Hi Laura:

I started working with/for Library stuff in 1994. Been working on it 
more or less full-time now for nearly half that time. I moved from the 
IT department and became a library employee several years back. So...CS 
degree, no library education, but have picked a lot up over the years.

One thing that's still not 100% clear to me is the relationship between 
the types of records. I sort of know how bib, authority, holdings, and 
item records relate to each other. What I would have found helpful a 
long time ago would be something like an entity-relationship diagram for 
these records, with decent text explanations. I could use that even today.

Hmm. Perhaps also such a diagram+text for all the workflows in a library.

Roy Zimmer
Waldo Library
Western Michigan University


On 7/20/2011 12:04 PM, Laura Smart wrote:
> 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