The CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group's Bibliographic Standards Committee is pleased to offer a workshop in tandem with the 2022 Annual Study Conference. The workshop will take place in St Hilda's College Library shortly after the close of the conference, but workshop registration is open to all, whether attending the conference or not. 

But what does it say?: cataloguing when you don’t read the language

If you’ve ever had a pile of books on your shelf waiting to be catalogued because no-one in your team can read them, this session is for you! Guided by Genny Grim, Librarian at Pembroke College, Cambridge, we will look at strategies for describing, identifying, and otherwise coping with books that are in languages you don’t speak and/or alphabets you don’t recognize. Then, once we've talked through some of the theory, we will do some cataloguing of books kindly provided for us from the collections at St Hilda’s. This will be collaborative cataloguing – there’s no test at the end, and getting advice from other people in the room is strongly encouraged.

Participants should bring pencils and paper for taking notes and writing out skeleton catalogue records.

When booking, please indicate in the "Special requirements" section on the registration form any languages with which you are already familiar so we can give everyone in the room the same experience of seeing something totally new. For “familiar”,  read “if you studied the language at any level for at least a term, or if you are conversant enough with it to order a meal in a restaurant, or you’ve been cataloguing material in this language for years already”.

The session will last for an hour and a half with a 10 minute comfort break in the middle.

This session is free of charge but is limited to 12 places, so registration is required. 

Participants in the workshop should meet by the Lodge, and a member of staff will accompany the group to the meeting room.