The Overachieving Archivist: The NTKN’s Transportation Cataloger’s Toolkit and Fashionable Librarians

This week I am working on an article to be published on The National Transportation Knowledge Network (NTKN) Cataloging and Metadata Initiative. The NTKN Cataloging and Metadata Initiative is responsible for the Cataloger's Toolkit. The mission of this initiative is the development of a coordinated cooperative cataloging program within transportation to ensure that as many resources at federal, state, and local transportation agencies are captured and cataloged. The Cataloger's Toolkit is designed to be an online space where transportation catalogers can gather to learn and share their personal knowledge about cataloging within the transportation community.

Here is the rubric for authors:

An article should be clear, concise, and grammatically correct.
It should cover its subject comprehensively.
An article should be backed up by facts and utilize citations and references.
An article should be kept up to date.
An article should fit within the General Scope of the wiki.

I will be writing about the differences between Descriptive Cataloging and Subject Cataloging. My LSIS 5425 Organization of Information professor would be very pleased to read that I am seeking out continuing education opportunities.

NTKN’s Cataloger’s Toolkit can be found at http://ntkn.mytier1.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

The cartoons I attached to this post were found on CSL Cartoon Stock via Google Images using "Cataloging" as a search term. Both cartoons make jabs at the fashion sense of librarians. I am not amused (I'm really giggling). I know plenty of well-dressed librarians including former supervisors, fellow classmates, and colleagues met at conferences--myself included but I can't lie and say I didn't see some questionable ensembles on display at ALA. Is the general consensus that librarians are a poorly dressed group of professionals? Who tallied the vote? The ability to color block or incorporate bold patterns with nudes does not influence the delivery of quality service.

Clothing serves different functions in various cultures. I've found in library culture what one knows and is able to communicate clearly and lead others to discovering is appreciated more than the corduroy pant and paisley tie combo the bibliosoph dons. I love the variety of expression exhibited in the clothing choices of librarians from the chic, nerdy, bright, bold, and sexy to the comfortable, dowdy, muted, and well-worn.

I am happy to be in a profession where every day is not a fashion show and people can find peace is dressing as they please for a public whose pleasure isn't enjoin pretty packaging. Librarians are sexy regardless of what they wear! This blurb from the "Sexy Librarians" Rutgers University affiliated blog authored by librarian and author Holly Black sums up exactly why clothes don't make the librarian:

"Librarians are hot. They have knowledge and power over their domain. When you enter a library, you enter as a supplicant. It is the librarian that must strip you bare of your layers of obfuscation and find you what you really came for.

Reading is a silent pursuit. When you sit down next to a commuter with his nose buried in a book, you don't know if he's reading some dry text about mergers or something wicked. Perhaps slightly flushed cheeks will betray him. Perhaps you will never know.

It is no coincidence how many librarians are portrayed as having a passionate interior, hidden by a cool layer of reserve. Aren't books like that? On the shelf, their calm covers belie the intense experience of reading one. Reading inflames the soul. Now, what sort of person would be the keeper of such books?"

Peruse this site at your own discretion http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~hblack/sexylibrarians.htm

Check out this quote from Willy Russel, British dramatist, lyricist, and composer whose best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers,

"I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun."

To all those cartoonists and the general public who make jokes at librarians and our eccentric draperies [1]: