Core Process
About Catalog
Each semester (Fall, WinterFest, Spring, SummerFest), LLI members eagerly look forward to catalog releases to determine what courses they want to take. Catalog entries are helpful and descriptive through the efforts of the Catalog Team.
The first draft of courses and instructor biographies are written through a joint effort between producers and presenters on the Curriculum Team and then are passed on to the Catalog Team.
This information goes through multiple edits by the Catalog Team to ensure course descriptions accurately, succinctly, and clearly describe the content of each course. Each LLI course and instructor biography is carefully edited and fact-checked (several times) before being published in our catalog.
All of this effort is why our Bard LLI catalog is widely admired and emulated! You can see previous LLI catalogs by selecting Courses in the top navigation bar; it is a joy to behold.
After going through multiple edits by the Catalog Team, the information is passed on to the Registration Team to be added to our catalogs.
To learn more about this team, contact [email protected].
Catalog Tasks
What do we do?
Chair
This person is the liaison with the Council, the Curriculum, Registration, Program Support and other committees. The chair gathers course abstracts and bios from the producers and thereby generates the first draft of the catalog. The chair organizes any necessary Zoom meetings or phone conferences, sets the schedule for editing of the catalog, and handles communication with producers about guidelines, due dates, missing information, etc. In addition to administrative duties related to the production of the catalog in its various formats, the chair is the committee’s arbiter of policy and its general traffic cop. Produces catalog’s first draft.
Editor
This person edits the first draft of the catalog, which entails any necessary cutting and rewriting. The top priority of the editor is to ensure that titles will be understandable and enticing, and that course descriptions will be clear, interesting and as comprehensive as possible within prescribed space limitations. This stage includes making judgments about overall tone, identifying and removing editorial bias when possible, ensuring consistency of third-person voice, imposing word-count limits, and general adherence to the Bard LLI Style Guide. Produces catalog’s second draft.
Copy Editors
These editors, working as a team, go through the second draft for style and clarity, ensuring that the copy conforms to the LLI Style Guide and is free of grammatical errors. The copy editors also answer any questions inserted into the second draft by the editor, either by consultation with reference materials (e.g. clarifying acronyms, checking historical dates) or by getting answers from presenters/producers (e.g. as to qualifications). Among other things, these editors are also the catalog’s fact-checkers. Importantly, the copy editors remove or rewrite any ambiguous language that the editor has missed. Produce catalog’s third draft.
Green Reader
The green reader performs the traditional proofreader function, correcting any errors of spelling, punctuation, grammar or style that may remain in the text. Also, it has been noted that the duties of copy editing and proofreading often overlap, which is a good thing. This person is the committee’s last set of eyes on the copy and ensures the catalog is easily understandable to any reader. The Greenreader proofs both the website and ProClass catalogs when production has been completed.
Produce a timely catalog
The catalog informs members of course offerings during the year.
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