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Because I like books. Robin Armstrong Viner Cataloguing Manager. How did I get here?. BSc Architectural Studies 3 years at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ British Architectural Library Everything from answering premium rate helplines to photocopying
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Because I like books... Robin Armstrong Viner Cataloguing Manager
How did I get here? • BSc Architectural Studies • 3 years at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ British Architectural Library • Everything from answering premium rate helplines to photocopying • 1 year in user services at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) • 6 years in content management at RICS (4 as Manager – Content & Information Architecture) • Everything from abstracting trade press to developing taxonomies • 2 years as Cataloguing Manager at the University of Aberdeen
Why cataloguing? • Because I like people... • I want them to find the information they need • Because it’s how I can reach the greatest number of users • A catalogue can answer thousands of individual questions, simultaneously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year... • And catalogues are surprising popular... • Amazon, Google and YouTube are all great examples of catalogues
Who are our users? • University of Aberdeen • 14,000 students • 1,400 academic staff • 1,600 academic-related and support staff • Academics, researchers and students worldwide • Local and business communities in North-East Scotland • Fellow professionals worldwide
So how do we help them? • Building the catalogue year on year • 12,000 new titles added to the catalogue • Records for 12,000 titles enhanced to improve access • Bindings, history and provenance of 600 rare and unique titles described • Creating metadata to make digital images discoverable • Everything from prehistoric artefacts to theses • Raising the profile of the University’s research • Adding new content to the Institutional Repository and improving our submissions to the funding bodies • Contributing to aggregators and union catalogues • COPAC, Suncat , WorldCat and others • Making high quality MARC records available to other libraries • 20% of records are created from scratch
So what are the challenges? • Changing expectations • Growth in publishing • Variety of formats • Diversity of standards • Range of systems • Scale of the task facing us • 600,000 records to be upgraded (including 200,00 rare and unique titles) • Moving beyond the library
Over to you... • Interested? • Want to help make a difference?