Team cataloging

One interesting aspect of the training process has been figuring out how to work on this project as a team.   Cataloging can seem like a lonesome and solitary job, and much of the time, I work on my own without consulting anyone else.   Nevertheless, this project is very team-oriented: we meet regularly to talk about issues or problems we’re having, we peer-review each other’s work, and I, for one, make ample use of the work the other members of the team have done so far.  As I work on creating new records for our catalog, I constantly search through the records that have already been added to see what my colleagues have chosen as subject headings for pamphlets with similar titles and to see whether authorized headings were found for certain publishers or authors, among other things.  Our project wiki acts in the same way; it’s a storehouse of information built up by the team over the first 10 months of the project that has proven to be a key resource for me as I continue to catalog.  I believe that doing the work of cataloging has become much easier for me because I have all this information to draw upon.  It’s a challenge to remember that the work I can get done is in large part thanks to the work the team has already completed, but I also think this is one of the best parts about this project: that we have many tools and systems in place that let us take advantage of each other’s work.