Why I am glad I am a teacher not a cataloger

I have been working with MARC 21 coding for weeks and am going nuts. Luckily the records I am creating are unofficial as I don't feel that the ideals of standardization are not in good hands with me. I find this new language very perplexing. Looking at examples, I do find that I can understand what existing records say, but in trying to create my own! There seems to be a lot of repetition especially with things like author statement and statement of responsibility, and several title fields. Imagine knowing what all 999 tags represent along with innumerable sub-field codes? I tried to create a chart for myself at first, and then found http://www.itsmarc.com/crs/Bib1468.htm a directory of all the tags, but am finding the explanations very technical.

I wrote in our Module 6 discussion board
 " I remember back when I was the temporary librarian for my school, all new librarians in the district were given a few days proD by the district librarian on how to manage the library and use the Destiny system. We were told that all cataloging for the elementary schools would be done centrally, and that middle and secondary schools would be cataloging their own purchases. Armed with my district credit card I went out and bought books. The majority of the time I was able to use records from other libraries in the district, or import records through the Follett software, all you had to do was type in the ISBN and it searched records at schools all over North America. You can even look at the records to choose the one you feel is the most complete. On the odd occasion that I could find/import no existing record I entered new resources into Destiny using the “Add title” feature. This allows you to enter records either using the “MARC editor” or “Easy Editor” buttons both of which allow you to add records easily with prompts, without needing to know the MARC fields. Are all library systems so user friendly? As a consequence I added several things to the catalog without having any understanding of what MARC records were."----A clear example of a fool and her credit card gone wild.

Here is a MARC record I created (using Word) for A short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

020 $a0385660049$c$23.00$
040 $SandilandsImaginativeCataloging$
041 $eng$
100 $aBryson, Bill$d1951$
240 $aA short history of nearly everything$leng$f2003$
250 $aAnchor edition published 2004$
260 $aCanada$bAnchor Canada$c2004$
300 ## $a554 p.$c22cm$
504 $aIncludes bibliographic references and index$
520 $aOne of the world’s most beloved writers takes his most challenging trip yet, through some of the toughest questions that scientists of all kinds have been trying to answer for years-sometimes for centuries. On this intellectual odyssey Bill Bryson puts his insatiable curiosity to use as he apprentices himself to the great scientific minds of today, and of history. In the course of his entertaining and revealing quest, Bryson asks not only “what” and “how”, but, more importantly “why”. Are the oceans getting saltier over time or less salty? How do earthquakes happen? What is a black home? And how on earth did we ever figure out things like that? Here is science like you never learned it at school-lucid, relevant, entertaining, and often very funny.$
521 1 $agrade 8 to adult$
650 #0 $aScience-Popular Works$
650 #0 $aScience-History$

Here is the MARC record (without the 000-019 and 9XX fields) I got from the VPL catalog:
020$a0767908171$
020$a0385660049 (pbk.)$
020$a0385660030 :$c$39.95$
040$aCaOONL$beng$cCaOONL$dCaBVa$
0550$aAG195$bB79 2003$
0820$a001/.09$221$
092$a500 B91s$
1001$aBryson, Bill$
24512$aA short history of nearly everything /$cBill Bryson.$
260$aToronto :$bDoubleday Canada,$cc2003.$
300$aix, 544 p. ;$c24 cm.$
504$aIncludes bibliographical references and index.$
593$aAlso: Anchor pbk. ed., 2004.$
593$aAlso: New York : Broadway Books, 2004.$
594$a20030528 dcj / 20041014 rc (020, 593) / 20041230 ba (020, 2nd 593)$
6500$aPhysics$
650$aCosmology$
650$aLife$xOrigin$
6500$aEarth sciences$
6500$aCulture$xOrigin$
650$aPrehistoric peoples$
6500$aHuman beings$xOrigin$
6510$aEarth$xOrigin$

Now as I have gone on to modules 7 and 8 I realize that copy cataloging is what I was doing (though not well). Creating records from scratch is very time consuming, and giving rank amateurs access to the catalog may have led to some very strangely cataloging items in our collection. Sorry Eleana.

All this boils down to a vote for central cataloging, freeing TLs up to teach information literacy skills, work with students to match them with the right books and all the other parts of the job that inspired me to take the teacher librarian diploma in the first place. No career change for me.