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Basic data on depressive symptomatology, United States, 1974-75 / [Rona Beth Sayetta and David P. Johnson]. (OCLC #5833792)

To search for a Sudoc number in OCLC (like “HE 20.6209:11/216”), use the gn: index, and remove all punctuation and spacing from the number:

gn: HE20620911216

This search does return the title we’re looking for:

Vital and health statistics. Series 11, no. 216
HE 20.6209:11/216

but also this one, whose Sudoc number compresses to the same string:

NCHS CD-ROM. Series 21, no. 6.
HE 20.6209/11:21/6

This is still a useful search, to quickly get you to government document records (if they exist), but since that compression to the search string is lossy, you must confirm that any record you find this way is the correct one.

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Daniel Boone / by Reuben Gold Thwaites. (OCLC #994154857)

Here’s a fun one from our Special Collections cataloger: This volume had a publication date of 1909 on the title page, a copyright date of 1902 on the verso, but no edition statement anywhere, except next to the title’s entry on the series list in the front matter:

Daniel Boone.
By Reuben Gold Thwaites. Third Edition.

So is that usable in the record?

RDA 2.5.2.2 says that Designation of Edition may be taken from anywhere inside the piece and used unbracketed. Given the difference in years, it made sense that this would be the third edition (and didn’t make a lot of sense that they would reference that edition in the series title list if this was not it), so we included it as an edition statement:

250 __ ǂa Third edition.
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Inventory of federal archives in the states : series IV, the Department of War. no. 14, Iowa / prepared by the Survey of Federal Archives, Division of Professional and Service Projects, Work Projects Administration ; the National Archives, cooperating sponsor. (OCLC #994006495)

Sometimes it’s helpful to get ebook metadata from the print record, like when the technician doing the digitization has covered the publication information with their hand:

264 _1 ǂa Des Moines, Iowa : ǂb Historical Records Survey Project,
    ǂc 1940.

We did not bracket the information, as the record is provider-neutral, and covers any potential complete copies as well (of whose content we can be reasonably confident).

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Les Prix Nobel. (OCLC #1644058)

We already own quite a few volumes of this serial, as described in the holdings record:

  866	31 ǂa 1948-1975,
  866	31 ǂa 1977-1980,
  866	31 ǂa 1982-1983,
  866	31 ǂa 1985-1986,
  866	31 ǂa 1988,
  866	31 ǂa 1990-2000

Note the multiple lines ending in commas, indicating gaps in our collection. We recently received a gift of four more volume (1981, 1984, 1987, 1989), so I got to rewrite the holdings as:

  866	31 ǂa 1948-1975,
  866	31 ǂa 1977-2000

So satisfying! Maybe someday 1976 will arrive and tidy things further.

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Early American art : a window on history and culture. (OCLC #49595559)

In cataloging, we aren’t always privy to collection development decisions, but sometimes we get a peek. In this case, we accepted this CD-ROM for the fine arts library because:

  • still works
  • adorable / historical
  • rare outside New England

The jewel case is broken though, so that will have to be replaced.

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Women leaders in chaotic environments : examinations of leadership using complexity theory / Şefika Şule Erçetin, editor. (OCLC #953709589)

A few months back on the Troublesome Catalogers Facebook group, somebody mentioned keeping a strip of ruler tape on her desk. Despite having multiple brightly colored rulers on or around my desk, I was constantly searching for them during original cataloging, so this is like magic.

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Lincoln on leadership : 41 powerful insights from his speeches, telegrams, letters, memos, and orders / edited and annotated by Harold Holzer. (OCLC #823508278)

The Civil War : 1861-1862 : an illustrated history / [editor, Kelly Knauer]. (OCLC #762190690)

1862 : the year of hope and horror / Weider History Group. (OCLC #859337573)

We don’t normally accept individual issues of magazines (or journals) into the library collection, but these were all special issues with their own individual titles. Other libraries seem to have made similar decisions, a I was able to find copy for all three (but not for individual issues generally).

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Commutative rings / Ayman Badawi, editor. (OCLC #50857508)

A sharp-eyed patron browsing books in QC (Physics) spotted this book next to Fourier’s “The analytical theory of heat”, and wondered if it was out of place: “Should it be in QA instead?”

The book was labeled QC 251.3, so he went to QA 251.3 and indeed, found lots more books on commutative rings and algebras. Somehow our catalog ended up with a bad typo!

We re-classed the book under QA 251.3 (the number in the OCLC master record) and re-labeled, so it can now be with its friends on the shelf and more likely discovered by interested browsing patrons.

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Contributions from the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. (OCLC #1751828)

This serial which started in 1891 (found on the shelf like this) appears too brittle to bind (early volumes at least fail the double fold test), which may explain why somebody made these little paper separators to label and “bind” groups of volumes together on the shelf. Which may be fine, as long as nobody touches them! These volumes may need some kind of box or other more stable support, a decision that will be made in binding/labeling, downstream from cataloging.

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Completion of assignment report : July 1981-August 1986 / Russell H. Brannon. (OCLC #39501215)

Long ago when this piece was cataloged and processed, its call number label was mixed up with that of its neighbor, which is not too surprising, given how similar they are:

S540.I56 B730 1986
S540.I56 B370 1986

They are very similar documents, so the only difference in call number is the cutter for the author:

  • Russell Brannon – B730
  • Harry Barnard – B370

This error was discovered during digitization (call numbers on the pieces didn’t match the catalog), and reported to cataloging for correction. Another report from that same year by Mr. Brannon also received the B730 version of the call number, so that was shifted for uniqueness.