IGBIS Cataloguing Ethics and Inclusivity Webinar with Dr Deborah Lee 

Dr Deborah Lee, a Senior Teaching Fellow at University College London will help us to understand the importance of cataloguing and classification ethics in our daily description practices.

Cataloguing ethics concerns itself with the moral principles and values that form the framework for cataloguing and classification practice. Over recent years there has been a growing body of research on this topic, and in January 2021 the Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee released its Code of Ethics for Catalogers (https://sites.google.com/view/cataloging-ethics/home).

South African cataloguers and metadata description librarians must give thought to ethics and inclusivity in our practice, but also to developing a code for South African practitioners on representative and inclusive descriptive practice. This is a topic that is important not only to cataloguing and metadata professionals, but to the greater library and information community, as it concerns how we describe, classify and present information materials to our users. We believe that South African library and information professionals have much to contribute to this conversation.

Dr Deborah Lee is currently a Senior Teaching Fellow at University College London, where she leads the Cataloguing and Classification module and Knowledge Organisation module.  She has previously taught information organisation modules at City, University of London, and Charles Sturt University, Australia.  She has a PhD in Library and Information Science from City, University of London.  Her knowledge organisation research has been published in a variety of research and professional journals in library and information science, including JASIST, Journal of Documentation, and Knowledge Organisation. Deborah was the Senior Cataloguer at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London for 11 years, where among other things, she led the library's implementation of RDA, managed their classification scheme, and was responsible for cataloguing strategy and training.

Programme

10:00 - 10:10 Introduction and Programme – Mercia Moreana

10:10 - 10:55 Cataloguing and Description Ethics – Dr Deborah Lee

10:55 - 11:05 Questions and Answer

11:05 - 11:10 Body Break

11:10 - 11:50 Way forward for South Africa

11:50 - 12:00 Closing address