Join us for this free, virtual event and engage with speakers along with fellow cataloging community members about initiatives to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in library metadata, and hear from OCLC staff about updates to our cataloging products and services.
Legacies of Catalogs and Cataloging Labor: past, present, future
Dr James Baker, Director of Digital Humanities, University of Southampton
Catalog records underpin the audit, curatorial, and public access functions of collecting institutions. They are relied upon by collection users, and increasingly those looking to analyze collection holdings at scale. They are also not a neutral record of collection holdings. Catalogs are the products of cataloging labor, often spanning many decades, labors that are transmitted over time and between places by index catalogs, multi-volume series, databases, and open data - transmissions that make durable the biases and inequities of labor that happened at a particular time and place.
In this talk, James Baker will introduce his research into the histories of cataloging labor, his work with cataloging communities to consider the role of legacy catalog data in shaping and constraining present day knowledge ecosystems, and offer his reflections on what might need to change as we consider future technologies and their likely impacts on collecting institutions.
OCLC updates
Professor James Baker
Professor James Baker is Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. He works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. His research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), British Council, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, and European Commission.
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