On being autistic in the Library Profession as pertains to Interlibrary Loan, some observations.

 So TSLAC offers online "Office Hours" over Zoom for Interlibrary loan professionals at Texas libraries on tips and tricks and troubleshooting covering the ShareIt platform by Autographics, Inc.  I do my best to attend these religiously because they're always insightful and helpful.  Librarians are able to exchange ideas, ask questions of our TSLAC hosts, report problems, commiserate over shared frustrations, etc.

One of the things I've learned out of these discussions is that Libraries do some weird damn things that make no sense to me as an autistic person.  Specifically because the ShareIt platform is uniquely integrated with participating libraries OPACs in real time, often through the NCIP protocol, what you see in ShareIt is an accurate reflection of their actual holdings in real time.  In contrast, apparently the search results in OCLC Worldshare and WorldCat are NOT as reliable and more often represent historical data that is not always up to date & current.

You would think as a logical person that as part of any cataloging department's book withdrawal procedure commonly called "weeding", which is a natural part of a book's life cycle, especially in public libraries where the collection must be refreshed yearly to stay relevant to the public, that deleting one's holdings from OCLC Worldshare/WorldCat would be the final step in the process.  Makes sense, right?  And to their credit most public libraries do include this as a final step in the weeding process.  But when it comes to the big academic lenders with the big legacy collections that change less often because of their bigger shelf real estate and because of the nature of academic research in general, this final step is often skipped.

Why?  Because those big collection numbers are a point of PRIDE for these academic lenders and they don't want to subtract from that number if they don't have to.  Even though it leads to increasingly inaccurate representations of holdings in WorldCat, which is very frustrating for us working in ILL who need accuracy in collection holdings when making borrowing requests.  Conversely, when I worked for TWU, I was slightly appalled at the number of works that were cataloged incompletely and seemingly on the fly and did NOT show up in OCLC Worldshare/Worldcat/Connexion.  One of my pet projects was recataloging such works to give them more robust cataloging in the OPAC on campus but also to increase the visibility of TWU's holdings in OCLC WorldCat, letting the world know that yes in fact we do own this work and can lend it to you via ILL if you need it.  Unfortunately my boss did not agree with my prioritizing this task over other responsibilities and I was ultimately made to resign which is a story for another time.

It's just a personal pet peeve of me that Academic libraries let such foolish considerations as PRIDE and bragging rights to get in the way of accuracy of their holdings information in OCLC Worldcat.  They would rather have big numbers even if some of that is fictional rather than a lower number that is based in factual reality.  Maybe they figure it all evens out in the wash since there are books on the shelves that aren't represented in OCLC Worldshare/WorldCat but if we don't remove holdings from books we've weeded those can stand in for the other and it's all good, right?  In the aggregate maybe but as an Interlibrary Loan professional it annoys me to no end this kind of lazy thinking and lazy collection management practice.

You would think that being autistic would be less of a hinderance in cataloging but office politics makes things complicated, especially if you're made head cataloger supervising two copy catalogers and reporting to the head Acquisitions Librarian.  If you're the one calling the shots then you can only use your best judgement in the end and that can be questioned by those higher up and if you can't explain yourself adequately or play the office politics game and read the room, pick up on unwritten rules, etc, you're walking into a mine field.  I failed as a cataloger because I never had a senior cataloger (outside of my practicum) willing to mentor me properly and show me the ropes, etc.  I was always on point as head cataloger, straight out of library school...which is insane but I was desperate to land ANY  professional position and took positions at TAMUG and TWU that were, let's say, less than ideal for my particular yet then undiagnosed neuroptype.  I had colleagues who were all smiles to my face yet positively LOATHED me behind my back in was that were utterly shocking to me when these antipathies surfaced openly near the end of my work periods at these institutions. 

I do tell myself that my Cataloger experience makes me that much better an Interlibrary Loan professional and I do still believe that is true.  It was probably even a good move to make because I was raised on AACR2r2 and MARC21 but RDA confused the shit out of me and I am just so far out of the cataloging game by this point there's no going back.  We no longer speak the same language.  I wouldn't even have the confidence to do copy-cataloging anymore....wild that it was originally part of my job responsibilities when I began to work for my present employer way back in 2010.  When my tyrannical bully of a manager had me within a week or so of firing me is when I reluctantly, against my will, disclosed my ASD diagnosis and ultimately saved my job, taking a demotion from Paraprofessional to Clerk II.  It took me a long, LONG time to claw my way back to Paraprofessional rank, too.  And I've always been turned down each and every time I applied for a Librarian I job within the system, so much and so often I eventually gave up trying and settled into my rut as an Interlibrary Loan professional, the job I know best.  I just wish my existing position could be upgraded to Librarian I.