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Andrew Young and the making of modern Atlanta / Andrew Young, Harvey Newman and Andrea Young. (OCLC #960450467)

This title has a publication date of 2016, but a copyright date of 2017. Which goes into the LC call number?

In the Library of Congress Classification and Shelflisting Manual, in section G 140 on Dates, it says to add the date of publication to all monographs, specifying that the date of publication is taken from 264ǂc. Copyright date should only be used here if the date of publication is not identified.

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A taste of power / Elaine Brown. (OCLC #30385250)

It’s a fun day when we get an unusual format (a book on tape!) and get to look up all those codes. The 33X are:

336 __ ǂa spoken word ǂb spw ǂ2 rdacontent
337 __ ǂa audio ǂb s ǂ2 rdamedia
338 __ ǂa audiocassette ǂb ss ǂ2 rdacarrier

And the 007 is:

ǂa s ǂb s ǂd l ǂe s ǂf n ǂg j ǂh l ǂi c

which is:

  • ǂa s – sound recording
  • ǂb s – sound cassette
  • ǂd l – speed: 1 7/8 ips (inches per second), the speed of standard cassettes
  • ǂe s – stereophonic sound
  • ǂf n – item does not have grooves (like a record)
  • ǂg j – height and width of cassette: 3 7/8 × 2 ½ in. (standard)
  • ǂh l – tape width: 1/8 in. (standard)
  • ǂi c – quarter track configuration
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Brother outsider : the life of Bayard Rustin / Independent Television Service presents ; a production of Question Why Films ; produced and directed by Nancy Kates, Bennett Singer. (OCLC #830187476)

The DVD on the left is already in our collection; we received the one on the right for cataloging. They are the same film, just from different distributors, so everything appears the same except for the style of the credits. We don’t typically collect duplicates; should both go into the collection?

This was a collection development decision; we bumped the question to the selector, who said yes.

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Will you be at ALA Midwinter?

I’ll be speaking on Saturday at the ALCTS CaMMS Catalog Management Interest Group Forum on the topic of oral history cataloging, and our semi-automated process for it.

Hope to see you there!

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Книга памяти / [издана комитетом в составе: Норы Левин] [and others] ; [edited by Joseph Vinokurov, Shimon Kipnis, Nora Levin]. (OCLC #745076463)

Picking up this book, I was reminded of last year’s weird dos-à-dos book with Uzbek from left-to-right, and Arabic from right-to-left. This one has Russian from left-to-right followed by English from left-to-right, with Yiddish from right-to-left.

Is it still a dos-à-dos or tête-bêche if it has a third book sandwiched in between?

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Sobranie sochineniĭ. V 4-kh t. [Vstupit. slovo I. Andronikova. Predisl. E. Starikovoĭ. Podgot. teksta i tekstol. primech. L. Smirnovoĭ. Primech. V. Zemskova]. (OCLC #2973358)

I don’t really know much Russian (though I have recently started the Duolingo course) but my bibliographic knowledge of the language gets me quite far in copy cataloging. This includes recognizing phrases like “Собрание сочинений” (“Sobranie sochineniĭ” = “collected works”) and guessing which words that appear on the piece are likely to be present, not present, or abbreviated in the record.

Recognizing this set as a complete works, I started my search using the year of the first volume (1968), and the author’s name (Romanized, as most older records do not include Cyrillic). This narrowed my search results down to ten OCLC records from which I was able to quickly recognize a good DLC record for a four-volume complete works.

I avoided searching for the title directly; “Sobranie sochinenii” was likely to appear, but I have sometimes seen titles translating to “complete works” omitted from 245, the idea covered by a 240 “Works”. The remainder of what could be the title, “в четырех томах” = “in four volumes” is present in this record’s 245ǂb but abbreviated, so would not have resulted in a successful search.

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We’ve just begun cataloging a large gift of VHS tapes, transferred to the university’s library from our Martin Luther King Center. Looks like there are some good titles in there! I did have to replace the batteries in our cataloging department’s VCR remote (we had not used it in a while) as the pause button is crucial for cataloging.

Hopefully we’ll find copy for most of these, but if not, we will consult OLAC’s DVD and Blu-Ray guide, adjusting accordingly for format.

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Aulularia / T. Maccius Plautus ; with notes critical and exegetical and an introduction by Wilhelm Wagner. (OCLC #968214555)

This print-on-demand facsimile of an 1876 book was missing a page (perhaps because the original was missing a page), so the printer included the missing content as a photocopy from what appears to be a different edition. We’ll probably make a pocket for it, as we would folded maps.

A few years ago I presented at the ALA Preservation Administrators Interest Group about reprints and reproductions as preservation copies, in which I caution against replacing brittle originals with crisp new photocopies; though much of the metadata may be the same, you may end up with slightly different content. (This was not such a replacement, and the content is likely fine for most purposes, but this kind of thing always gives me pause.)

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Numerical recipes in C++ : the art of scientific computing / William H. Press [and others]. (OCLC #48241370)

Throwback Thursday! Sort of.

I kind of love that we still have forms like these floating around, and use them to circulate books in some of our branches. Now I have to go update the online catalog with its information.

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Beiträge zur Tabakforschung international. (OCLC #8415862)

This CD-ROM was included with the April 1999 issue of this journal, with no more explanation than appears on its label (“CD-ROM, Version 1.0, March 1999.”) Is it the previous issue? A supplement? An ad?

We warily put the CD into a modern-ish computer (Windows 7) to investigate, and found (among other things) NFO files: likely Folio Infobase files, given the Folio logo on the disc.

Not having a reader for such files handy (the one provided on the disc would run, but not read any of the files), we looked at other issues for more clues. Near the beginning of the November 1998 was a note that they would be issuing a CD-ROM of abstracts and title references from 1961 to the present, and that it would be released by February 1999 (so close!).

So how to represent it in the bib/mfhd? As its own thing? As a supplement? (to which issue?) As an index? Is it worth keeping in the library collection if it won’t run on our typical computers? Was version 1.1 ever released? Can it be reformatted?

Serial inventory = good times.