ACORD Committee Members
The ALIA Board has confirmed the following members of the ACORD Committee:
Nicole Hunt (Chair)
Nicole Hunt is Team Manager – Libraries & Community Hubs located in Townsville, Queensland. Having spent more than 35 years cataloguing collections and maintaining systems, she joined ACORD to satisfy her desire for consistent data entry in all catalogue records. Her favourite MARC field is 586 – Awards Note, which is used for adding information on awards associated with the described item – a great searching point for readers which also highlights these achievements for authors.
Glenn Wells (Vice-Chair)
Glenn Wells is a Specialist Librarian working at the State Library of New South Wales. Glenn has worked in the field for a decade across library and archival management systems. Partly as a consequence of his poor memory, Glenn has a love of the research tools required for MARC Bibliographic 510 Citation field entries; however, he acknowledges the greater value of MARC’s work-horse access point, linking and tracing fields
Sara Davidsson (Secretary)
Sara Davidsson is the Member Services Coordinator at CAVAL in Melbourne, Victoria. Whilst not currently working directly with resource description, cataloguing is where she started her recent library career and she still manages to keep a finger in the cataloguing pie when cataloguing foreign language materials whenever the opportunity arises. Sara joined ACORD in an effort to contribute to the future of resource description in Australia. Her favourite MARC field is 490 – Series statement, as there is nothing better than discovering there are more titles in a series you have fallen for.
John Timoney (Treasurer)
John Timoney is the Collection Development Coordinator at the City of Marion Library Service in South Australia. From the vantage point of public libraries, he believes metadata should breathe life into discovery platforms and resource description activities be thoughtful and considered. He joined ACORD in 2022 to actively participate in the strategic direction of resource description work in Australia and his favourite tags are the 7XXs due to the serendipitous and rhizomatic connections they reveal.
Catherine Barnes
Catherine is a Course Coordinator and Lecturer in University of South Australia, STEM with specialisations in Metadata and Descriptive Cataloguing. She has qualifications and experiences in Information Management, Information Technology and Education, with a passion for metadata and learning. Her background as a Teacher Librarian has led to a curiosity for not just the how and why of describing things, but also the who with further exploration of the connection between description and digital inclusion. With a broad experience in regional Australia, as well as medical, technology, theological, and vocational organisations, an awareness of engaging with communities for representation is a key aspect of her practice and teaching.
Renate Beilharz
Renate Beilharz is Catalogue Content Manager at the Schools Catalogue and Information Service. She started in school libraries and taught Librarianship at Box Hill Institute. Renate began a love affair with cataloguing rules and standards from first being introduced to Dewey, Sears and AARC2 in the 1980s. Since then, her passion shifted from creating catalogue records themselves to focussing on the purpose of bibliographic metadata, ensuring that catalogue records meet the needs of end-users in a respectful manner. Joining ACORD gives Renate the opportunity to actively participate in current critical cataloguing conversations. Renate no longer loves MARC quite as much, because of the constraints it places on fully implementing RDA Toolkit.
Brad Chugg
Brad is an Application Support Administrator at the Royal Australian Mint, overseeing a number of application of the organisation including the Collection Management System for the National Coin Collection. He originally started out undertaking cataloguing activities whilst working in school libraries in Northern Tasmania as a Library Technician, prior to making the jump to Systems Librarian in Libraries Tasmania. He has worked across the library and IT sectors after relocating to Canberra, exploring different approaches to cataloguing outside of traditional MARC through established standards and bespoke solutions. He joined ACORD in 2024 to contribute to the cataloguing discussion nationally and with the evolving technologies which impact cataloguing work.
Cath Ferguson
Cath Ferguson is a Library Technician who has been working in school library environments for over 20 years. She joined ACORD in 2024 as a passionate advocate for advancing standards in resource description in Australia.
Edith Fullalove
Edith Fullalove is a Digital Services Librarian based in Melbourne, having worked in a Private Secondary School Library first as a Library Technician. Edith has served on the Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC) for 4 years. She took part in the formation of ACORD. Cataloguing and MARC has always been one of her main loves of working in the Library. Her favourite MARC field is 521 – Target Audience Note, which is very important to ensure students have access to resources that are appropriate for their particular age.
Lesa Maclean
Lesa Maclean is an Information Resources Librarian at Victoria University with a deep appreciation for the role of metadata in library systems. She views metadata as the central nervous system of libraries, warranting substantial investment and strategic focus. Her favourite MARC field is 505 – Formatted Contents Note. She appreciates how detailed information in this field can significantly improve users’ ability to find resources through keyword searches, often uncovering materials that may be overlooked by traditional subject headings. Lesa joined ACORD to contribute to the group’s pivotal work in the Australian cataloguing landscape.
Alissa McCulloch
Alissa McCulloch is the Coordinator, Metadata Strategy and Standards at Deakin University and a fierce advocate for reparative description and critical cataloguing. She joined ACORD partly to advance these goals and partly to help (re)build a community of metadata and resource description professionals in Australia, to highlight the continued value and importance of this work. Her favourite MARC field is 515 – Numbering Peculiarities Note. Who among us has not lost count of our (serial) issues?
Melissa Parent
Melissa Parent is a Senior Librarian at State Library Victoria and former member of ACOC. She joined ACORD to help shape RDA development and implementation in Australia, and has faith in RDA as a 21st century resource description standard. Yes, the new Toolkit is challenging and yes, we’ll get used to using it just as we did the old Toolkit. Her favourite MARC tag is the utilitarian yet efficient 008, and her favourite RDA entity is the slippery, slippery Nomen.