Margaret Joyce (Hawaii)

Cataloger’s Judgment: The Hidden Human Process

Embroidery
Designed and stitched by Margaret Joyce

“Many think of cataloging as simply following a series of baroque rules. I wanted to highlight all the considerations that a cataloger has when making a record, and the human element that influences all the resulting work.”

*****

Margaret Joyce is the Hawaiian materials cataloging and metadata librarian at the University of Hawaiʻi in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

This embroidery is of a funnel. At the top of the funnel are all of the considerations a metadata professional might have when creating a record, including resources (such as time and money), rules, policy, ethics, training, systems, community, tech and discovery. All of that (and so much more!) goes into a large middle section called Catalogers Judgment, where a cataloger applies and thinks about all of these external rules and ideas to create the RECORD a user sees in the library’s online catalog, which allows them to find the item on the shelf.