Journal, week 11
As I was nearing the Brown campus this week, Allison texted me to let me know she had had to call out of work today. She had a personal matter to attend to. So, I busied myself with more of the usual work. During my shift last week, I had edited records for a few items that needed contributor attributions---there were a few editors, translators, and contributors who had no authority record in OCLC. Cheryl Kaletsch, the library's Cataloguing Assistant, has recently finished her training to create OCLC records, and was now authorized to create records on a trial basis, meaning any records she creates must be audited by a cataloger already accredited by the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO). In fact, only libraries that are participating in NACO have the authority to create records in the LC authority file. You'd be correct to assume that JCB is one such library.
Cheryl had finished creating new authority records for my items by the end of last week, and just before I'd arrived today her supervising cataloger had approved all of what she'd made. Cheryl was kind enough to spend a bit of time showing me her process for creating authority records and talked about her experience in training. I'm always thoroughly impressed by the rigor of information professionals and the LIS world, and having taken URI GSLIS' cataloging course last year, I was excited to see this kind of work in action.