Heythrop Library

Training new crew members (or in our case, work experience volunteers) comes with its own trials and tribulations. In my case, as Second Officer but primarily Cataloguer, I am tasked with breaking down cataloguing to its basic and most simple form. I have discovered that this can be way more difficult than it sounds! I can demonstrate the most basic MARC21 fields, but each book is unique and complicated in it’s own way. I might be talking about a 100 ‘author’ field, but realise that the record also needs a 700 field for ‘editor’. I end up steering off course on more than one occasion, and confusing our brave volunteers. I have endeavoured to press on and improve my cataloguing training for each subsequent crew member!