My sincere apology to Joseph C. Harmon for misspelling his name in the
citation I provided.
Beth

Beth Guay wrote:

> Dear Elizabeth,
>
> then please don't forget to include a citation to Joseph Harman's
> fitting article, The death of quality cataloging: does it make a
> difference for library users?
> (The Journal of Academic Librarianship, v. 22 (July 1996) p. 306-7).
>
> My  opinion is that there simply aren't enough Michael Gormans in
> library management. Cataloging as a profession  has been under attack
> for years ...  and please include a link to Mark Watson's  "Top Five
> Reasons Why Library Administrators Should Support Participation in the
> Program for Cooperative Cataloging"
> (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/topfive.html).

> We are undergoing a
> "review  of our PCC Participation" at UM. We were asked: "Do PCC
> requirements  affect your productivity?" and "What are some of the steps
> that take extra time?" My answer was this:
> Yes, PCC requirements affect my productivity. They allow me to be more
> productive than if they didn't exist. If there were no PCC requirements,
> I would be spending even more time than I already do cleaning up the
> catalog. Because there are standards, I am assured that  catalog record
> errors brought to my attention are kept to a minimum. It takes a lot of
> extra time to clean up a catalog record that is below standard because I
> often have to take a trip to the branches or the stacks and do some
> detective work in order to clean up the record. Even more positive about
> participating in the PCC, once I have cleaned up the record for our
> users, I have saved some or many other catalogers the time repeating my
> work,  --I'm not simply fixing my own catalog and leaving other
> catalogers elsewhere the job of repeating the work that I've already
> done!
> Thank goodness for the PCC!
>
> Beth
--

Beth Guay
Monographs/Continuing Resources Cataloger
McKeldin Library, University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742

(301) 405-9339
fax (301) 314-9971
baguay@umd.edu