Month: September 2014

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Latinos in the heartland : proceedings of the 12th annual conference : positive steps toward a pluralist society, St. Louis, Missouri, June 12-14, 2013 / Stephen Jeannetta and Corinne Valdivia, editors ; with the assistance of Katarina Sostaric and Lindsey Saunders. (OCLC #889753646)

The record for this title includes the subject headings:

    650 0 ǂa Hispanic Americans ǂz Middle West.
    651 0 ǂa Middle West ǂx Emigration and immigration.

The MARC field 043 (Geographic Area Code) is used if a subject heading assigned to the item has a geographic term in any form or position.

The code for Middle West (on the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas) is:

    043 __ ǂa n-usc--

You can generate these fields quickly in OCLC (from the 6XX) using the macro OCLC!Generate043.

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A treatise of the lawes of the forest : wherein is declared not onely those lawes, as they are now in force, but also the originall and beginning of forests : and what a forest is in his owne proper nature, and wherein the same doth differ from a chase, a parke, or a warren, with all such things as are incident or belonging thereunto, with their seuerall proper tearmes of art ; also a Treatise of the pourallee : declaring what pourallee is, how the same first began, what a pourallee man may do, how he may hunt and vse his owne pourallee, how farre he may pursue and follow after his chase, together with the limits and bounds, as well of the forest, as the pourallee : collected, as well out of the common lawes and statutes of this land, as also out of sundrie learned auncient authors, and out of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster / by Iohn Manvvood ; whereunto are added the statutes of the forest, a Treatise of the seuerall offices of verderors, regardors, and foresters, & the Courts of Attachments, Swanimote, & Iustice seat of the Forest, and certaine principall Cases, Iudgements, and Entries of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster: neuer heretofore printed for the publique. (OCLC #7955672)

In a modern computerized ILS, there is little marginal cost for each additional access point. In a card catalog however, each access point (title, authors, subjects, series) will be a heading on its own card in the catalog. If the title (and thus the record) is long enough to span multiple cards, each heading will also generate multiple cards!

This set of cards cut off nearly half the ISBD Area 1 paragraph (italicized above), including the full description only on the shelf list card.

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Cults of America / by Maurice Beam. (OCLC #5796766)

Vinabind is a binding process where the paperback cover (and any stickers or labels on it) is laminated and then the book is re-bound with that cover. RDA 3.22.1.3 on Making Notes on Item-Specific Carrier Characteristics says to “make a note about carrier characteristics of the specific item being described if considered important for identification or selection.”

This volume is not an early printed resource (which have different rules in RDA) and this did not seem like an important enough feature to record, so I did not mention it even in our local copy. In OCLC, local binding does not generally justify a new record, though one record (and only one that I can find!) does mention it.

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Within the walls ; and, What do I love? / H.D. ; edited by Annette Debo. (OCLC #890587170)

Though this author is best known as H.D. (reflected in her name authority record), her class number is assigned such that she is filed under the fuller form of her name, Hilda Doolittle. PS3507 is for individual American authors, 1900-1960, name starting with D, and cuttered by second letter so we have:

  • PS3507.I93 – Dixon, Thomas
  • PS3507.O726 – Doolittle, Hilda
  • PS3507.R55 – Dreiser, Theodore

Her class number is subarranged using table P-PZ40, so we use A6 for this volume which contains two titles (Selections). This is not her complete works, and the titles are in different forms (Essays and Poems), so I followed RDA 6.2.2.10.3 on Other Compilations of Two or More Works, and recorded the preferred title for each of the works instead of adding “Selections” to a conventional collective title (like “Novels”):

    245 10 ǂa Within the walls ; ǂb and, What do I love? / ǂc H.D. ; 
        edited by Annette Debo.
    740 02 ǂa What do I love?
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Three horsemen of the new apocalypse / Nirad C. Chaudhuri. (OCLC #38258401)

RDA 16.2.3.7 on Alternate Linguistic Form of Name includes the specific case that “if the name recorded as the preferred name begins with a number expressed as a word or contains a number expressed as a word, and numbers expressed as words are accessed differently from numbers expressed as numerals, record the form with the number expressed as an arabic numeral as a variant name.”

For this title, that would be:

245 10 ǂa Three horsemen of the new apocalypse / ǂc Nirad C.
    Chaudhuri.
246 3_ ǂa 3 horsemen of the new apocalypse
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[Agricultural Adjustment Administration documents related to Kentucky] (OCLC #891104587)

(Cataloging flash mob!)

For this month’s Third Thursday (cataloging discussion and professional development), we did a “bring your cataloging problems” session. I brought one that had been lurking on a nearby shelf in cataloging for years.

Those 39 volumes were not actually books; they were a bound archival collection (of letters, forms, and other documents related to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Kentucky) but our Archives/Special Collections did not want them in their collections. Though the volumes contained some federal government documents, they also contained many state government documents (all mixed together!) so they did not belong in our federal documents collection either.

There were so many decisions to make: Should they be disbound, and the pieces cataloged separately and sorted into their appropriate locations? Should they get a detailed finding aid, or a briefer collection record? Should we gather more opinions from staff who might remember more about the collection, or change their opinion about which branch it should live in?

One thing that was clear was that the books were getting no use sitting on my shelf, and with all of my analysis paralysis going on, that’s where they were going to stay unless I got some help. At the problem session, I passed out volumes and a skeletal record to the group, and told them my basic plan: keep the volumes bound, collection record only, shelve in main library. Together we examined the materials and muscled through the record, discussing each questionable field until we had consensus, and adding more subject access points to make it more discoverable by researchers in the field. It took about 40 minutes – now that shelf is clear!

If there is interest, someone may eventually re-visit this collection and give it a more thorough description, but for now, its discoverability has been significantly improved.

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Cotton flour bag (sack) towels : a recorded voluntary standard of the trade. (OCLC #890720497)

Cataloging commercial standards creates a fun opportunity to look up subject headings I’ve never used before, like:

    650 _0 ǂa Dish towels ǂx Standards.

There is also a code for the Cont: fixed field for titles containing standards and specifications:

    Cont: u

A search for an LC classification correlated to “Dish towels” produced no results (though I was pleased to see Dishwashing–Fiction nearby), but the broader term “Towels” suggested TS1781, which is for Miscellaneous textiles including bagging, shawls, towels, etc. so we have the call number:

    TS1781 ǂb .C68 1951
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Symposium on the Orion Nebula to honor Henry Draper / edited by A.E. Glassgold, P.J. Huggins, and E.L. Schucking. (OCLC #8845640)

“What’s a Festschrift?” asked many of us when we first saw this fixed field in cataloging class. And after looking it up, “how often do you see those?” As it turns out, it’s somewhat unusual (0.2% of records in our catalog) but that just makes it a rare treat to get to change that fixed field, and often the conference publication fixed field at the same time:

    Fest: 1     Conf: 1

RDA also includes a relationship designator for specifying who is being hono(u)red in the Festschrift:

    700 1_ ǂa Draper, Henry, ǂd 1837-1882, ǂe honouree.
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Body measurements for the sizing of boys’ apparel (knit underwear, shirts and trousers) : a recorded voluntary standard of the trade. (OCLC #890709074)

RDA 2.17.2.3 (Title Source) describes a note that should be recorded if the title proper is taken from somewhere other than the preferred source of information; for example, the title page for a book. This book has no title page, so I used the caption title, and noted that, following the examples in the RDA text:

500 __ ǂa Caption title.

This note is core for LC/PCC. RDA itself does allow the note to be omitted if there is only one title on the piece, but the LC-PCC PS says not to omit.

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What the Bible says about salvation / by Virgil Warren. (OCLC #9092454)

Often when copy cataloging, we’ll find a record with a call number ending with “x”. It’s my understanding that some institutions add this when constructing a call number as a way of marking it “locally assigned”, so that there is no conflict if another book comes in with that same call number. Our policy is to not add x’s when constructing call numbers, and to remove them from call numbers in incoming copy. That is, if a record comes in with:

    050 _4 ǂa BT751.2 ǂb .W294x

We add a new call number to the record and use it:

    050 _4 ǂa BT751.2 ǂb .W294x
    090 __ ǂa BT751.2 ǂb .W294 1982

(We also add the year if it is not there already.)

Note that ‘x’ is different from other small letters that might appear at the end of a call number, which have their own specific meanings, and should not be removed:

  • a – facsimile
  • b,c,d, etc. – other title with that same call number, probably even published in the same year
  • z – uncertain year of publication (1950z = 1950-1959)

Sometimes the ‘x’ will sneak in on copy, and that’s fine too. This shelving tutorial suggests that it should be treated as “½”.