Laura-

One of the things I wish someone had explained to me at the beginning is all the different metadata standards we use and how they fit together.  I'd been working with MARC metadata for years before anyone explained what AACR2 was, or various other controlled vocabulary content standards.  In fact, I think it wasn't until I was in a meeting with librarians explaining our metadata to non-library people that I heard a lot of things spelled out.


BTW, you might be interested to know that, after many years of faithful service, Sage is going to be decommissioned this Fall.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles <[log in to unmask]>

"I went down to my old neighborhood ... and the pool hall I loved as a kid
 is now a 7-Eleven." -- Social Distortion, Story of My Life

________________________________________
From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Laura Smart [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Programmer Orientation to Library/Lib Sci

Hi folks -

What do you include in orientation when you hire a programmer
(excellent, experienced, of course), who isn't familiar with
library-land?  MARC is a given, ditto the ILS, plus e-resource
management back end (OpenURL parsers, proxies and the like).  From
those of you who came into libraries for other industries:  what do
you wish you knew about libraries, library/info science, and library
operations when you began? I'm especially interested in anything which
gave you an "ah-ha!" moment when you were working with library data --
the implicit things which didn't make sense until you knew why those
crazy librarians did things the way they did.   Also - which resources
were particularly valuable to you as you gained familiarity with your
new environment?

Your insight is deeply appreciated,

Laura J. Smart
Metadata Services Manager, Caltech Library
[log in to unmask]@gmail.com