I found this exhibit very interesting. At the risk of oversimplifying, many catalogers feel misunderstood and undervalued. A group of people developed this community art project to highlight the work of metadata practitioners. There are 38 pieces from all over! Most of the pieces are embroidery or cross stitch.
Several of the pieces are quite clever. One of my favorites is called Metadata: It’s Complicated. It is hard to see in the picture, but there are all these words in the metadata letters illustrating the trends, tools, standards, things to keep in mind, etc. It is, indeed, complicated work.
My other favorite is just gorgeous in person. Sadly, you don’t get the full effect from the picture. It is called MARC to Linked Data and is about the changing standards behind the scenes. Here is the quote from the catalog:
This conceptual piece represents the transition of MARC metadata to Linked Data through the application of RDF triples of Work-Expression-Manifestation-Item (WEMI) relationships.
It is interesting how a project like this grows. What started off as an idea in one person’s head in 2021, morphed into several stitch and bitch sessions and now has:
- A traveling exhibit (eg. Exhibit announcement at MSU)
- A book/catalog
- Articles and Presentations (eg. session at Minitex Connect)
The talk of librarianship as women’s work reminded me of books from the 1990s such as Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession by Roma Harris and Feminist Thought in American Librarianship by Christina Baum. I was curious to see what recent publications I could find. Sadly there are not many and the problems are not magically solved. Here are three recent items:
- 2021 – Women’s Work, Women’s Words: Feminist Library History
- 2021 – Less money, less children, and less prestige: Differences between male and female academic librarians
- 2020 – The Gender Wage Gap in Research Libraries
