Thursday, September 10, 2009

Cataloguing people

At some point, a few years back, I read an article somewhere about a library that was playing with the concept of cataloguing people.

That is, they would put "living" resources in the catalogue, by listing people who were experts in the field or had relevant personal knowledge.

I really, really wish I could find that article now, but the only terms I can think of using are coming up with useless rubbish.

Do you know what you get when you try to look for "cataloguing experts"? You get people who are experts at cataloguing. Looking for "cataloguing people" gets you nothing but people who catalogue, and "catalogue people" gets you sentences like "after looking at a catalogue, people tend to browse the shelves..." Looking for similar phrases will provide you with similar results.

Nothing on cataloguing people, though.

3 comments:

Alice L said...

I read that article too Sharon. I think it was something like "Living Library - borrow a person" .... the idea always appealed to me too!

Library girl said...

Is it a similar idea to the 'Living Library' concept that Lismore City Library has pioneered? (In Oz, that is - I think it started in Sweden or Denmark originally but don't quote me on that!) Sounds like a winner :)

Sharon B said...

Yes! Thank you, ladies. It's amazing what a difference a couple of words can make.

(Not to mention a bit of networking. Go team!)

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