Organizing Library Collections - by Gretchen L Hoffman (Paperback)

About the Book

Written for beginning library science students, this book introduces the theory and practice of organizing library collections in a clear, straightforward, and understandable way. It explains why and how libraries organize their collections, and how theory and practice work to...

Book Synopsis

Written for beginning library science students, this book introduces the theory and practice of organizing library collections in a clear, straightforward, and understandable way. It explains why and how libraries organize their collections, and how theory and practice work together to help library users.

Review Quotes

Dr. Hoffman has written a clear and understandable guide that demystifies the topic. In Organizing Library Collections, the author has succeeded in creating a text that navigates through the history and tradition of library cataloging while focusing on current practice and future trends. The book is highly recommended for adoption as a cource text in a cataloging and classification course.

The writing is crisp and, for the most part, knowledgeable. This would be an excellent introduction to the entire area of organization for anyone newly appointed to a library board who might not have any professional training. It is also an excellent, but very sophisticated, introduction to organization of collections for a library/ information studies school student.

As a teacher of both organization of information and cataloging in a library school program, I can confirm what she acknowledges: that this is a topic that students come to in library school with little or no knowledge of and the overwhelming number of acronyms used in this branch of LIS. So I am happy to see that the book is very straightforward in its language; it assumes no prior knowledge and explains concepts in layman's terms.

Dr. Hoffman has written a much-needed primer for understanding the basics and importance of cataloging in libraries. Students new to librarianship and practitioners looking to refresh their cataloging knowledge would benefit from reading Dr. Hoffman's straightforward, richly illustrated narrative. The end-of-chapter discussion questions and class activity suggestions make this the perfect text for information organization courses and interactive study for practitioners.

Replete with theoretical and practical knowledge for both the beginning and the professional cataloger, this book covers methods, issues, and challenges faced today in organizing library collections. As technologies advance with the semantic web and linked data, catalogers are expected to usefully organize traditional materials and digital content in ways patrons may efficiently find, identify, select, and obtain resources. This text provides current information on the rules and standards catalogers follow to create metadata, subject access, and categories for successful library collections.

About the Author

Gretchen Hoffman is an Associate Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman's University. She has been teaching there since 2007. Her teaching and research agenda centers on the organization of information, specifically library cataloging. Courses she teaches include Cataloging and Classification, Advanced Cataloging and Classification, Collection Development, and Information Organization.

Before moving to Texas Woman's University, Hoffman was a professional cataloger at the University of Kansas, specializing in complex and difficult cataloging, music cataloging (scores and audio recordings), and cataloging German-language monographs. Prior to that, she worked as a professional serials cataloger at Portland State University, specializing in federal government documents.