Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Yikes

I got into cataloging for this fall, and I told my boss about it. We're going to figure out my work schedule later, since the class meets on Saturdays and will conflict with my work days. After telling him about that, I expressed my concern that this class is going to be difficult, and he started handing me books and other information. So now I have a stack about a foot high of resources about MARC, MARC21, AACR2, LOC and the Dictionary of Library and Information Science.

Addendum: Just realized I am already talking like a cataloger. FYI, MARC is Machine Readable Cataloging, MARC21 is the newer version of Machine Readable Cataloging named for the 21st century, AACR2 is the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition, and LOC is Library of Congress. My apologies to non-librarians or librarians-to-be.

And you thought I was a nerd before this. Hoo boy, get ready.

Right now I am really hungry but can't think what to eat. Also, I have nothing to do this afternoon, which is weird. Probably will read and relax, ultimately ending up taking a nap since I slept weirdly (went to bed early, fell asleep quickly, but kept waking up and then had to get up at 6am to register, then back to bed until 8am).

1 comment:

Andrea said...

So I just surfed in from Repressed Librarian's blog, and perused here a little bit (I'm a librarian wanna-be myself, but I'll probably wanna-be for a few years more at least...I've got two small kids and another on the way!). And I found your "Yikes" post about your cataloging class. I did already work on my library science masters for a bit, and I LOVED my cataloging class! I remember the AARRC2 quite well. (Repressed and I were actually in that class together.) All the details, little rules to learn, kind of like grammar rules (which I also loved). "In this case, you use this rule, unless such-and-such condition exists, in which case you use THIS rule. But if all Romans are liars, then skip over to THIS rule and read all the conditions to make sure none of them apply." :)

Plus, I'm so introverted that my perfect job involves sitting in front of a computer all day, so cataloging would suit me fine.

You're a former English major? Just approach it like grammar. Just a bunch of rules to learn!