WWU's Casey Mullin publishes article in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly

Casey A. Mullin, head of Cataloging and Metadata Services at Western Washington University Libraries, recently published “An Amicable Divorce: Programmatic Derivation of Faceted Data from Library of Congress Subject Headings for Music,” in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly.  The article describes efforts to adapt legacy library metadata for music resources, repurposing traditional “subject” headings as faceted descriptors, which are more granular and amenable for filtering on search results in the library catalog and other discovery environments. The faceted approach is slated to eventually replace the legacy subject heading method for music; in order to mitigate the costs of manual enhancement/conversion of legacy catalog data, automated and semi-automated processes will be required. Mullin’s article describes a sophisticated application of such processes. Limitations inherent to these processes and ideas for future directions are also described.

Casey Mullin holds a Bachelor of Music degree in viola performance from Western Washington University and a Master of Library Science degree (with music specialization) from Indiana University Bloomington. Prior to coming back to Western, he was Music Cataloger for the New York Public Library and Head of Data Control for the Stanford University Libraries. His professional service engagements include committee posts with the Music Library Association and American Library Association, and he currently serves as Past Chair of the Music OCLC Users Group. Outside of the library, Casey is an active performer (viola, violin and piano) and a published writer on music.