Catalogers, metadata librarians, digital humanists and coding

I'd like to revisit a recurring theme for this blog — catalogers and metadata librarians learning to code. It's a topic I think about a lot — especially with regard to the direction our profession is going in and the skills we're expected to have.

Recently, digital humanists have helped me fine-tune my understanding of this issue. I think digital humanists and catalogers have a lot in common because, at heart, many catalogers are humanists — our background is often not computer science, but the humanities. I know that's true for me. At college, I majored in art and fashion design before switching to religion and theology.

The most insightful post I've found so far is The Code Problem written by Rafael Alvarado, Associate Director of SHANTI at the Unversity of Virginia. He addresses the question — Why should digital humanists code? — and talks about the assumptions swirling around coding that often cause anxiety and hold people back from learning what's becoming (in both our fields) an essential skill.

Comments

[Kai Li]

One point about the importance of cataloger learning coding is BIBFRAME. In order to play with it right now, at least people need to know about coding.

[David Bigwood]

I'm not so sure catalogers should be writing code, beyond a simple very basic script. Leave that to the professionals. We should know the basics, however. An understanding of SQL, SPARQL, and databases would help us as we build our catalogs and talk to the coders. An understanding of regular expressions would be useful. These are the ways people are accessing our catalogs. The ability to use some tools to work with our data would be useful. Google Refine, for instance could point out areas to be worked on in our catalogs.

I don't have the time to be writing programs, that would be better done by a programmer. I do need to have an understanding of how my catalog works and use the tools to improve it.