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22/02/2005
Small Library Syndrome
This library suffers from small library syndrome. Large libraries do have their problems but they are often quite different to the peculiarities of small libraries. The problems here have to do with being vulnerable to reductions in staff and funding, there’s no leeway, any cut is felt very strongly. It is very likely to end up with staff being so disillusioned that they leave. With a high staff turnover, often ending up with completely different staff every few short years, methods of doing the work changes drastically. I know in this library, because it’s so small, there has been the unfortunate tendency to keep information in heads instead of recording it somewhere. Even simple things such as which serials have to be indexed have not been recorded. I’ve done my best to get all those helpful details onto the system so the next person (I am disillusioned, plus I’m a contractor so I can be put off without notice, and so I am looking to move into another job) won’t have to deal with suddenly discovering after weeks of doing the accessioning that there hasn’t been any indexing done and they are actually blamed for it. Saying ‘you didn’t tell me’ does help me, but only irritates the lib’n.
Without experienced long term staff there has been a real mix of cataloguing levels and styles, even to the point of someone getting in there who didn’t actually understand cataloguing at all! It’s all very well to say ‘people make mistakes’ and ‘we don’t need high level cataloguing’ and ‘there have been problems converting from one system to another’ but every word in a title capitalised? The series numbering ending up in the publication field? No authors at all? Records with only a title (maybe they were going to get back to that, um, them, um all of them…..). Subject headings without capitals or every word capitalised. I think my current lib’n understand cataloguing, just hates it, but someone in the past had no idea … and there wasn’t a long termer, experienced person to keep an eye on them.
There are a host of other problems associated with being a small library, and not all small libraries end up like this, but the ones that work usually have long term staff.
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