MDG Chair Jane Daniels and MDG committee member Dr Diane Pennington have been serving on the Joint USA (ALA ALCTS CaMMS), Canada (CFLA-FCAB CMSC), and UK (CILIP MDG) Cataloguing Ethics Steering Committee since the committee’s commencement in 2018. Their task is to develop a Cataloguing Code of Ethics, which is meant to be a dynamic document embodying the collective experiences and wisdom of cataloguing and metadata communities of practice. It will consist of general principles as well as case studies to be used as examples of best ethical practices.
Each Steering Committee member served as a liaison to a larger working group of professionals charged with making recommendations that then fed into the development of the Code. Jane Daniels liaised with the Authority Working Group, and Diane Pennington worked with the Resource Discovery and Accessibility Working Group. After receiving the Working Group reports, the Steering Committee members subsequently collaborated to develop a draft.
The draft Code was launched at an ALA ALCTS Competencies & Education for a Career in Cataloging Interest Group virtual meeting that was held on 10 June called “Cataloging Ethics: The Force Awakens.” A recording of the presentation and the Q&A session can be accessed here:
The draft Code can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DT1K2bEkbJN4-rLfC-cT20E4ThFkDsea_d4d1YTurf8/edit.
This draft is open for comments and questions until 1 August, 2020. The Committee encourages you to provide feedback and ask questions by using the “Comment” feature in the Google doc.
More information about the Steering Committee is available at https://sites.google.com/view/cataloging-ethics/home.
The Committee looks forward to your participation in this important effort.
CILIP Metadata and Discovery Group 