A wave of retirements, restructuring, and new hires amidst the Covid-19 pandemic gave way to a brand new technical services team at a small university's specialized, statutory college library. The new technical services department built their cataloging capacity from the ground up, with the goal that all team members would be expected to contribute to the library's original cataloging of its niche subject matter. The team dug in deep, working together to figure out an open and realistic training approach. With the support of the library's administrators and a philosophy to use any and all available resources, the technical services team combined modest professional development funds, discussion groups, consortia guidelines, mentoring, and out-of-box approache - such as auditing university classes in specialized subject areas - to meet their goal. This poster illustrates how a collaborative, creative approach to developing budding catalogers can bridge up-front barriers when it comes to introducing metadata work to brand new learners.
