Changing roles of cataloguers in British academic libraries

How have the roles of cataloguers evolved over the past decade due to the impact of automation When cataloguers in academic libraries in England were surveyed it was found that 97 per cent work with a fully automatic online public access catalogue; all catalogue online, and share records with some bibliographic utility, of which RLIN and BLCMP are the most popular. Professional staff size had decreased at 50 per cent of the institutions with means of 4.5 professionals and 4.8 support staff members. The average percentage of professional cataloguers per library was about 53 per cent. Roles that were greatly expanded included cataloguing of digital documents and Internet resources, authority control, and database management. Of the respondents, 65 per cent are now involved in e‐mail discussion groups where ten years ago none were. Administrative functions have also increased as 50 per cent of the cataloguers are now heads of bibliographic access departments.