1. Because I like books... Robin Armstrong Viner Cataloguing Manager

2. How did I get here? BSc Architectural Studies 3 years at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ British Architectural Library –Everything from answering premium rate helplines to photocopying 1 year in user services at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) 6 years in content management at RICS (4 as Manager – Content & Information Architecture) –Everything from abstracting trade press to developing taxonomies 2 years as Cataloguing Manager at the University of Aberdeen

3. Why cataloguing? Because I like people... –I want them to find the information they need Because it’s how I can reach the greatest number of users –A catalogue can answer thousands of individual questions, simultaneously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year... And catalogues are surprising popular... –Amazon, Google and YouTube are all great examples of catalogues

4. Who are our users? University of Aberdeen –14,000 students –1,400 academic staff –1,600 academic-related and support staff Academics, researchers and students worldwide Local and business communities in North-East Scotland Fellow professionals worldwide

5. So how do we help them? Building the catalogue year on year –12,000 new titles added to the catalogue –Records for 12,000 titles enhanced to improve access –Bindings, history and provenance of 600 rare and unique titles described Creating metadata to make digital images discoverable –Everything from prehistoric artefacts to theses Raising the profile of the University’s research –Adding new content to the Institutional Repository and improving our submissions to the funding bodies Contributing to aggregators and union catalogues –COPAC, Suncat, WorldCat and others Making high quality MARC records available to other libraries –20% of records are created from scratch

6. So what are the challenges? Changing expectations Growth in publishing Variety of formats Diversity of standards Range of systems Scale of the task facing us –600,000 records to be upgraded (including 200,00 rare and unique titles) Moving beyond the library

7. Over to you... Interested? Want to help make a difference?