The fact that I’m about to attend a 4 hour session on cataloging on a Sunday morning may point to a streak of masochism in me. It will be interesting to see how much this overlaps or diverges from the view I heard yesterday in the afternoon session.

The moderator is Robert Wolven (Columbia)

The panelists are:

• Tim Spalding (LibraryThing)
• Roy Tennant (OCLC)
• Diane Hillmann (Syracuse)
• Martha Yee (UCLA)
• Jennifer Bowen (Rochester)

Robert Wolven is introducing the the session, noting that we both have predictions of the end of the catalog, and views that the catalog is an essential tool that represents the strengths of the library. Cataloging is seen by some as obscure, elitist, etc. and by others as an objective and beautiful (?) thing.

So, the panelists are going to explore these issues…

Robert starting with 3 anecdotes:

There was a TV programme called ‘What in the World’, in which a panel of experts tried to identify a mystery object

There were comic book versions of literary classics (Comic Classics). You used to be able to order stuff that was in stock, but because stock changed so quickly, you often got other issues instead of the ones you wanted

Kelly Freas – illustrator who did many Sci-Fi/Fantasy covers