Educatters
A couple of questions about class practice items for cataloging and
metadata assignments:
In-class practice work can be fun and effective in getting across the
theory. Brief standards like Dublin Core are fine for this purpose, but
with AACR2, LSCH, MARC, LCC, DDC, etc. being so cumbersome, it is no longer
practical for students to work with these tools in a classroom environment,
especially with large size classes. Has anyone from the group been
successful in finding workarounds for this?
In discussing practice homework assignments, I am noticing that many
students seem eager for intellectual stimulation in addition to practical
and professional relevance. Students who plan to be catalogers or who see
some other direct practical application to the material will have a
built-in interest, but others will be looking for content which is
intellectually engaging in its own right. Work involving subject analysis
is easy to make interesting on both a theoretical and practical level, but
topics like descriptive cataloging present more of a challenge. Can anyone
recommend ways of structuring practice work that are particularly effective
in generating lively discussion on both a practical but a theoretical
level?
C. Olivia Frost
Associate Dean and Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
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