Introduction and Acknowledgements

This book is the product of a desire to combine elements of the most important knowledge found in high-quality textbooks on the subject of Cataloging. Reed Hepler, the Digital Initiatives Librarian and Archivist at the College of Southern Idaho, used his knowledge along with that of the other librarians at CSI and combined it with information found throughout OER, Public Domain, and Open Access resources. The result is this publication on the details of efficient and accurate cataloging.

Special acknowledgement goes to Dave Horalek, the Reference Librarian at the College of Southern Idaho, and Miranda Buren, the Cataloger and Interlibrary Loan Specialist at the same institution, for sharing their expertise and viewpoints. Also, thanks to Teri Fattig, the former director of the CSI Library, for creating effective and thorough quizzes and other assessments.

Trainings created by the Library of Congress have been immensely helpful in creating exercises and adding more expertise than was had by the professionals at CSI. The reader is strongly encouraged to go through the trainings in the Catalogers Learning Workshop of the Library of Congress. As facilitators of the training on the Library of Congress Classification system, Janis L. Young of the Library of Congress and Daniel L. Joudrey of Simmons University merit boundless thanks for their concise, thorough, and accurate description of the system and the Classification Web program.

Special thanks and acknowledgement to OCLC for their support of the WebDewey and Connexion products and services. Connexion is the gold standard for MARC record searching, viewing, interpretation, and retention. WebDewey is the easiest service to use to access and navigate the Dewey Decimal System. It is also helpful in creating unique Dewey numbers when necessary. Not only have they created and maintained these products and services, OCLC also allowed me to include screenshots/screen captures in this book. All rights for these images are reserved by them. These images will allow you to visualize the processes you need to use when creating and interpreting MARC records and Dewey Decimal Numbers. They will also help you somewhat in your work with Library of Congress Call Numbers. Thanks to Michael Campbell and Heather Carlisle specifically for helping me navigate the permissions process for these images.

Connexion®, DDC®, Dewey®, Dewey Decimal Classification®, OCLC®, and WebDewey® are registered trademarks/service
marks of OCLC. All rights are reserved by them.

Every time that you use this textbook, please contact Reed Hepler at rhepler@csi.edu and provide the course title and the number of students involved. If you are using it for professional development, please give the institution and approximately how many people are going to use it at your institution. If you are a lone researcher, worker, or student, feel free to reach out and contact Reed with any revisions, questions, or other comments. This allows him to monitor the impact of the textbook and its associated assessments.