Paul Cauthen, Librarian in the CCM Library, Receives Honor

Paul Cauthen, Assistant Music Librarian in the Albino Gorno Memorial Music Library, is the 12th recipient of the Music OCLC Users Group’s Distinguished Service Award.

Paul received this well-deserved award for his contributions to music cataloging over the past 20 years, during which time his cataloging output was cited as being of “exceptional quality” and that his work saved fellow catalogers “literally thousands of hours.” Paul received this prestigious award at the recent MOUG/MLA conference in Atlanta in February.

Congratulations, Paul!

The full announcement follows.

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The Executive Board of the Music Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Users Group (MOUG) was honored to name Paul Cauthen (University of Cincinnati) as the 12th recipient of MOUG’s Distinguished Service Award, at its annual meeting in Atlanta. This award was established to recognize and honor those who have made significant professional contributions to music users of OCLC.  The MOUG Executive Board selects recipients based on nominations received from the membership.

Since its inception, one of the primary purposes of OCLC has been to facilitate the sharing of bibliographic records among libraries, increasing cataloging efficiency by reducing duplication of effort. This is particularly valuable in sound recordings cataloging, where a single record can include numerous notes, lengthy contents statements, and myriad entry points for subjects, performers, and included works. One such record can take hours to produce. But when that record is contributed to WorldCat, those hours are saved hundreds of times over when other libraries are able to simply retrieve that record and download it into their own catalog with little or no editing. Regular users of WorldCat soon come to recognize that the appearance of certain OCLC symbols in the 040 field indicates the record can be counted on to be of high quality. For at least 20 years, in the realm of sound recordings cataloging one of those symbols has been “CIN.” And the cataloger behind that symbol for that entire time has been Paul Cauthen. Paul’s cataloging output has been both prodigious, and of exceptional quality, saving fellow catalogers literally thousands of hours. In addition, he has been active member of MOUG, a participant in the NACO Music Project, and a member of various subcommittees of the Music Library Association Bibliographic Control Committee, further helping to advance the profession to which his daily work has made such great contributions.