In the Eye of the Beholder

Abstract

We often focus our professional attention on what happens within libraries on libraries similar to our own. Looking to other public libraries, we seek inspiration, new ideas, and innovative approaches to enhancing our own readers’ advisory service. Rather than taking a traditional approach, this article seeks to explore the role cataloging and the cataloger can play in enhancing readers’ services. Victoria Caplinger, cataloging supervisor at NoveList, explores how NoveList, working together with leading professionals in our field, created appeals terminology for inclusion in bibliographic records; in essence, creating a new controlled vocabulary focusing on readers’ needs for library catalogs. Throughout this article, Ms. Caplinger explores the many ways cataloging professionals and NoveList enhance, support, and promote a new level of remote readers’ services in public libraries.
—Editor