Categories
Uncategorized

Pele / Rod Smith. (OCLC #785823200)

In OCLC copy, this reader about Pelé was initially classed under GV942.7: Soccer, individual biographies. We bought many books in this Penguin series, and classed them in the same area so they could be easily browsed in our collection.

From what we found in copy for other titles in the series, many libraries had this same idea, but made different decisions on what that classification should be, including: (our decision bolded)

  • PE1121 – intermediate and advanced readers
  • PE1126.A4 – readers for adults
  • PE1126.N43 – readers for new literates
  • PE1128 – general textbooks for foreign speakers
Categories
Uncategorized

Great expectations / Charles Dickens ; retold by Clare West. (OCLC #182520269)

We recently got a collection of simplified editions of classic works. For example, where the original says:

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

This version says:

My first name was Philip, but when I was a small child I could only manage to say Pip. So Pip was what everybody called me.

I wondered, is this a new expression of the work “Great Expectations” created by Charles Dickens? (maybe an adaptation or free translation?) or is it a whole new work? Who should be recorded as the creator?

RDA 19.2.1.3 includes as an example this very situation (and this very title, but with a different reteller):

Great expectations / Charles Dickens ; retold by Florence Bell

and indicates that “Florence Bell” should be recorded as the creator of the (new) work.

Categories
Uncategorized

Ionic channels of excitable membranes / Bertil Hille. (OCLC #10755486)

This gift book was already labeled with a call number that didn’t quite look like a Library of Congress call number. It was in the copy we found as a National Library of Medicine call number:

060 __ ǂa QH 601 ǂb H651i 1984

We re-labeled with a Library of Congress call number, which was quite similar:

050 00 ǂa QH601 ǂb .H55 1984

The two classifications are similar enough that in our collection, we do have some titles with NLM call numbers assigned, but interfiled with the LC collections.

Categories
Uncategorized

Abstracts. (OCLC #7352023)

We initially did not find copy for this volume, probably because it was difficult to determine (particularly from the cover) what might have been used as the title proper (Ti? 3rd International…? The Academy…?). The title page and spine suggested the simple title “Abstracts”, a search for which returned many records and needed significant refining.

Categories
Uncategorized

Latinos in the heartland : proceedings of the 12th annual conference : positive steps toward a pluralist society, St. Louis, Missouri, June 12-14, 2013 / Stephen Jeannetta and Corinne Valdivia, editors ; with the assistance of Katarina Sostaric and Lindsey Saunders. (OCLC #889753646)

The record for this title includes the subject headings:

    650 0 ǂa Hispanic Americans ǂz Middle West.
    651 0 ǂa Middle West ǂx Emigration and immigration.

The MARC field 043 (Geographic Area Code) is used if a subject heading assigned to the item has a geographic term in any form or position.

The code for Middle West (on the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas) is:

    043 __ ǂa n-usc--

You can generate these fields quickly in OCLC (from the 6XX) using the macro OCLC!Generate043.

Categories
Uncategorized

A treatise of the lawes of the forest : wherein is declared not onely those lawes, as they are now in force, but also the originall and beginning of forests : and what a forest is in his owne proper nature, and wherein the same doth differ from a chase, a parke, or a warren, with all such things as are incident or belonging thereunto, with their seuerall proper tearmes of art ; also a Treatise of the pourallee : declaring what pourallee is, how the same first began, what a pourallee man may do, how he may hunt and vse his owne pourallee, how farre he may pursue and follow after his chase, together with the limits and bounds, as well of the forest, as the pourallee : collected, as well out of the common lawes and statutes of this land, as also out of sundrie learned auncient authors, and out of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster / by Iohn Manvvood ; whereunto are added the statutes of the forest, a Treatise of the seuerall offices of verderors, regardors, and foresters, & the Courts of Attachments, Swanimote, & Iustice seat of the Forest, and certaine principall Cases, Iudgements, and Entries of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster: neuer heretofore printed for the publique. (OCLC #7955672)

In a modern computerized ILS, there is little marginal cost for each additional access point. In a card catalog however, each access point (title, authors, subjects, series) will be a heading on its own card in the catalog. If the title (and thus the record) is long enough to span multiple cards, each heading will also generate multiple cards!

This set of cards cut off nearly half the ISBD Area 1 paragraph (italicized above), including the full description only on the shelf list card.

Categories
Uncategorized

Cults of America / by Maurice Beam. (OCLC #5796766)

Vinabind is a binding process where the paperback cover (and any stickers or labels on it) is laminated and then the book is re-bound with that cover. RDA 3.22.1.3 on Making Notes on Item-Specific Carrier Characteristics says to “make a note about carrier characteristics of the specific item being described if considered important for identification or selection.”

This volume is not an early printed resource (which have different rules in RDA) and this did not seem like an important enough feature to record, so I did not mention it even in our local copy. In OCLC, local binding does not generally justify a new record, though one record (and only one that I can find!) does mention it.

Categories
Uncategorized

Within the walls ; and, What do I love? / H.D. ; edited by Annette Debo. (OCLC #890587170)

Though this author is best known as H.D. (reflected in her name authority record), her class number is assigned such that she is filed under the fuller form of her name, Hilda Doolittle. PS3507 is for individual American authors, 1900-1960, name starting with D, and cuttered by second letter so we have:

  • PS3507.I93 – Dixon, Thomas
  • PS3507.O726 – Doolittle, Hilda
  • PS3507.R55 – Dreiser, Theodore

Her class number is subarranged using table P-PZ40, so we use A6 for this volume which contains two titles (Selections). This is not her complete works, and the titles are in different forms (Essays and Poems), so I followed RDA 6.2.2.10.3 on Other Compilations of Two or More Works, and recorded the preferred title for each of the works instead of adding “Selections” to a conventional collective title (like “Novels”):

    245 10 ǂa Within the walls ; ǂb and, What do I love? / ǂc H.D. ; 
        edited by Annette Debo.
    740 02 ǂa What do I love?
Categories
Uncategorized

Three horsemen of the new apocalypse / Nirad C. Chaudhuri. (OCLC #38258401)

RDA 16.2.3.7 on Alternate Linguistic Form of Name includes the specific case that “if the name recorded as the preferred name begins with a number expressed as a word or contains a number expressed as a word, and numbers expressed as words are accessed differently from numbers expressed as numerals, record the form with the number expressed as an arabic numeral as a variant name.”

For this title, that would be:

245 10 ǂa Three horsemen of the new apocalypse / ǂc Nirad C.
    Chaudhuri.
246 3_ ǂa 3 horsemen of the new apocalypse
Categories
Uncategorized

[Agricultural Adjustment Administration documents related to Kentucky] (OCLC #891104587)

(Cataloging flash mob!)

For this month’s Third Thursday (cataloging discussion and professional development), we did a “bring your cataloging problems” session. I brought one that had been lurking on a nearby shelf in cataloging for years.

Those 39 volumes were not actually books; they were a bound archival collection (of letters, forms, and other documents related to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Kentucky) but our Archives/Special Collections did not want them in their collections. Though the volumes contained some federal government documents, they also contained many state government documents (all mixed together!) so they did not belong in our federal documents collection either.

There were so many decisions to make: Should they be disbound, and the pieces cataloged separately and sorted into their appropriate locations? Should they get a detailed finding aid, or a briefer collection record? Should we gather more opinions from staff who might remember more about the collection, or change their opinion about which branch it should live in?

One thing that was clear was that the books were getting no use sitting on my shelf, and with all of my analysis paralysis going on, that’s where they were going to stay unless I got some help. At the problem session, I passed out volumes and a skeletal record to the group, and told them my basic plan: keep the volumes bound, collection record only, shelve in main library. Together we examined the materials and muscled through the record, discussing each questionable field until we had consensus, and adding more subject access points to make it more discoverable by researchers in the field. It took about 40 minutes – now that shelf is clear!

If there is interest, someone may eventually re-visit this collection and give it a more thorough description, but for now, its discoverability has been significantly improved.