I work at a library that, although at a big university, operates very small. We’re very student focused which means technical services work is often not given the primary focus (not a critique - although others have made very compelling arguments as to why such a dicotomy might be worthy of a critique). I came into my position as my first library job and my predessesor talked about how isolated she was during the month and a half that we had to work together. Now that I’ve been doing this job for two years, I’m feeling that isolation. I’m realizing that I need to find new communities of practice to learn with. This is tough. I don’t feel like it is supported well by our organizations. ALCTS feels really high level and there is this assumption that we all know what we’re doing. I’m here to admit that I am not sure I know what I’m doing. Are you (if so - can we talk?)?

Things I want to know more about (other than metadata):

• how are you managing MARC records for journal title lists
• what error checks are you running on your batch loads
• what are you looking for before you grab an OCLC record for electronic records?
• when do you create a new record versus wait versus derive a record?

I guess there is probably more. I guess this particular community is probably very much tied to CONSER - which is not a community I can get access to. It’s also somewhat endangered given that - as far as I know - most libraries don’t do searching for OCLC records for journal titles lists but instead get MARC record delivery.

Other communities I want to join would be related to figuring out to get involved in linked data and data modeling without it actually being a priority locally. I mean, it will be someday.

Maybe I just need more to do!