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The Hasidim : mystical adventures and ecstatics / Anne N. Lowenkopf. (OCLC #898652)

This volume appeared on the problem cataloging shelf, despite having had a good DLC record since 1974. How did we not spot it?

The volume has a typo on its title page: it says “mystical adventures”, where the cover and title page verso both refer to “mystical adventureRs”. This inconsistency was represented in the DLC record in the 245ǂb as:

    mystical adventure[r]s and ecstatics

While this is understandable to a person reading from a catalog card, and would likely not cause that card to be differently sorted, it’s not great for an online catalog, in which a search for “mystical adventures” would not (and did not) retrieve this record.

RDA 1.7.9 on Inaccuracies in elements to be transcribed says to transcribe any inaccuracy as it appears on the piece, unless the element has instructions to the contrary. RDA 2.3.1.4 on Recording titles only provides an exception for inaccuracies in titles of serials or integrating resources, so for this monograph, we would only transcribe the inaccuracy:

245 14 ǂa The Hasidim : ǂb mystical adventures and ecstatics / ǂc Anne N. Lowenkopf.

with the corrected spelling included as a variant title:

246 34 ǂa Hasidim : ǂb mystical adventurers and ecstatics

Shout-out to OCLC’s GLIMIR feature for implying, while we were editing a minimal record with just one holding (but which had the title-page-version of the title), that there was a very similar record with over a hundred!

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The lead, zinc, and fluorspar deposits of western Kentucky / by E.O. Ulrich and W.S. Tangier Smith. (OCLC #5796647)

Throwback Thursday!

This volume from 1905 helpfully includes a page of “library catalogue slips” that you can cut out and mount on cards for use in your local card catalog.

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Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici sive De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII / recognovit et prolegomenis, apparatu critico, commentario, indicibus instruxit Clemens C.I. Webb. (OCLC #965502804)

The LC-PCC PS for RDA 1.11 includes specific instructions for RDA cataloging of Print on Demand (POD) Reproductions and Photocopies, which roughly say:

  • Create one provider-neutral record for all potential print-on-demand copies of the title from any vendor.
  • Most fields (including publication information) can more or less be cloned from the record for the original.
  • Fixed field Form should be “r” to indicate print reproduction (but do not code “r” in DtSt).
  • Include this note: 533 __ ǂa Print reproduction.
  • Link back to the original manifestation with 775.
  • If you wish to include information about your specific printing (ISBN, vendor), do so in 020, 037 respectively.

These rules have a fairly narrow scope, and should only be applied to facsimile reprints and reproductions; follow standard RDA rules for other types of reprints and new editions.

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Memoría histórica y poscolonialismo en Corea del Sur : los usos del pasado en el nuevo cine documental / María del Pilar Álvarez. (OCLC #965255325)

This volume had a prominent “Korea Foundation” logo on it, and an explanatory statement on the title page verso, which I included in a quoted note:

500 __ ǂa "The Korea foundation has provided financial assistance
    for the undertaking of this publication project"--Title page
    verso.

I also wanted to include an added entry for the foundation with a “sponsoring body” relationship, but had some difficulty locating its AAP. A Corporate / Conference Name authority search for “Korea Foundation” returned 55 results, most of which were romanized Korean; I assumed most of them had something including “Korea Foundation” as a 410, but as the results list only shows the authorized access points (110), I could not quickly identify which was the one I was looking for.

I looked up the foundation on Wikipedia, and found its name in Korean (한국국제교류재단) which I used to repeat my OCLC search, and quickly find the authority I was looking for:

    110 2_ ǂa Han'guk Kukche Kyoryu Chaedan
    410 2_ ǂa Korea Foundation

for inclusion in my bib record:

710 2_ ǂa Han'guk Kukche Kyoryu Chaedan, ǂe sponsoring body.

I realized then that I could have also done the search on the authories.loc.gov web site, whose search results do actually include the text of the 410 with a References link to get you to the authorized form:

I will try to remember that for future similar searches!

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Delphi series. Volume I / featuring Anna Leahy, Karen L. George, & Robert Perry Ivey. (OCLC #964631912)

The MARC 505 (Formatted Contents Note) in its basic format contains only one subfield ǂa with a contents note marked up with ISBD punctuation:

505 0_ ǂa Sharp miracles / by Anna Leahy -- The fire circle /
    by Karen L. George -- Letters to my daughter / by Robert
    Perry Ivey.

There are subfields for doing further markup, such as ǂt for titles and ǂr for statement of responsibility, and some ILS will even honor those and index the contents as titles and authors respectively:

505 00 ǂt Sharp miracles / ǂr by Anna Leahy -- ǂt The fire
    circle / ǂr by Karen L. George -- ǂt Letters to my daughter /
    ǂr by Robert Perry Ivey.

This is not the ideal way to index them however; the authors’ names are not in their authorized forms here, the statements of responsibility may include words like “by”, and the titles may include non-filing words like “The”. (There is a subfield ǂg for “Miscellaneous information” which could theoretically be used to “remove” such things, but the MARC documentation specifically says NOT to use it for that purpose.) For this reason, it is best to also include added entries for indexing:

700 12 ǂa Leahy, Anna, ǂd 1965- ǂt Sharp miracles.
700 12 ǂa George, Karen ǂq (Karen L.). ǂt Fire circle.
700 12 ǂa Ivey, Robert Perry. ǂt Letters to my daughter.
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Found poetry: the results of a title browse for “I wish I”:

I wish I had a heart like yours, Walt Whitman.
I wish I was sick, too!
I wish I could hold your hand–
I wish I worked there!
I wish I’d written that;
I wish I had–

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Delphi series. Volume II / featuring Joy Ladin, Jennifer Litt, & Tasha Cotter. (OCLC #964571488)

I was very conflicted about identifying the title proper of this book. What may be considered a series statement is most prominent on the cover, followed by the publisher (Blue Lyra Press), with the titles of the contained works in smaller print near the bottom. One could consider it a work with no collective title, but there is a main title page that does not include these individual titles at all, so I went with what was presented as a title and statement of responsibility on that source:

    245 10 ǂa Delphi series. ǂn Volume II / ǂc featuring
        Joy Ladin, Jennifer Litt, & Tasha Cotter.

I also included a variant title entry for the publisher, as its placement may cause it to be mistaken for a title:

    246 3_ ǂa Blue Lyra Press

The individual titles are in a contents note and in name/title added entries.

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Whenever I consult OCLC’s When to Input a New Record documentation (which is bookmarked as “NEW RECORD?” on my browser) I hear in my head the Mario Party voice, triumphantly shouting “New record!”

(Is that just me?)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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The Troublesome Catalogers and Magical Metadata Fairies had an interesting discussion on Facebook recently: how should we encode that an ebook is open access, so that patrons can limit their search to open access materials only?

I have a few thoughts on this:

  • I am not in the habit of doing this for our open access books, but it might make sense to put it in MARC 506 (Restrictions on Access Note), like:
    • 506 0_ ǂa Open access.
    • Note that the first indicator zero means “no restrictions”.
  • Should this go in the bib or elsewhere? If a library had access to multiple copies, some open access and some not (this does happen), it might make more sense to attach this as a note or license to the particular holding/portfolio under the bib.
  • Once you’ve decided how to encode this, there’s the added step of configuring the OPAC/discovery layer to allow limiting in this way.
  • Is this a common search for patrons to want to do in the library catalog? If so, why? For the academic purpose of just knowing which titles are open access? or for some practical reason concerning their own access? Our patrons should be able to access any of our ebook titles from off campus; they may have to login through a proxy though. In an in-person discussion, somebody mentioned the idea of reference librarians (particularly in public health) identifying resources that they could send to community members more broadly, which seems like a good use case. Any others?

Any other thoughts?

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The death train : a personal account of a holocaust survivor / Luba Krugman Gurdus. (OCLC #4825260)

While cataloging a gift book from a large collection, one of our catalogers spotted a letter tucked into one volume; it was written to the book’s author, from Menachem Begin, who was Prime Minister of Israel during the book’s publication. I alerted our Special Collections selector in case they’d like to add this to our collections!