Myung-Ja (MJ) Han, Metadata Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is working on a survey to learn about how other catalog departments are handling changes in their cataloging department and the responsibilities of metadata librarians. Before sending out the survey, she is soliciting feedback on the survey questions. The draft of the survey is available below, and suggestions can be emailed to mhan3@uiuc.edu.
1. In what institution do you work?
a. Academic library
b. School library
c. Public library
d. Museum
e. Archives
f. Other: _______________________
2. Which units are involved in digital library development and production? (Please choose all that apply.)
a. Cataloging Unit
b. Information Technology (IT) or Systems Department
c. Preservation Department
d. Collection Development
e. Other (Please list the units.)________________________________
3. If your library or institution has a separate unit for digital library development and production, please answer the following questions:
• When (what year) did the unit get established?
• What is its organizational affiliation?
- Part of Technical Services Division
- Part of IT/Systems
- Other (please give details.)
• How many staff are in the unit?
• Please list the types of position.
4. If Cataloging Unit participates in digital library development, what are its mains tasks? (Please choose all that apply.)
a. Metadata creation and management
b. Policy making (including Best Practices)
c. Consultation
d. Training staff who create/maintain metadata
e. Other (Please list the tasks.)______________________________________
5. How many Metadata Librarians (including Metadata/Cataloging Librarians) do you have in your institution? If you have any, when was the position created with the current title?
6. Which units does the metadata librarian(s) belong to? (Please choose all that apply.)
a. Cataloging
b. Digital Library unit
c. Shared between Cataloging and Digital Library unit
d. Other (please give details.)________________________________________
7. What are the main tasks of the metadata librarian(s)? (Please choose all that apply.)
a. MARC record creation
b. Non-MARC record creation (Descriptive, Technical, Administrative, and Preservation metadata)
c. Training
d. Creating Best Practices
e. Consulting
f. Metadata management including normalization and augmentation using style sheets
g. Other (Please list the tasks.)_______________________________________
8. How many people are involved in metadata creation and management other than Metadata/Cataloging Librarian(s)?
9. Do you have any IT personnel in Cataloging Unit?
If so, how many of them are full time and how many of them are part time?
10. What are the main tasks for them in Cataloging Unit?
11. What are the three most difficult challenges your Cataloging Unit has faced thus far? (For example, developing new workflows, dealing with new formats of material, lack of resources and etc.)
12. Please specify some of the changes your institution made to meet those challenges in the last three years.
13. What do you think your organization, Cataloging Unit in particular, need the most to meet those challenges?
a. Skilled staff
b. Best Practices and workflow
c. Funding
d. Re-organization
e. Other
Thank you so much!
*Please contact MJ Han (mhan3@illinois.edu) for any feedback about this survey.