Cataloging I and II

This week I met both of the classes of students that will be in the undergraduate cataloging classes at ESI. They are the first and second year students, and M. Alli is the main instrutor for the classes.

The first years get a taste of cataloging theory at the beginning, and I get two days during that period to discuss the basics of MARC. That's a whole week -- a lot in terms of the time alloted for the class (and I'm very grateful). The rest of the semester is spent studing the cataloging code used in France (AFNOR) and applying it to examples. At the end of the class, I also get several sessions where I'll be able to walk all 90 or so students through the process of marking up their AFNOR records with MARC 21.

The second years dive straight in to using AFNOR for more complex cataloging problems and formats. I get the last three class periods to introduce them to MARC and to walk them though some record creation. We'll use the Koha with Class service through LibLime (thanks to LibLime for hosting us, and for giving a French interface when possible!) It's all very, very exciting!

In all honesty, I expect that Moroccan libraries will not as a whole adopt the use of MARC records ever. Online catalogs are not yet the norm over here, and I hope that XML formats will be the library gold standard by the time that Moroccans are ready to get online en masse; no one will ever need to learn clunky old MARC. The hope is that our preliminary look at MARC cataloging procedures today will serve as a solid point of departure for the librarians in the trenches in the future.

And for once, I'm trying to be Moroccan about my handouts. I'm trying very hard to prepare handouts that are in the style of the other materials used in class ... to encourage reuse next year when I'm gone.