Thursday, October 24, 2013

Cataloging in French

After the lull I recently had in my internship, things are definitely not slow now. I received my new set of titles to catalog and nine out of twelve are in French! At first, I thought maybe there was some mistake so I immediately contacted my supervisor. Recently Mitinet took on a Canadian client who needs many French titles cataloged. I don't speak a word of French, so it's a little intimidating trying to catalog the French titles. Luckily, I am in the same boat as the other interns and contracted employers so we have been emailing back and forth and sharing resources we find. For example, Canada has their own equivalent to the Library of Congress, called AMICUS. It has taken me a little while to navigate the website, but I have been able to locate several of the French titles I am working with. Normally we have a week to finish our titles, but my site supervisor is very understanding that this is a difficult week for everyone and has allowed us extra time. Slowly but surely I am cataloging my French titles, but I am relying heavily on Google translator. While this is definitely the most challenging part of the internship thus far, at least I am learning how to catalog in a foreign language and maybe even learn a word or two of French.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

New Technology

I have hit a bit of a lull this week with the cataloging portion of my internship. Because the department that enters our records into the database has been short staffed, I have not received any new records to catalog. Also, the staff member who sends new records to catalog has not received base MARCs. Therefore, I have not have any new records to catalog. In the meantime, I have been conducting research for my final paper. All of the Mitinet interns are required to write a position paper on a topic of our choosing. I thought it would be interesting to research careers that involve cataloging and trends related to cataloging or metadata jobs. A large portion of my research so far has been looking through job lists for jobs pertaining to cataloging or metadata. While some may feel like cataloging knowledge is no longer a necessary skill set, I have found the opposite to be true. I will report more of my findings as I continue my research.

On top of writing my paper, Mitinet is getting ready to introduce a new website that we will use in our cataloging process. We were told it should streamline the process and allow us to catalog more quickly and efficiently. My site supervisor is comparing all the intern and independent cataloging contractor schedules to set up training sessions for all of us to learn how to use the new technology. Fingers crossed it won't be too complicated!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Shutdown Affecting my Internship!

Hi. Hope everyone's internships are going well. I apologize for not updating my blog as often as I would like, but I'm a forgetful person. So far, my internship has been going well. I have been cataloging titles that I am sent each week. Now that I have worked out most of the kinks with the software, I am much faster at cataloging. However, we have ran into a problem because of the government shutdown. As many of you may know, the Library of Congress is affected by the shutdown and unfortunately, the website is as well. We use the LOC website for copy cataloging and choosing subject headings. Each titles requires five to seven LOC subject headings, LOC children's, and Sears headings. Because we can't access the information through the website, this has made cataloging difficult. Hopefully our government will get their difference worked out soon and the LOC website will be back up and running.