ASSOCIATES (vol. 7, no. 1, July 2000) - associates.ucr.edu
Cat On A Hot Web Tube
(Or Behind The Red Door)
by
Vicky Diaz
KAM Division
Cataloging Section
James Dickinson Library
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Las Vegas, city of casinos, glitter, glitz and glamour. This is what comes
to a person's mind when Las Vegas is mentioned. Indeed this 24-hour town conjures
these images, but wait; there is another side to this city. There are churches,
schools, grocery stores, and a University, yes, the University of Nevada Las
Vegas (UNLV). A young and vibrant institution of learning, 20,000 student population
strong.
At the center of this University is the James Dickinson Library, two structures
connected by a bridge (some people call it a tunnel). The Stacks area is located
in the round building; Administration offices, Reference, Circulation and Technical
Services in the square building. On the 4th floor of the square building, behind
the red door is the Technical Services area (which has now been split in two
sections). The Acquisitions, Serials/Periodicals are part of MOR (Materials
Ordering Receiving). Cataloging, combined with Systems is known as KAM (Knowledge
Access Management). Quit abounds at this locale as the Acquisitions section
is busy acquisitioning, the Serials/Periodicals is busy serializing and at the
back of the room the Cataloging section is busy cataloging -- NO! hold on a
second here, there is something wrong with this picture, the catalogers are
not cataloging but are working on WEB pages. Designing, coding and editing WEB
pages. Well, folks that scenario is quite right.
At the James Dickinson Library the Cataloging Section personnel, aside from
their cataloging duties, are also the web developers for the library (Web Team).
The team is comprised of faculty and support staff. They assist various library
sections in creating and developing web pages for those sections. A cataloger
works with the content originator for that section and has the task of maintaining
those assigned pages.
Although this might not be the traditional role of a cataloger, given the
technological climate we are in, this is not surprising. Traditional tasks are
being incorporated with the new technologies and the combination produces amazing
results. This team, for instance, was self taught -- they learned HTML coding
by reading various books on that subject and experimented with web designs all
to the delight and at times chagrin of everyone involved. It sure was a learning
experience. (You should see their first designs; the Smithsonian would die for
it!)
Presently, a new library is being built on the campus of UNLV, the Lied
Library. At the request of the Dean of Libraries, the team is now in the process
of redesigning the library's web pages to coincide with the opening of the building
(target date Jan. 2001).
So, come and visit them sometime at: http://library.nevada.edu/
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