Cataloguing

Lesson 4 on cataloguing made grateful at how far education has come. I can imagine that 30 years ago a course like this would have had tests which would have required us to memorize terms like metadata, MARC records, collocation and so on. Aside from being pointless, I would have found that exceedingly difficult without some practical experience. It's hard for me to distinguish the concept of metadata from MARC records (apparently MARC records are technically a form of metadata but that's not the common usage) without hands on experience working with these concepts. I think I get the basic concept and I know where to find the information when I forget a term. Too bad more of this enlightened view of education has not trickled down into high school where we ask kids to recall reams of facts on tests.