, Digital Project Management for the 21st Century, has been planned for December.
LC has established a special clearinghouse portal for cataloging and metadata training called the Cataloger’s Learning Workshop (CLW), where you can find more information about the courses in this series.
Keeping Up with the Fast-Developing Digital Environment
It is true that Web resources develop at a fast pace and that the contents of the training classes will age quickly unless they are continually maintained. Therefore, ALCTS created another group in partnership with the Program for Cooperative Cataloging and LC to update the course materials as needed. CUL’s David Banush has served on this Continuing Education Training Materials Committee.
CEIG and Its Work
The five members of the CEIG team meet twice a year at the ALA Annual Conference and Midwinter Meeting. During the rest of the year they communicate via monthly conference calls and myriad e-mails. They share expertise and serve as liaisons with developers of the different modules in the series. The members review the content of all courses and work with developers to revise courses as needed. Marty has worked closely with three developers during the three-year span that will come to an end in January 2007.
Next Steps
CEIG is working with ALCTS to identify a group to create Web-based versions of some of the course content. The aim is to offer the classes globally via the Internet. In addition, it is likely that the courses will be translated into other languages. Now that more course content has been created, the training initiative has taken on a life of its own. One of the courses has already been adapted for the law library community, so other adaptations are possible, too. Converting the courses for Web delivery will extend the reach of the series even more.
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