Greetings fellow educators,
As I'm sure you have already experienced, it is become harder and harder for students to get cataloging fieldwork experience - times are hard and it seems that fewer and fewer catalogers are able to take time away from their work to supervise students. Also, sadly, cataloging coursework is being cut back, at least at UW - we're offering new courses in data curation, metadata, information modeling and so the advanced cataloging course here will be taught only every other year (rotating, I believe, with Classification theory).

I sent out an email to our MLIS students to tell them that advanced cataloging will probably not be offered in 2017. One student so far (I expect there will be at least one or two more) has already said she really wanted to take it in 2017 but now won't be able to. I'm recommending fieldwork to take the place of coursework, but this first student, who lives in San Diego and works at UCSD, has said she's having a very hard time finding someone to supervise and mentor her in the SD area (they've already told her no at UCSD).

Anticipating more like this I wonder if any of you would suggest catalogers able & willing to supervise students who also work on collections of digital materials that could be cataloged online so that our students could have a remote fieldwork experience. Also, I remember that ALCTS/CaMMS has offered mentoring for beginning professionals, but do they also have a mechanism for mentoring fieldwork/practicum students? Is there a good contact person there?

Thanks so much,
Allyson

Allyson Carlyle
Associate Professor, Information School
University of Washington