My name is Reagan Hall, and I’m a Fall 2023 Library Intern. I’m currently a junior here at Ferrum. I’m an Animal Science major, with a minor in History and a minor in Museum Studies. Cataloging in important in both a library and a museum to know what you have, where, and in what medium it is kept. When working with previously uncatalogued materials, it is important to know the organizational system in place to know what call number groups the material falls under, how to include it in the existing catalog, and where and how to file the materials.
Cataloging and classification, well-tried disciplines often combined under the general heading of “indexing,” provide the needed guidance. The function of the catalog is to identify all the items in a collection and to group like items together. For our purposes at Stanley Library, the group of items to catalog were donations from previous years that were duplicates of items originally formatted for our Special Collections. The archives are free for viewing by anyone in the campus community and outside visitors, but materials cannot be checked out, must remain within the library at all times, and may be viewed only under supervision by a member of library staff. The documents, books, and letters cataloged within this project have been done so with the express desire to be future digitization.
Works Cited:
“User Services.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/library/User-services. Accessed 24 Oct. 2023.
Metadata is data about data. It is descriptive information about a particular data set, object, or resource, including how it is formatted, and when and by whom it was collected. Although metadata most commonly refers to web resources, it can be about either physical or electronic resources. It may be created automatically using software or entered by hand.
Metadata makes it much easier to find relevant data. Most searches are done using text (like a Google search), so formats like audio, images, and video are limited unless textual metadata are available. For our purposes, at Stanley Library, the collection of Metadata is an extension of preparing materials to be digitized, so we already have keywords and searchable text for our database/library management system (KOHA).
Works Cited:
“Indiana University.” Indiana University Knowledge Base, 10 Feb. 2023, kb.iu.edu/d/aopm.
“LibGuides: Metadata for Data Management: A Tutorial: Why Do I Need It?” Why Do I Need It? - Metadata for Data Management: A Tutorial - LibGuides at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Library Data Services - UNC, 17 July 2023, guides.lib.unc.edu/metadata/.