Working at ProQuest as a Catalog Librarian gives me insight into
vendors, their process, and the importance of libraries to their business.
For ProQuest, librarians and library users are a top priority and
key to the services and products the company provides. ProQuest,
for example, hires MLS-degreed, professional catalogers who create
full-level cataloging records that accompany certain ProQuest products
such as e-books and streaming videos. Since ProQuest aggregates
items for libraries into packages or services, it makes sense for vendors as
a whole to take on the role of creating high-quality cataloging records in
order to provide more consistency and standardization among the records.
Vendors that machine-derive records tend to be sparse and can
have more errors in coding and within the fields, since professional catalogers
know the rules and can examine the materials. Besides vendors,
publishers are also in a position to contribute to OA metadata.