[yul-naco] FW: LCCN: appreciating Barbara Tillett, part 3

Wed Mar 12 11:50:57 EDT 2014

Continuing the Barbara Tillett interview. Stepping back into the 1970s in the 1990s.

Steven Arakawa
Catalog Librarian for Training & Documentation
Catalog & Metadata Services
Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University
P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240
(203) 432-8286 steven.arakawa at yale.edu<mailto:steven.arakawa at yale.edu>

From: Library of Congress Cataloging Newsline [mailto:LCCN at LISTSERV.LOC.GOV] On Behalf Of LCCNEditor
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 2:35 PM
To: LCCN at LISTSERV.LOC.GOV
Subject: LCCN: appreciating Barbara Tillett, part 3

LCCN, Mar. 11, 2014
ISSN 2324-6464

LCCN: appreciating Barbara Tillett, part 3
by Melanie Polutta, with material from an interview of Barbara Tillett on November 14, 2012

Once Barbara had written her dissertation and begun to work on the theoretical work that fascinated her, the opportunity opened up for her to come to the Library of Congress. Here she talks about some of her work here at the Library, and what she most enjoyed about it.

*******

MKP: So, I know you came here in 1994, so you've worked here now 18 years?

BT: Eighteen years and eight months, but who's counting, right?

MKP: Ooh, I don't know, somebody is!

BT: And three days to go!

MKP: So what actually brought you here, when you first came?

BT: Actually, I had applied two years before. To me, it was the perfect job, because it combined all of the things I loved.  I could build on my cataloging experience, doing everything, classification, subjects, description, everything for all types of resources.  I could continue exploring all of the theoretical information and help develop future policies, knowing what the past was, so we didn't have to repeat the mistakes of the past, but could build better approaches for the future.  I could build on my managerial expertise, because not only had I been head of Technical Services at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, I was, later, the head of cataloging department at the University of California at San Diego. And I had been president of the Palomar chapter of the California Library Association, involved in lots of professional organizations during budget crises - involved in professional organizations and led lots of committees, done all kinds of leadership kinds of things, involvement on campus, and stuff like that, so, leadership capabilities, cataloging expertise, theoretical background, big picture overview of the whole range of cataloging operations, as well as whole library operations, having been a reference librarian, I knew the impact of what catalogers do and how it affects everything else in the library. ... So, the LC job opened up again, so I applied again, and I got it, so, yeah, but that took a bit.

MKP: So it was just the whole prospect of what you'd be able to do?

BT: Able to do, yes! And to be able to make a difference, not only within the United States, certainly, as the Library of Congress, clearly, that was a factor, but also the international leadership opportunities that this job presents, and it's unparalleled. It's the ultimate.

MKP: It's truly a highly influential position in so many ways.

BT: It's incredible.

MKP: So what did you focus on when you first arrived?

BT: Actually, I was trying to grab a lot of the oral traditions. When I first came, I was trying to understand "how do we do things here?", "what are the operations?", nothing was written down. So I said, we've got to document. Well, I shouldn't say "nothing." There were things like the Subject Cataloging Manual and there were a few things documented, the Descriptive Cataloging Manual had been going on, and there was the Cataloging Service Bulletin that was sort of updates about what was going on, but I was really not getting a full sense of what all the catalogers here at LC, day to day, were dealing with and what practices they were following. And so we started a whole series of oral traditions, documenting those oral traditions, so all of the policy specialists and I would be meeting with groups of catalogers and different people to hear them out and see all the variations in practice that were going on and try and see, could we come up with policies, principle-based - back to my own standard - principle-based consistency, but consistency that was based on a user need. We wanted to make sure we were really focused on users.

MKP: It just strikes me as strange that so much hadn't been written down. Cataloging is such a documentation-based career.

BT: I know! Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, I don't want to minimize what was there. There was a bit, but it just wasn't what everyone was doing day to day, so I really wanted to be able to capture that and be able to come up with something that was more consistent, Library-wide.

MKP: That must have taken a while, though.

BT: It did, quite a while. And in the process of doing that, I was appalled at the state of our MUMS system that we were dealing with. People had never heard of GUI interfaces, they'd never used a mouse. When I arrived here, I couldn't believe I was stepping back in time into the 1970's. Here it was 1990's, and the Library of Congress, in my view the ultimate library, was so behind. I could not believe it.

MKP: Well, it was a government agency...

BT: Well, yes, and we did everything in house; we did not even consider that something was good off-the-shelf, we had to build it here, and to build it here took such a long ramp-up process, years and years and years, to develop the specs for something. ... So everything out of my mouth was how appalled I was at the state of technology at the Library of Congress, and at that time, General Scott had started as the Deputy Librarian of Congress, and he heard me, and basically said, "Do something about it." Okay, so we started the integrated library system. So that was in, I came in '94, that was in '95, we launched into that. Again, wearing multiple hats all the time.

MKP: You can't seem to help yourself.

BT: Can't seem to help myself, right.

MKP: And I have found that you have to be careful what you open your mouth and complain about

BT: Be careful what you say. Be careful what you wished for.

MKP: That's certainly how I ended up helping so much with the NACO stuff...

BT: But really, that was so overdue, and I was really glad to do it, but it was a huge, huge undertaking.

MKP: So would you say that was the biggest project you've taken on?

BT: That I have ever led, yes. I mean, it was at least 500 people that were directly reporting, I mean, involved, engaged in, in that activity. The picture that is back on the wall behind you is like one third of the people that were involved in that integrated library system project. That was our picture at the end of the project, when we were celebrating completion. And we completed on time, under budget, which is never heard of in the Federal government.

MKP: Yes, I noticed on that CV listing, that you mentioned that you received an award specifically for that, for the fact that it was on time, under budget, and successfully done.

BT: And it was the whole team that made it happen. I had the best team ever. And I work best in a team environment. I'm happy to lead it, but I am really much better when I can bounce ideas off other people, and get their good suggestions to make a better product. That, to me, is the best environment ever.

MKP: So that was clearly the biggest project you did. Are there any other big projects that you did here, setting aside what we are doing currently, but during your time here?

BT: With RDA, well, clearly that is really a big activity that is shifting and certainly, not specifically within the Library of Congress, but laying the groundwork for RDA enabled me to be more involved in IFLA, to launch that whole series of regional meetings towards an international cataloging code, that led to the International Cataloguing Principles. That again was a suggestion from Natalia Kasparova at the Russian State Library, who had realized that it had been forty years since we looked at the Paris Principles, and said 'we've got to look at it in light of today's environment,' so I led the effort to do that in IFLA, and we had five regional meetings to reach international agreement on those basic cataloging principles. So that again was a huge undertaking, so that was a biggie.

MKP: So would you say that you always intended that the cataloging principles would become more international and standard?

BT: Yes, well, they were, the Paris Principles, give them all due credit, they were the foundation for nearly every cataloging code used around the world, but that led to lots of different codes. And what we were really hoping this time, was that it would lead to an international code, which in my view, is RDA. And so, that's what we're hoping will happen.

*******

So Barbara got a lot done in her years here at the Library of Congress. Hopefully we'll be able to hear about her plans for the future, which have already been happening.

________________________________

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