Cataloging: What to Remember

What I want to remember about cataloging comes down to my two fields of experience with it, the personal and professional. The personal stems from the fact that both my parents are Harvard University Librarians, with my father being a literal cataloger. Hence I have grown up hearing his takes on the subject – both the positive and negative – within the context of cataloging books both new and old for one of the world's largest and most researched school libraries. And one thing my father has always said is, "you have to look in the book. If you take some time to study it then you can catalog it so more students who need it can find it more easily." This, above anything else, is the cataloging rule I have always sought to remember in my own school librarian career. As the Introduction of Allison G. Kaplan's book Catalog It! says:

"From the time knowledge became greater than one person could accurately store and recall mentally, humans have sought ways of organizing and storing information. Why do we have this need? For the most part, we do this so that we can easily and efficiently retrieve and access specific information. True, there are those of us who happily exist in cluttered and chaotic environments, but to make the best use of information it should be well organized and easily accessible."

Quite true and, better yet, accessible to the most number of people across as many applicable fields as possible. When one picks up a book about, say, the Solar System one can easily and instantly catalog it as being a Science book about Outer Space specifically and, even more specifically, not about Deep Space but purely about our own tiny celestial neighborhood. This is good cataloging. So what is great cataloging? Following my father's advice. For example, say I spent several minutes browsing through this hypothetical Solar System book and found a section of it dedicated to the history of our understanding of it – from Flat Earth, to Geocentric, to Heliocentric and the scientists Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. Suddenly, while the physical book would still be shelved in the Science sub-section about Outer Space, it can be digitally marked as having historical information as well. Not just scientific information either, but the role religion played in shaping early beliefs about the Solar System and what early astronomers had to do to discover and, often at great personal risk, prove their truths. A great cataloger will make sure this is reflected in the digital tags attached to the book – and now a student researching the the Middle Ages, the Roman Inquisition, and the Renaissance could find and use it.

That was the personal. Now we get to the professional. Chapter Five of Catalog It! begin with the words "Dewey or don't we?" before noting that "detractors say the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system is dated, difficult, and dysfunctional" and that other more modern systems such as BISAC and Metis better supports browsing. While "DDC supporters, on the other hand, maintain that the organizational scheme of DDC fits perfectly with the curriculum design of K-12 education and that it supports efficient discovery of information." Then there is the MARC Format and the Library of Congress cataloging system. I had never heard of the former, while the latter is the only thing my father uses (indeed, he has never used Dewey). However, as Chapter Five of Catalog It! also notes in a quote which could arguably sum up the entire book: "Both traditional and alternative systems will be presented here, and it will be up to you, the school librarian, to make the decision based on what is best for your community."

This final quote is to me among the most insightful in the book, because it came close to my own philosophy: You use the system, do not let the system use you. At the school library where I work we use Dewey for the Nonfiction books because it helps us organize them into coherent topic-based sections. That said, my supervisor and I are not above bending the so-called rules of Dewey based what we think is best for the school. In short, if we think a book classified as one thing really belongs somewhere else, we will change the call number accordingly.

So what do I want to remember about cataloging? That Dewey – and indeed every cataloging system – is a tool, not a tyrant. Meaning individual libraries/librarians can fiddle with them as they please so long as they keep the digital records straight and consistent. That, and my father's advice about taking the time to go through each book; it may make cataloging a longer enterprise, but the results will be more thorough and, most importantly, make the books more accessible to a greater number of students.