Nowhere was the coming change more startling than in cataloging. My introductory cataloging class was taught by a ferociously intelligent professor who told us on day one that as recently as a few years ago we would have been learning how to format index cards on typewriters. "And I would not have been teaching this class." All the fun stuff--subject analysis and logic--without the tedium of typewriting? Sign me up!
A catalog record is a set of metadata--title, authors' names, and subject headings--that allow users to search a library's collection, identify works of interest and retrieve them. Online cataloging had been developed in the 1970s and however clunky the early databases, the ease of correcting, editing, and updating records, and the ability to search multiple libraries' holdings, soon overrode any lingering nostalgia for the card catalog. Today, it's rare to find anyone under the age of 50 who even knows what a card catalog looks like.
My first cataloging job, 20-odd years ago, was in the Research Library of the American Museum of Natural History, working on its series of Scientific Publications (SciPubs), which showcase current research in zoology and paleontology. The Library had made the transition to an online public access catalog (OPAC) in 1995 and needed fully-cataloged records for every issue of these journals, primarily the Bulletin of the AMNH, published since 1881, and American Museum Novitates, which began in 1921. Over the next few years, I upgraded or created records for some 5000 individual SciPubs.
And so began my immersion in the fascinating worlds of the "enigmatic harpy fruit bat," "flattened ground spiders," and the mysterious mammalian fossil that could only be described as "neither a rodent nor a platypus." As each new issue was published, I made a new record for the catalog.
Soon a parallel digital database (DSpace) was established. Unlike the OPAC, which contains only metadata, DSpace is an online publication archive which links to a PDF copy of the work itself. Researchers, scientists, and members of the public could now read these publications--and see the images--without visiting the library. As the technology improved, a high-resolution PDF could also be uploaded. With so much work of taxonomy, classification and cladistic analysis being done at the molecular level, these detailed images could be displayed along with the explanatory text.
Now, with the museum closed for the pandemic, and working from home, I have been adding updated permanent DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers, or web addresses) for the Novitates in both our catalog and in OCLC WorldCat, an international bibliographic database containing the catalog records (over one billion at last count) for the holdings of its member libraries and academic institutions. The DOIs allow users all over the world to download and read the museum's SciPubs.
Seeing (again) these communications from expeditions to remote geographic areas and examinations of the collections of natural history institutions, I am awed by the discoveries continually being made, the new species and fossil finds: the work of hard science being done and reported. And on a less exalted note, I think of that Jim Stafford song, "Spiders and snakes." Unlike Mary Lou, I do like spiders and snakes--and bats, frogs, and every kind of insect--as long as they stay in their digital form.
This is the second post in a series about how the Library's staff is working remotely and enriching its digital collections to enhance access to researchers and the public during the Covid-19 pandemic. This entry was written by Ann Herendeen, Cataloging Librarian.