Authored by cataloging librarians, educators, and information system experts, this book of essays addresses ideas and methods for tackling the modern challenges of cataloging and metadata practices. Library specialists in the cataloging and metadata professions have a greater purpose than simply managing information and connecting users to resources. There is a deeper and more profound impact that comes of their work: preservation of the human record. Conversations with Catalogers in the 21st Century contains four chapters addressing broad categories of issues that catalogers and metadata librarians are currently facing. Every important topic is covered, such as changing metadata practices, standards, data record structures, data platforms, and user expectations, providing both theoretical and practical information. Guidelines for dealing with present challenges are based on fundamentals from the past. Recommendations on training staff, building new information platforms of digital library resources, documenting new cataloging and metadata competencies, and establishing new workflows enable a real-world game plan for improvement.

Will library technical services exist thirty years from now? If so, what do leading experts see as the direction of the field? In this visionary look at the future of technical services, Mary Beth Weber, Head of Central Technical Services at Rutgers and editor of Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS), the official journal of ALA’s Association for Library Collections and Technical Services and one of the top peer-reviewed scholarly technical services journals has compiled a veritable who’s who of the field to answer just these questions. Experts including Amy K. Weiss, Sylvia Hall-Ellis, and Sherri L. Vellucci answer vital questions like: Is there a future for traditional cataloging, acquisitions, and technical services? How can librarians influence the outcome of vendor-provided resources such as e-books, licensing, records sets, and authority control? Will RDA live up to its promise? Are approval plans and subject profiles relics of the past? Is there a need to curate data through its lifecycle? What skills will be needed in the future in technical services jobs?

In this book, experts in the field describe best practices based on their experiences in corporate libraries worldwide. With information driving today's global economy, corporate librarians must become even more proactive in their daily assignments. Best Practices for Corporate Libraries will help them do just that through a series of papers that offer an international array of opinion and practice methods. This book showcases current practices in corporate library functions and suggests best practices for current librarians. It also examines some of the changes in librarianship that have arisen from changes in how information is provided and how corporations are now organized. Topics covered include library service functions, return on investment, measurements and evaluation, collaboration, communication and outreach in corporations, managing changes in the corporation and in the library, and legal issues such as intellectual property concerns. Drawing from the experience of 25 contributors, the book includes chapters covering corporate libraries in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Barbados, and Nigeria.

This unique annotated bibliography is a complete, up-to-date guide to sources of information on library science, covering recent books, monographs, periodicals and websites, and selected works of historical importance.

Learn and perfect the skills needed to conduct satisfying reference interviews in the modern technological environment with this easy-to-use guide. In today's technology-driven world, reference librarians must serve users who come into the building as well as remote users who ask via various digital means. With virtual reference and social networking tools now commonplace, reference questions have become more complex and interdisciplinary. The Reference Interview Today will help reference librarians decide which tools and strategies will best serve their diverse group of patrons—in person and in cyberspace. This text covers the skills needed for traditional face-to-face reference and how they can be applied in 2.0 media. Best practices for culturally diverse, disabled, and "difficult" patrons; strategies for public and academic libraries; and virtual technologies like Twitter and Second Life are described. Written by a practicing reference librarian, this invaluable book makes it easy to train paraprofessionals and serves as a guide for experienced librarians to hone their skills in new delivery methods.

A new edition of this best-selling textbook reintroduces the topic of library cataloging from a fresh, modern perspective. Not many books merit an eleventh edition, but this popular text does. Newly updated, Introduction to Cataloging and Classification provides an introduction to descriptive cataloging based on contemporary standards, explaining the basic tenets to readers without previous experience, as well as to those who merely want a better understanding of the process as it exists today. The text opens with the foundations of cataloging, then moves to specific details and subject matter such as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), the International Cataloging Principles (ICP), and RDA. Unlike other texts, the book doesn't presume a close familiarity with the MARC bibliographic or authorities formats; ALA's Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd Edition, revised (AACR2R); or the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). Subject access to library materials is covered in sufficient depth to make the reader comfortable with the principles and practices of subject cataloging and classification. In addition, the book introduces MARC, BIBFRAME, and other approaches used to communicate and display bibliographic data. Discussions of formatting, presentation, and administrative issues complete the book; questions useful for review and study appear at the end of each chapter.

Transmedia is a technique of delivering a single piece of content in individual parts via different media and communication platforms (books, films, TV shows, games, live performances, etc.). In the book transmedia is considered as a case-in-point for the need to rethink library cataloguing and metadata practices in a new, heterogeneous information environment where the ability to bring together information from various sources into a meaningful whole becomes a critical information skill. Transmedia sheds new light on some of the long-existing questions of bibliographic information organisation (the definition of work, modelling of bibliographic relationships, subject analysis of fiction, etc.) and introduces libraries to new, transient and interactive media forms such as interactive fiction, gaming events, or performances. The book investigates how various theories and practices of bibliographic information organisation can be applied to transmedia, focusing on the solutions provided by the new bibliographic conceptual model IFLA LRM, as well as linked open data models and standards. It strongly advocates collaborative practices and reuse of knowledge that underpin an emerging vision of the library catalogue as a 'mediation tool' that assembles, links and integrates information across a variety of communication contexts. - Explores transmedia from the point-of-view of information organisation - Presents one of the first extensive analyses of the IFLA LRM bibliographic conceptual model - Uses examples of recent publishing practices to assess current bibliographic data models, standards, formats and technologies