The cataloger-programmer continuum

Earlier this month, Diane Hillmann gave a keynote address at the Code4Lib 2011 conference [archived video] where she suggested that catalogers and programmers are on a continuum. Well, recently I've moved further down that continuum toward programming and away from cataloging. My supervisor asked me to focus on the programming side of metadata work (and application development) and train one of my colleagues to do the more traditional metadata work, editing by hand, authority control, etc.

Eric Hellman, who also presented at this conference [archived video], said something that sounds like my personal mantra: "the power of a little bit of code." So far, my metadata work has benefited over the last three years from the power of a little bit of code (using XQuery and regular expressions). Simply put, things that would have been tedious drudgery if done by hand became fun programming challenges for a coding newbie.

So, as I move along the cataloger-metadata librarian-programmer continuum, I'll continue to share my experience here and on Twitter.

And I suppose I should get myself to a Code4Lib conference one of these days :)

Comments

[Kevin S. Clarke]

definitely attend; I would be interested to hear what you all are doing with XQuery (at next year's code4lib(?) Either as a lightning talk or a full presentation) :-)

Kevin

[Christine Schwartz]

Kevin,

I will mention this idea to my digital collections colleagues. We've been working on some interesting stuff the last three months. Maybe one or two of us could present next year.

[Chris Cormack]

You should go to Access 2011 in Vancouver too.

[Phil]

Teach me your ways...I want to move further down the continuum as well.