Teaching Cataloging in a Brave New World

Abstract

This article examines teaching new catalogers “in” Resource Description and Access (RDA). An analysis of training courses (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition [AACR2] and RDA) from the Courtauld Institute of Art is presented, focusing on publication, introductory material, and relationships. It is found that the change to RDA training is a complex mix encompassing content, structure, and pedagogy. “Teacher knowledge”—an education studies conceptual model—in particular, pedagogical content knowledge, is used as an additional analytical tool. Teacher knowledge helps explain why some training topics take longer to rework for RDA than others and how existing knowledge of cataloging remains useful even when teaching “novel” cataloging rules.

KEYWORDS:

• cataloging
• PCK
• pedagogy
• RDA
• training

Notes

¹The full name for “subject matter knowledge” is used in this article, yet an initialism is used for PCK. The reason for this inconsistency is that while the education literature appears to have partially adopted “PCK,” there seems to be no similar initialism used for subject matter knowledge.