Category: Uncategorized

Categories
Uncategorized

Un catecismo para los negocios : respuestas de la enseñanza católica a los dilemas éticos de la empresa / Andrew V. Abela, Joseph E. Capizzi ; traducción, Francisco J. Lara. (OCLC #956991214)

While MARC 020 $a is for the ISBN for the particular item you are cataloging:

020 __ ǂa 9780813228877 (electronic bk.)

you can include more ISBNs in 020 $z (“Canceled/invalid ISBN”). This subfield is often used to include the ISBN of a different version of the title, such as an eISBN in a record for the print.

020 __ ǂz 9780813228860 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Today I found the ISBN for the (original) English version of this title in the record for its translation into Spanish:

020 __ ǂz 9780813228846

this was included in a $z because though it was structurally valid (correct number of digits, check digit matched), it was an invalid application, being for a different resource.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Brown Betty cookbook [electronic resource] : modern vintage desserts and stories from Philadelphia’s best bakery / Linda Hinton Brown and Norrinda Brown Hayat ; photography by Alison Conklin. (OCLC #843126922)

Is it good or bad timing that so many cookbooks (including this one) were just removed from our DDA discovery record profile? (How many short term loans might we have had this weekend?)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Categories
Uncategorized

The Yellow River / by Irene P. Freeley. (OCLC #83798544)

Very funny, Florida State University cataloger from 1983.

Categories
Uncategorized

[Liḳrat Shabat ṿe-Yom ṭov] = Likrat Shabbat : worship, study, and song : for Sabbath and festival services and for the home / compiled and translated by Sidney Greenberg ; edited by Jonathan D. Levine. (OCLC #9057683)

Not all administrative metadata we know about the piece ends up in the bib record, or even stays with the piece. (We removed the tape and the post-it during cataloging of this gift to the library.)

Categories
Uncategorized

한국 문화 어떻게 가르칠 것 인가 : 이론 과 실제 / 이 성희 지음. (OCLC #961941940)

I found copy in OCLC for a very similar book to this one, but with some differences: same title, author, publisher, and publication date; different pagination, ISBN, and parallel title. A different edition?

My Korean language skills are minimal (I know the alphabet and some words) but I can match strings in the record against those on the cover and title page. I spotted a word that seemed specific to my edition (in the circle on the top left, in orange lettering on the cover), but what did it mean?

Google Translate has handwriting input for Korean which works well, suggesting the correct letters/blocks, even if your handwriting isn’t the greatest. My extra word translated as “revision”, so I was able to quickly derive a new record for this new edition.

Categories
Uncategorized

The hunger games. Mockingjay / Lionsgate presents ; a Color Force/Lionsgate production ; produced by Nina Jacobson, Jon Kilik ; screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong ; adaptation by Suzanne Collins ; directed by Francis Lawrence. (OCLC #961480896)

OLAC’s Best Practices for Cataloging DVD-Video and Blu-ray Discs Using RDA and MARC21 indicate that widescreen presentation of a DVD may be recorded as an edition statement when it is presented as such:

    250 __ $a Widescreen edition.

Regardless of whether it appears as an edition statement, it should also be recorded in a 500 note:

    500 __ $a Wide screen (2.4:1).

As many fields that we used to record as free-text in a 538 note now are recorded in specific fields (like 344 for sound characteristics, 346 for video characteristics), it is tempting to put this information into 345 (Projection Characteristics of Moving Image) which has a subfield for presentation format, but this should not be done. This field is only for use with actual motion picture film, and should not be used for DVDs.

Categories
Uncategorized

La “Collation Sechehaye” du Cours de Linguistique Générale de Ferdinand de Saussure / édition, introduction et notes par Estanislao Sofia. (OCLC #954052946)

This title appears to be criticism/interpretation of a famous work, Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure. The copy we found for the book in hand had this LC call number assigned:

    P121.S369 S64 2015

It seemed odd that it had two cutters (one for Saussure, another for the editor?) so I checked the LC schedule. P121 is “Philology. Linguistics—Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar—Science of language (Linguistics)—General works”, so it makes sense that our copies of Saussure’s work itself have call numbers like:

    P121.S36

But what about that second cutter? Is there a rule somewhere in the Shelflisting manual about adding 9 and then a second cutter for the editor? I checked our catalog, and found two other titles around P121.S36 in our catalog with that same construction, but don’t know where it comes from.

G340 in the shelflisting manual says that for criticism/commentary of a work classified with one cutter, you should start with the call number of the main work, add the digit “3” and then a second cutter based on the main entry of the criticism/commentary work.

So is this a typo? (Repeated by several catalogers for commentaries of the same work?) Or is there a rule I haven’t yet found?

Categories
Uncategorized

That mailbox full of stuff? It’s an artist’s book, and I’m cataloging it soon.

Categories
Uncategorized

While cleaning up some records today, I noticed a few videos whose titles appeared in the catalog as:

  [videorecording]

I wondered if this was some sort of intense art film with no title, or if someone was intentionally or unintentionally messing with catalogers by giving their film a title more often seen as a GMD. (Was this a film about the history of the GMD??)

I clicked through and found that it was a perfectly normal film, with the title: 

  $100 a day : justice and reparation in California's
    legal system

And this had somehow ended up in the MARC record as:

  245 00 ǂ1 00 a day : justice and reparation in California's
    legal system

The dollar sign is a particularly dangerous one to have in your data if you’re not careful with your processing. In many languages it signals the beginning of a variable, so “$100” may have unpredictable (or erroneous) behavior. It’s also a common convention for representing the subfield delimiter in a MARC record, so:

  245 00 $a $100 a day

might have looked like it contained an empty subfield $a and been cleaned up in text to form:

  245 00 $100 a day

and then reinterpreted as:

  245 00 ǂ1 00 a day

It’s important to sanitize your input!

Categories
Uncategorized

The October 18, 2016 release of RDA Toolkit includes (among others) the following change to RDA 7.15.1.1 (scope of Illustrative content):

Tables containing only words and/or numerical data are excluded, not considered as
illustrative content. Disregard illustrated title pages, etc., and minor illustrations. 

On the RDA-L listserv, reactions to this change seem mixed. Some appreciate RDA not overstepping (a library might consider a book illustrated when it has an illustrated title page) and others appreciate the guidance this rule has given in the past, anticipating questions about such illustrations from new catalogers.

Illustrative Matter is not a core element in RDA. Even LC PCC-PS only considers it a core element for resources intended for children. So we might consider why we record this element. If someone is looking for a book about musicians, and only wants an illustrated book, is it helpful to include among those results a book that has no illustrations except for a Pelican logo? Or should we only include books with illustrations that supplement the pages’ informative content, or guide the story?