To date, metadata librarian roles and responsibilities have not been discussed extensively in library literature compared to the attention given cataloging librarian roles and responsibilities. Research on cataloging librarian job descriptions, based on surveys and empirical studies, tends to focus on how differences in resource formats and developments in IT have affected the roles and responsibilities of cataloging librarians.

Twelve years ago, Buttlar and Garcha surveyed 271 catalogers to see how automation and technological innovations had changed the profession.³ They found that automation had shifted cataloging duties to nonprofessionals as catalogers participated more in bibliographic instruction and database maintenance or upgrading, and acquired more management responsibilities. Chaudhry and Komathi analyzed descriptions of cataloging librarian jobs posted in 1990 through 1999.⁴ The authors divided the descriptions into two periods to consider the effect of technological developments on job qualifications. They determined that job descriptions dating from 1990 through 1994 belonged to the “traditional environment,” while those dating from 1995 through 1999 fell into the “electronic environment.”⁵ In their analysis, the majority of cataloging librarian jobs in the electronic environment called for a “knowledge of automated cataloguing systems,” signaling a “dependency of cataloguing on technology and the importance of technology related skills and knowledge on this profession.”⁶

Kwasik addressed the relationship between technological progress, exemplified by increasing volume of electronic resources, and job qualifications for librarians specializing in serials cataloging.⁷ According to Kwasik, serials librarians should know how to catalog both print and electronic resources and should receive training in markup languages, Dublin Core (DC), and management skills. A new title for this kind of cataloger, “serials/electronic resources cataloger,” emerged in 2001 and appeared in 46 percent of the serials librarian job descriptions Kwasik analyzed. Khurshid also reported on technical developments and their effect on required job qualifications for cataloging librarians.⁸ Analyzing 151 job descriptions gathered in 2000-2001, Khurshid noted that libraries were interested not only in previous cataloging experience but also in knowledge of emerging metadata schemes and tools. The word “metadata” appeared in six job titles during this period. Khurshid found that developments in IT had affected everything from position titles to the required skills of catalogers.

Hall-Ellis reviewed qualifications for cataloging librarians from the perspective of library school education.⁹ In her empirical study, based on 266 job descriptions posted from 2000 through 2005, she compared descriptions of job requirements and expectations to descriptions of programs in library and information science (LIS), especially in the context of cataloging courses. She argued that a course in introductory cataloging is not enough for students aspiring to be professional catalogers because cataloging librarians increasingly are expected to know metadata schemas and to have technical and computing skills.

The study carried out by Park and Lu focused on the qualifications of metadata professionals (not specifically of librarians) working mostly with resources in digital and electronic formats.¹⁰ They analyzed the descriptions of jobs, dating from 2003 to 2006, that had titles with the words “metadata, electronic, e-resources, and digital.”¹¹ They discovered that while conventional cataloging tasks and procedures continued to apply and were combined with metadata creation activities, metadata professionals also were required “to be able to adapt to a changing environment and keep abreast of emerging technologies and metadata standards.”¹²

The literature on metadata librarian roles suggests that the position of metadata librarian has evolved from that of cataloging librarian. According to Faiks and McCue, metadata librarians first appeared as additions to the cataloging profession. They stated that “open positions give the library the opportunity to completely recast a position.”¹³ At Cornell University Library, for example, a metadata librarian position was created in 1997 to reflect the “broader scope of the cataloging staff.”¹⁴ Calhoun defined a metadata librarian as someone at the intersection of many services in a library (e.g., technical services, information technology, collection management, and digital library and access). She stated that this juncture of services has occurred because “metadata is key to empowering information seekers and to building scholarly information access systems that are easy to use.”¹⁵

Beacom noted that metadata librarians are needed because of the increasing amount of digital resources and the growing expectation for integrated access to these resources.¹⁶ Chapman further defined the role of the metadata librarian.¹⁷ His research focused on metadata librarians affiliated with a technical services division, which traditionally has been responsible for the description of resources. He described four key functions of metadata librarians—collaboration, research, education, and development, which together complement Calhoun’s definition of metadata librarians’ roles.

A final resource consulted for the literature review was the SPEC Kit Metadata published in 2007 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).¹⁸ The SPEC survey looked into ARL libraries’ implementation of metadata, exploring a range of topics, such as metadata standards, creation, management, and challenges as well as staffing and training issues. Like the current paper, the SPEC Kit on metadata explored questions of organizational change and metadata librarian requirements and qualifications. The survey results included several interesting findings. For example, MARC was still the most frequently used metadata standard in ARL member libraries and continued to be required knowledge for metadata librarians. In addition, more than half of the responding libraries used Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH), the Library of Congress name authority file, and the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, affirming the importance of traditional cataloging knowledge for metadata work. The survey also found that 85 percent (55) of responding libraries had undergone organizational changes, and 62 percent (36) of libraries had refined responsibilities for existing positions to meet the need to carry out metadata work.

The literature on the work of cataloging librarians underscored how automated systems and increasing variation in resource formats have shifted the emphasis from actual cataloging duties to knowledge of emerging technologies and metadata schemas as well as to changing responsibilities, such as management tasks. This development arguably anticipated the pronouncement made by Faiks and McCue that the metadata librarian position arose in the late 1990s largely to broaden the scope of cataloging staff.¹⁹ The literature on metadata librarian positions confirmed this observation by repeated mention of the need for metadata librarians to collaborate across library units and to keep current with technology through research and professional development. The ARL SPEC Kit on metadata offered a comprehensive view of the metadata librarian position and its context. Yet by reviewing job postings for metadata librarian and cataloging librarian positions, the authors of the present paper were interested in analyzing the evolution of the metadata librarian position in the context of any similarities to, and differences from, the cataloging librarian position. Until now, these two types of librarians have not been compared. The authors have pursued a comparative approach, not only because the cataloging librarian may be seen as a prominent precursor to metadata librarian roles and responsibilities but also to try to see, more than a decade after Faiks and McCue’s pronouncement, whether distinctions between the work that each type of librarian does can be discerned—and if they can, then what are they? If no true distinctions can be detected, then what might this suggest about strategizing for information access and technical services units in libraries in the future?

The authors’ first step was to define the criteria for including positions in this study. All the position descriptions that had job titles with the word “metadata” in them, such as “metadata librarian” and “metadata and digital collections librarian,” were considered within the scope of this project. When the title included both “metadata” and “cataloging” or “catalog,” it was also considered a metadata librarian position. With these criteria in mind, 86 job descriptions were collected, dating from January 2000 through December 2008, from three different sources: American Libraries, College and Research Libraries News, and online sources, such as the Metadata Librarians ListServ (http://metadatalibrarians.monarchos.com) and Explore Careers (www.lis.illinois.edu/careers/studentsalumni/jobs/explore), an electronic bulletin board managed by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Explore Careers aggregates job postings found via library-related electronic discussion lists (e.g., American Library Job Bulletin, Metadata Librarians ListServ, and Autocat). The authors selected 2000 as the starting point for analyzing the job descriptions because the metadata librarian position is being considered in the context of a twenty-first-century academic library. The stopping point was the end of 2008 (although the authors note that no openings for metadata librarian positions were advertised from October through December 2008).

On the basis of content from the job descriptions, the authors created the following categories in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, with relevant data from the descriptions entered for each field: job title, institution name, institution type, year of job posting, required qualifications, and desired qualifications. In this process, all the duplicated job postings were removed from the data set. Information about the placement of the metadata librarian in the organizational structure of the institution also was recorded in the spreadsheet. Qualifications, both required and desired (also phrased in some descriptions as “preferred”), were then subdivided into three categories: education; professional skill set (generally encompassing knowledge of metadata standards and bibliographic tools); work-performance skills, such as communication skills and management skills; and knowledge of IT. These qualifications were analyzed to gain a sense of competencies required or desired in metadata librarians.

In addition, the authors reviewed descriptions for 85 cataloging librarian positions for comparison with metadata librarian jobs. The 85 positions were advertised during the same period (January 2000 to December 2008) and retrieved from two print sources, American Libraries and College and Research Libraries News.²⁰ These descriptions were entered in an Excel spreadsheet and organized in categories identical to those for the metadata librarian job descriptions. This approach was taken to track and compare changes over time, both in number of jobs and in qualifications for metadata librarians and cataloging librarians.

The method undertaken in this investigation was highly quantitative. It confirmed some expectations (e.g., that metadata librarians need to have broader knowledge of metadata standards, markup languages, and technology skills related to metadata management than do cataloging librarians) and yielded some surprises (e.g., that the top two desired qualifications for metadata librarians and cataloging librarians are identical: foreign language knowledge and cataloging experience). The facts resulting from the foregoing analysis tell only part of the story, however—to some extent because of an oversight in the method. While print and online job sources were consulted for the metadata librarian positions, only print sources were referenced for the cataloging librarian jobs. In retrospect, for the sake of consistency in approach, descriptions for cataloging librarian positions should have been sought in online job listings as well, and the authors plan to rectify this oversight in future research. The authors also would reconsider what is actually meant by a job title, since there likely are librarians doing work with metadata, both part-time or full-time, that do not hold the title of metadata librarian or that do not include the word “metadata” in their titles, as revealed in the review of job postings. Recently, some examples of such positions include digital archivist and digital curator, jobs to which attention to metadata-related issues is integral. In addition, this study would have benefited from a comprehensive survey of metadata librarians, and the librarians with whom they collaborate regularly, to seek details about their actual responsibilities. The reason for surveying other librarians is that metadata librarianship is often collaborative in nature, involving interaction with more than one library unit, and a broadened investigation would have potential for a more complete portrait of the work in which metadata librarians are engaged.

The authors also plan to introduce a qualitative component to the research. A subset of librarians from those surveyed will be chosen for follow-up, semistructured interviews. Using these interviews, the study could include profiles of two or three metadata librarians, thereby providing additional insight into the substance of their work. Data gathered from a qualitative approach would enable a comparison of the findings that resulted from the job description analysis, the survey, and the interviews and profiles. Questions such as the following could be addressed: Which responsibilities mentioned in the job descriptions are under the purview of a practicing metadata librarian, and which are not? What are metadata librarians doing that could be shared with current library students to better prepare them for such jobs? Is the metadata librarian position a forerunner of other kinds of new and necessary librarian roles, and what might these be?

Finally, since these are early days for metadata librarians, a longitudinal study is in order. In such an approach, a selection of metadata librarians and their libraries could be tracked during an extended period of time to see what kinds of changes—including, but not limited to, the area of digital collection management and access to digital resources—are occurring in libraries as a result of retaining metadata librarians. Thus, a longitudinal investigation would afford a fuller picture than the present study.

This paper set out to explore a set of interrelated research questions about the role and responsibilities of metadata librarians:

1. What is the required skill set for a metadata librarian?
2. Has the skill set changed over time, specifically from 2000 through 2008?
3. Has the organizational home for metadata librarians changed over time?
4. What are the differences between metadata librarians and cataloging librarians in terms of competencies and qualifications?

The survey of job descriptions, posted over a nine-year period, showed that the required skill set for a metadata librarian consists of work-related professional skills, such as knowledge of metadata standards (including MARC and authority control), work performance skills (such as analytical, communication, interpersonal, organizational, and problem-solving), and the ability to work both in a team environment and independently. The most important work performance skills to have were flexibility in work and the ability and willingness to learn new skills. In terms of IT, metadata librarians were required or desired to be proficient in XML, OAI-PMH, and RDF, which are used for metadata conversion and sharing.

With regard to the second research question, the metadata librarian skill set changed considerably during this period. In 2000 only 1 of 5 job descriptions (20 percent) mentioned communication skills as a requirement. By 2008 that number had increased to 12 (63 percent) of 19 positions advertised that year. The communication skills requirement is in keeping with the collaborative nature of metadata librarian positions. In particular, between the years 2005 and 2008, the job descriptions surveyed showed a steady demand for interpersonal skills, the ability and willingness to learn new skills, the ability to work in a team environment, and competence in digital project management. From 2007 forward, the ability and willingness to learn became the most desired skill for metadata librarians. However, the requirements of work-related professional skills and knowledge of IT did not change. These skills appeared in job descriptions consistently from 2000 through 2008, implying that institutions expect metadata librarians to be able to tackle different metadata standards, including MARC, and also would like them to have knowledge of IT to help to expand access to digital resources.

On the question of placement within a library’s organizational structure, this changed little for metadata librarians between 2000 and 2004. For the most part, during this period metadata librarians continued to be based within a cataloging unit. Starting in 2004, however, the job descriptions for metadata librarians began mentioning affiliations with other types of library units, such as a digital library unit, library computing and media services, and information acquisition and management. Also, several institutions changed the names of cataloging units (e.g., to “Cataloging and Metadata Unit”). The placement of metadata librarians in these emerging variations of the cataloging unit, as well as in new library departments and units, suggests that the metadata librarian position has originated in response to changes in the way libraries are delivering and providing access to their collections, confirming reports in the literature reviewed earlier in this paper. New departments and new positions can be interpreted as a revision of library infrastructure, showing a library in a state of transition.

Finally, on the matter of differences between metadata librarians and cataloging librarians, some disparities exist in the competencies and qualifications gleaned from the job description data, but there also were similarities. For example, in 2000, 1 description for a metadata librarian job (of the five jobs advertised that year) called for experience with or knowledge of MARC. By 2008, 11 of the 19 metadata librarian job descriptions posted mentioned knowledge of MARC as a requirement. This statistic matches exactly the descriptions for cataloging librarian positions in 2000. That year, 11 of 19 job postings for cataloging librarians required experience with or a knowledge of MARC. The authors posit that knowledge of or experience with MARC is viewed as desirable for a metadata librarian to have because it is foundational for understanding how metadata standards function in a library environment.

Judging from the job description analysis, a key difference between qualifications of metadata librarians and cataloging librarians is knowledge of emerging technologies, which was required more often of metadata librarians. Examples of this knowledge included familiarity with markup languages such as XML, protocols such as the OAI-PMH, and approaches to conceptual modeling such as RDF. Knowledge of emerging technologies appeared as a required qualification just once in the set of cataloging librarian job descriptions analyzed in 2003 and once as a desired qualification in 2000 (exemplified in the postings as familiarity with XML/SGML and IT). In addition, while cataloging standards, cataloging rules, and foreign language skills continued to rank as the top three required and desired qualifications for cataloging librarians, descriptions for cataloging librarian jobs also listed knowledge of metadata standards as a desired qualification. This qualification for cataloging librarians, along with the requirement for metadata librarians to know MARC, signals the need for a common language between metadata librarians and cataloging librarians; both types of information professionals are compelled to address together a range of resource formats, delivery systems, and content standards in their work.

These findings indicate that descriptions for cataloging librarian positions remain focused on traditional cataloging responsibilities carried out in a predominately MARC-based cataloging context within academic research libraries. Descriptions for the emerging and evolving job of metadata librarian, on the other hand, encompass a much broader suite of metadata implementations, demanding familiarity (if not also experience) with an array of formats, standards, schemas, tools, and best practices. This difference is documented by the increasing list of formats, standards, and technologies found in postings for metadata librarian jobs from 2000 through 2008. The authors assert that, from the research presented here, the position of metadata librarian reflects the rapidly changing nature of cataloging librarianship, suggesting that it is incumbent on both metadata and cataloging librarians to be self-motivated, willing to learn, and flexible.