Month: November 2014

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Мастер ы Маргарита : полное собрание черновиков романа, основной текст, в двух томах / М.А. Булгаков. (OCLC #896822497)

In the LC Subject Cataloging Manual on Shelflisting, the instructions for new multipart items (not analyzed) says, for languages other than English, regardless of the vernacular terminology used on the title page and/or contents note, to use (in this order), “vol.” for the first vernacular designation, “pt.” for the second, and “no.” for the third.

My library has a different practice, which is that we use the vernacular terminology, abbreviated in a standard way (we have a list). Volumes in this set have the designation “том” (tom) so we assigned them the call numbers:

  • PG3476.B78 M3 2014 t.1
  • PG3476.B78 M3 2014 t.2
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In [U]mbra : ǂb демонология как семиотическая система / ǂc ответственные редакторы и составители Д. И. Антонов, О. В. Христофорова. (OCLC #896742190)

Even on the title page, the U in the word “Umbra” is represented as some kind of animal; it is probably a demon, given the subject of the book.

RDA 1.7.5 on Symbols has an LC-PCC PS with instructions on handling symbols with an obvious spoken or written equivalent, which the picture of the demon has. I added a note about this detail:

500 __ ǂa On title page, "[U]" appears as a demon.
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Library and information sciences : trends and research / Chuanfu Chen, Ronald Larsen, editors. (OCLC #893896494)

This print volume published by Springer includes on the title page verso:

The book is published with open access at SpringerLink.com.

and indeed this appears to be the case! (link to fulltext ebook)

More specifically, it adds:

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

In an RDA record, this note could be recorded in Restrictions on Use, which is core for LC for non-General collections, and core for NLA, though I haven’t seen much use of the 540 for this purpose in the wild; maybe I will if this method of publishing becomes more popular.

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A history of witchcraft : sorcerers, heretics, and Pagans / Jeffrey B. Russell. (OCLC #70277995)

RDA 7.15.1.3 on Recording Illustrative Content has an optional addition, which is to record the number of illustrations if the number can be readily ascertained. This piece has “With 94 illustrations” recorded directly on the title page, so this could have been recorded in the Physical description field as:

300 __ ǂa 192 pages : ǂb 94 illustrations ; ǂc 24 cm

NLA says to apply the addition if considered important for identification or selection, and BL leaves it up to cataloger’s judgment (but no mention in LC-PCC PS).

The AACR2 copy we used included this information in a note:

500 __ ǂa "With 94 illustrations."
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The archaic revival : speculations on psychedelic mushrooms, the Amazon, virtual reality, UFOs, evolution, Shamanism, the rebirth of the goddess, and the end of history / Terence McKenna ; illustrations by Satty. (OCLC #23976961)

The name of the publisher is printed on this piece as “HarperSanFrancisco”; so what does RDA say to do with CamelCase?

RDA A.16.5 on Capitalization of Other Corporate Bodies says to “capitalize the name of a … company”, but isn’t specific on what that means. The only spacing guidelines I could find described spacing in Initialisms and Acronyms, which is not the issue here.

With no further guidance, I’d fall back on one of RDA’s guiding principles: Representation. Specifically, the data describing a resource should reflect the resource’s representation of itself. In the MARC record, I would capitalize/space this as it appears on the piece:

264 _1 ǂa [San Francisco] : ǂb HarperSanFrancisco, ǂc [1991]
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Witches U.S.A. / Susan Roberts. (OCLC #2692802)

The LC-PCC PS for RDA 2.3.6.3 (Recording Variant Titles) mentions letters and initialisms (including acronyms). It says: When a series of letters or an initialism occurs as one of the first five words in a title proper with separating punctuation (hyphen, period, slash), make a variant title in the form without any separating punctuation if it is thought that some catalog users might expect that the letters would be recorded in that form in the source.

USA is a common way of writing U.S.A., so I recorded the variant title:

246 3_ ǂa Witches USA
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The evil eye : the origins and practices of superstition / Frederick Thomas Elworthy ; Introd. Louis S. Barron. (OCLC #1661732)

RDA 9.19.1.3 on including Date of Birth and/or Death when constructing access points says to add that date if needed to distinguish one access point from another, which is similar to the rule in AACR2.

There is an optional addition to add the date of birth and/or death even if there is no need to distinguish between access points, and it is encouraged by LC (for new records), NLA (if readily ascertainable) and BL.

There is no other Frederick Thomas Elworthy in the authority file, but the heading for this author includes birth and death dates:

    Elworthy, Frederick Thomas, 1830-1907
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ABC’s from the edge : graduate school descriptors / ǂc by the ABC Conspiracy Committee ; graphic arts by Bill Leal ; illustrated by Jason Corder. (not in OCLC)

In 1991, graduate students in our university’s Education department created an ABC picture book about their grad school experience, which included pages like “A is for Anxiety” and “B is for Braindead” through “Z is for Zoned-out” and (finally) “P is for Procrastination”.

Though the selector did not accept the piece for Education branch, it is being added to University Archives where it will receive some other kind of metadata (probably an entry in a finding aid). While waiting for this decision, I went ahead and looked up the subject headings:

    Universities and colleges--Graduate work--Humor.
    Graduate students--Humor.
    Alphabet books.
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Aliens in the United States (number of aliens in the United States, by States, counties, and nationalities, who reported under the Immigration and nationality act during January 1965) Prepared for the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate. (OCLC #184920)

I know now that the monthly catalog record for this title says “Aliens in United States” (missing a word), which is why my full title searches were not finding it. I continued my search using the SuDoc number instead.

I initially misread the second cutter in the SuDoc, first looking too quickly and seeing only an “A” with a flourish, and then recognizing it as “Ae”. That also turned out to be incorrect.

I had found the OCLC record already (no SuDoc number), so used the Find in a Library feature to check what other people had as its SuDoc number in their government document collections. I found a library with a slight different SuDoc number (another variant!):

Y4.J89/2:A14/5

before finally finding the correct one:

Y 4.J 89/2:AL 4/5

and spotting that those letters must start the cutter for ALiens.

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Salute : C. Oran Little, Dean and Director UK College of Agriculture, 1988-2000 / produced by Dr. Little’s friends and family ; crafted through the efforts of Ag Communications Services. (OCLC #894704261)

RDA 3.5.1.4.3 on recording the dimensions of resources with cassettes as carriers says to record the gauge (i.e., width) of the film or tape in millimetres and use the metric symbol mm. As an example, it gives the gauge of VHS tape as “13mm”. This differs from our practice in AACR2, where we recorded the dimensions in inches: ½ in.

There is an alternative to RDA 3.5.1.3 which gives the option to record dimensions in the system of measurement preferred by the agency preparing the description. The national libraries have different recommendations for applying the alternative:

  • Library of Congress: Use inches for discs and audio carriers
  • National Library of Australia: Do not apply.
  • British Library: Use inches for discs.

We felt that our catalog would be more consistent (and our patrons best served, should they choose to look at that field) if we continued to use inches for videotape, so we made it our local policy to do so:

300 __ ǂa 1 videocassette (95 min.) : ǂb sound, color ; ǂc 1/2 in.