Technical Services Blogs

A couple of years ago, when the Quick T.S. column was part of the CMRLS newsletter Centralities and not its own blog, I wrote about the blogs that focus primarily on Cataloging issues. I had scoured the blogosphere and found only a few of them: 025.431 The Dewey Blog, Catalogablog, The FRBR Blog, and Lorcan Depsey’s Weblog. Since then, other cataloging-type people have begun blogs and so I’m updating my list to include more blogs with a Cataloging focus.

Christine Schwartz began Cataloging Futures in April of 2007. Cataloging Futures uses the subtitle “a ‘work’ in progress” (a play on FRBR?) and says “The focus of this blog is the future of cataloging and metadata in libraries.” Christine has been paying attention to the stated purpose of her blog since “Cataloging” and “Metadata” are some of the largest words in the accompanying tag cloud.

Digiblog: ALCTS and Future of Tech Services began in October of 2006 to “to support the 2007 ALCTS Midwinter Symposium in Seattle …” Anyone can register and post to the blog. There is not a lot of activity, so if you have an opinion on a Tech Services issue and don’t want to start your own blog, you might consider posting on Digiblog.

Minerva Shelved, which began in December of 2006 as part of a Library 2.0 project, does not specifically define itself as a cataloging oriented blog. The tagline is simply “On books and libraries and such.”. However, Minerva often covers cataloging issues and so I’ve tucked her blog into the folder called Cataloging Blogs in my Bloglines account. What I like best about Minerva Shelved is that it plays classical music. I want music on my blog, too!

Any blog that begins with a Library of Congress classification number must have something to do with cataloging and sure enough Z666.7L364 contains “musings related to metadata, cataloging, and the ‘great big’ world of librarianship (plus some other stuff…)” The blog’s author, Jennifer Lang, is the Electronic Resources Cataloger at Princeton University Library and also teaches Cataloging and Classification at Rutgers University’s library school. The blog began in April of 2006.

Perhaps you don’t want to take the time to read each of the Cataloging blogs. If so, a quick and easy way to keep up with Tech Services issues is to read Planet Cataloging., “an automatically-generated aggregation of blogs related to cataloging and metadata …” Planet Cataloging began in May 2007 and is maintained by Jennifer Lang (of Z666.7L364) and Kevin S. Clarke who are happy to add any blog they might have over looked. Planet Cataloging scoops up posts from all of the blogs I’ve listed plus several others. It also locates individual posts on Cataloging topics even if the overall coverage of the blog is more general.

Technical Services people no longer need to bemoan the lack of blogs discussing Cataloging and related issues. The number is growing which means it that much easier to stay informed. So find yourself a blog or two and get reading.