The first half of the Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group meeting was a discussion of competencies for metadata librarians, which was generated by Erin Stahlberg earlier in the year. The full discussion questions are listed here.
Leading the Discussion
Erin Stalberg, Head of Metadata and Cataloging, North Carolina State University
Christopher Cronin, Head of Digital Resources and Cataloging at University of Colorado, Boulder
Elaine Westbrooks,, Head of Metadata Services, Cornell University
MJ Han, Metadata Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Moderated by Louise Ratliff, Librarian, Cataloging and Metadata Center, University of Calafornia-Los Angeles
Christopher performed a demographic survey of the room:
• Almost all academic librarians, mostly with the title of metadata librarian, but also some catalogers and IT people
• One person from EBSCO publishing
Below are a list of questions that were asked in the course of discussion with answers from participants. If specific to an institution, the answer includes the name of that institution.
Question 1: What are the IT competencies for metadata librarians?
• Metadata librarians should know XML.
• Relational database design: may not have to be an Oracle programmer, but should understand the structure, and be able to form queries
• Be able to do data modeling
• Have traditional cataloging skills as well as database, XML, XSLT skills
• Maybe cannot do all of the computer programming, but should be able to read programs and know what they do. Basically, have the ability to speak the language.
• Perl scripting
• Cataloging background no longer as important, but need to help catalogers move from the MARC environment to the non-MARC environment
Question 2: Is it possible to find all of these things in a single person?
• Every institution has different needs: might need to hire a metadata librarian, a digital projects librarian and systems librarian.
• Have guidelines for competencies but having hard and fast rules would be too limiting.
• Metadata librarians have to specialized, but not insular. Having background in cataloging and description is very important, as well as understanding programming, but maybe not be hardcore programmers.
• Need to justify what a metadata librarian is, sometimes job descriptions are just changes of names, not really changes in position descriptions. Metadata librarian description seems to be more theoretical than tangible.
• At the same time, there’s an importance in name change from the administrative point of view. “Cataloging” may end up disappearing from department names. In terms of changing the organizational culture, changing a name may be the first step. Names have power.
Question 3: How do we teach IT competencies in library school?
• It’s hard to keep up with changing technologies so having people willing to learn becomes extremely important.
• Library schools don’t train people in cataloging competencies either.
• It’s not easy to find clear set of competencies, but determining them will push learning opportunities and skill sets to the forefront. There should be more opportunities to get such teaching into library school programs and give people more opportunities to learn and take advantages of their capabilities.
• Need to set up good practical applications and experiences, to give people some perspective.
Question 4: How do institutions handle this the need for technical support if they don’t have the luxury of programming in metadata services?
• Even if you have have tech support in your unit, it may not be enough. Have your programmer train people in specific programs: XSLT, Perl, take advantage of skills and spread them around.
• At Cornell: programmers originally in the Metadata Services unit went to the Digital Library Group. Now Metadata Services uses graduate students and interested undergraduate students for support. To keep these positions, they have written grants, but then are stuck in grant/soft money model. If grant money were to dry up, it would be a challenge to keep the position. Grants come from:
o Mellon Grant
o Also looking for NSF money, IMLS
• At Wichita State (University Libraries), a project transforming metadata from DSpace to Voyager and OCLC used CS students to help modify the stylesheet and used MarcEdit toolkit to do the transformation. Understanding database foundations was beneficial to know how data works to be able to work with the programmer.
• Univ. of Minnesota: hidden source of soft IT support: the database team for the ILS. Able to talk to them about the large scale processes of scripting. They negotiate with central IT for some things, library IT for others.
Question 5: Should a metadata librarian be in tech services, special collections/archives, IT, digital projects, or somewhere else?
• Most discussion participants were in tech services.
• At Johns Hopkins, former metadata librarian lobbied to move metadata librarian position out of tech services, but failed in effort. However, the digital libraries program is hiring its own metadata librarian. Maybe there’s a feeling from the systems side that metadata librarians don’t know as much about systems because they are in tech services.
• At Brown: position is a half time music cataloger and half time metadata librarian. Metadata librarian is also part of Center for Digital Initiatives. A lot of programming is from other people in the Center for Digital Initiatives.
• Where to place metadata librarian probably depends on what the specific responsibilities are of that person. If the library wants to separate metadata from the catalog, maybe it’s fine to separate metadata librarian.
• Clarmount Colleges Digital Library: duties are creating metadata for digital projects, but also creating MARC records to go into the catalog, so there is training within tech services to have more people to take on to metadata.
• If metadata is removed from cataloging, a lot of experience and expertise can be lost. Metadata work is an excellent opportunity to stretch catalogers with additional intellectual work.
• Metadata coordinators can be in any department as their job is to make sure that people are talking to each other.
• UC-Santa Barbara is hiring a new metadata library and is looking for a feral professional: someone who crosses all lines and can move across the structure of the library.
• UCLA: have Digital Library and Cataloging and Metadata Center. Digital library does programming, scopes the projects, writes the grants, catalogers will advise on kinds of metadata elements, so there is a lot of coordination between them.
• Cornell: politically it was important for metadata librarian to be located in Tech Services. Metadata Services has more opportunities for collaboration when in Tech Services. For example, the institutional repository was able to work with catalogers to learn how to harvest from the institutional repository.
• Univ. of Kansas: want to see metadata in Cataloging, and the more involvement across the libraries, the better. The libraries must rely on central campus IT for all technical support, and don’t have a single person to work with, so it’s absolutely imperative that people in the libraries have technical skills.
• Wichita State: Metadata Cataloger position is in Tech Services, where it works closely with Special Collections, institutional repositories, and also traditional cataloging. It is an evolving position. Has also worked closed with computer science students for some project programming.
• Administration has to support no matter where located, to know that its okay across boundaries.
Question 6: How do we avoid turning people off from the jobs, if they’re not comfortable with some of the terminology in the position description?
• Put things in the preferred qualifications that would be nice for candidates to have, but don’t put them in the required to leave more flexibility.
• Maybe not require MLS to broaden the pool.
• “Demonstrated interest in” – keep the candidate pool broad by encouraging people with interest but not necessarily lots of experience to apply.
Notes by Kristin Martin