Core Competencies in Practice: Exploring Catalogers’ Alignment with Professional Standards

The purpose of this article is to report on a recent study that explores how well the self-assessed knowledge and skills of cataloging and metadata librarians correlate with the knowledge and skills described in the Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians that was revised in 2023 by a group formed by the American Library Association’s Core Metadata & Collections Leadership Team. A questionnaire gathered basic demographic information and invited participants to rate their understanding of the Knowledge core competencies, as well as rate how often they utilize the Skill/Ability core competencies. The results suggest that cataloging and metadata professional librarian participants of this study view themselves as having a good or full understanding of most Knowledge core competencies, even if many participants did not regularly use the Skill/Ability core competencies that include that knowledge