Anne Welsh’s presentation at LIKE35 last night was an author’s view of book publishing. Her opening gambit was why bother to try writing a book in the digital age, when so many other possibilities are available for making your ideas public. As a professional cataloguer, her next question was why write a niche book on a niche professional area particularly when, as a friend of hers pointed out, the entire career structure of the stereotypical cataloguer is based on being completely ignored by everyone. Anne succeeded in answering all these questions in a highly entertaining and absorbing manner, and against all my instincts I found myself quite disappointed not to have won a copy of her new book Practical Cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC21 (Facet Publishing, March 2012) in the raffle at the end.
Practical Cataloguing co-authored with Sue Batley has been written at a time of transition in international cataloguing. It aims to provide cataloguers and students with a background in general cataloguing principles, the current code (AACR2) and format (MARC 21) and the new Resource Description and Access standard (RDA). It also aims to provide library managers with an up-to-date overview of the development of RDA in order to equip them to make the transition.
As an academic (she teaches cataloguing and historical bibliography at UCL Department of Information Studies) Anne has a vested interest in getting her work formally published – both her career progression and the future of her department depend upon an accredited publication stream. Moreover, as those involved in Information Literacy teaching will know, anyone approaching academic/professional research must be aware of the hierarchies and cycles of publishing: books and peer-reviewed articles, with their extended publishing gestation periods have the intellectual authority that more ephemeral media lack.
Anne has nonetheless written the book with a strategic eye on her audience and her professional community – and this is one of the lessons she had for aspiring authors. She is quite clear that she intends this to become the standard UK textbook in this field, picking up where John Bowman’s Practical Cataloguing left off, and advance orders indicate that it will be taken up widely in teaching and professional practice.
Anne was also keen to address the issue of printed versus digital media. There is some evidence that undergraduates may still regard printed books as more authoritative than their Kindled equivalents, although portability is one of many factors steering them towards e-formats. Professional textbooks in particular are nonetheless an obvious choice for digital production, the importance of versioning for practitioners being one of many benefits.
This all makes dry work of what was an extremely engaging talk at the Crown Tavern. I still have slightly alarming memories of Tuesday morning Cat.&Class. seminars at UCL in the early 1990s with the McIlwaines. Anne Welsh blows the cobwebs off the subject and makes us laugh in the process – no mean feat.
- Donald.