Wherefore Technical Services

I feel often that you as students think we are teaching you how to work in a technical services department.  But of course we are not.

This course looks to give you the FUNdamentals of the catalogue.  How the artifacts of the catalogue record is made.  But this is problematic to get.  To know more about how technical services works you have to get your fundamentals sure but we want you to know… What happens in there?  What are the rules by which the library collections and mandate come through?

This is a list of how Tech Services represents themselves.  Needs improvement?

A vintage consortia piece http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/services/cataloguing/workflows/

Cataloguing standards for the British Library http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/catstandards.html

Penn State libraries http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging.html

Policies like these are only a hint at the actual style guides within that set out local rules and protocols.  There are a set of triggers that say while you could just describe every item to the best of your ability, don’t do that.  It is important that libs of every stripe are conversant in this and finding out which collections get the total treatment and which are marginalized.

But I guess I should not assume to limit catalogue metadata is synonymous with limits on access?