Recently my friend and colleague (who knows me pretty well) Crystal
Graham asked me to post her message on differing philosophies of cataloging.
One end of the debate, she maintained, was that we need to follow rules
and RI's or we'd have chaos; this, she argued is the LC stance. On the
other end is the philosophy that seeks to avoid prescriptive RI's and
leave cataloging to catalogers' judgment (Crystal, I hope I'm paraphrasing
you correctly); this she names the "Carol Mandel" philosophy.

I guess I am, as Crystal observed, smack in the middle. All these years
I've stuck to the rules and the RI's, and, I believe, it made me a better
and quicker "in the trenches" cataloger. What's being left out here in the
discussion is *experience* and *intuition* -- which provide the framework
of our *practice*. The truth is that most catalogers are in the middle, whether
they are aware of it or not. Their "judgment" comes from the years of discus-
sion of the rules; these discussions occur on the job, among immediate
colleagues, not at conferences. The point is, that catalogers like to shoot
the bull on their *practice* which is based on their unconscious absorption
of the rules, and just as importantly, what Crystal calls "folklore," which
practices not written anywhere but handed down from cataloger to cataloger.
Again, this comes out of practice, which comes out of knowledge of the rules.

Someone once said that liberal democracy, in its early stages, worked very
well in America, because its proponents had a deep reverence for tradition
*unconsciously*, and this enabled them to exercise the restraint,instinctively
and intuitively, necessary to prevent excess. To me, the centrist, this,
translated to the cataloging environment, means that those of us who learned
cataloging from people of the old school can "naturally" be trusted to (pretend
to) "ignore" rules and RI's, which, whether they know it or not, is deep in
their bones. I would say that Crystal and I and a throng of others, who have
been in the trenches for years, can easily handle the responsibility of this.
Of course I ignore certain prescribed practices like the letter of RI25.5B;
But, the conservative streak in me says that you can't trust the multitudes
to do this "safely". Therefore, if a seasoned cataloger consistently finds
him/herself deviating or banging up against a practice that is unclear and
possibly unworkable, he/she has the responsibility by exercising that very
"judgment" we are talking about here, to push for a change. If change is not
forthcoming, at least push for clarity and consistency.

I liked what Carol Mandel said in her article about how "cataloging must
change," but I thought, Carol, that's easy for you to say because Columbia
participates in NACO; whatever your catalogers' judgment leads you to in
forming name headings pops right into a *shared* database of authority
records, which others then follow to maintain *consistency* in RLIN et al.
Under the current guidelines, five non-NACO libraries could establish a
name five different ways, and the results, as we all know, is that after
an authority record for the heading has been formed, we need cleanup. As
we also all know, there's never money for cleanup. Carol's basic philosophy
is great when left to people who "grew up" on the rules.

There has to be a middle ground. We need a basic *framework* of the rules,
which delegates latitude to those best able to maneuver treacherous waters
when necessary (the OCLC Enhance Program is an example of the middle ground).
To recap, whether we're aware of it or not, the framework I'm talking about
is already deeply embedded in the unconscious practice of those who seek to
abandon it. They may formally abandon it, but it is there nonetheless. The
difference between me and the "Mandel stance" is that I admit that I have
that framework in my conscious awareness and they have it in their unconscious.
The difference between me and the "LC stance" is that certain things should
be relaxed (RI25.5B), for the cataloger in the know; but they need to be
clear and consistent (but not rigidly prescriptive), for the average cataloger
in the trenches, trying to make sense of it all. The RI's are there to *help*
that average cataloger so he/she will not waste time figuring out what "judg
ment," i.e. what solution, should be applied in a given situation.

Rick Gildemeister
Cataloger/OCLC Enhance Coordinator
Lehman College of the City University of New York