Between pulpit and pew [electronic resource] : the supernatural world in Mormon history and folklore / W. Paul Reeve and Michael Scott Van Wagenen, editors. (vendor record) (and others)
One of these last batches of vendor records had some very strange “ISBNs”. I was not checking check digits (though maybe I should), just bad patterns/lengths. Some of these even appear in 020ǂa, not 020ǂz.
Записки неохотника : неполное собрание текстов / Борис Ванталов. (OCLC #654857782)
This piece was forwarded to me for subject heading work when it was identified as possibly being literary criticism, possibly due to the Z in the second cutter of its existing call number: PG3489.3.A53 Z16 2008
This particular book appears primarily to be a collection of works of the author (mini-novels, essays, etc) so I would classify it “Separate works. By title” in Table P-PZ40, which is .xA61-.xZ458. (I could also see an argument for .A6, “Selected works. Selections”, but I don’t think any of the included texts had previous wide publication.) The romanized title starts “Zapiski” so second cutter is early in the Z’s.
That Z is often a good signal though; general literary criticism for an author with a single cutter does get second cutter .Z5-.Z999, so it is shelved after all of the author’s actual works.
There was some literary criticism included near the end of the book, so I added the subject heading anyway to aid in discovery.
Classic problems of probability / Prakash Gorroochurn. (OCLC #757478610).
Mr. Sunday’s Saturday night chicken / Lorraine Wallace. (OCLC #774024192)
The first title was already in our collection; the second was in a DDA record pool and detected as a possible duplicate because their records share an ISBN!
The chicken book does have the ISBN in an 020ǂz (Cancelled/Invalid ISBN) but we are checking those as well because they often contain the ISBNs of the title from other ebook publishers or in other formats.
This particular ISBN (9781118063255) is a popular one; OCLC has it in records for eight distinct titles!
K otázce pronikání německého imperialismu na jihovýchod v období před rokem 1918 = Zur Frage des Vordringens des deutschen Imperialismus nach dem Südosten im Zeitabschnitt vor 1918 / Zdeněk Jindra. Iredentistická činnost nacionalisticky̌ch němců ČSR a jejich podpora imperialistickými a militaristickými kruhy německa v letech 1918-1923 = Die irredentistische Tätigkeit der nationalistischen Deutschen in der Tschechoslowakischen Republik und ihre Unterstützung durch die imperialistischen und militaristischen Kreise Deutschlands in den Jahren 1918-1923 / Koloman Gajan. (OCLC #869969589)
This was the only volume of this series (in our collection) that did not have its own unique title. It seemed messy to just have it as the only volume on a serial record, and a “Philosophy and History. no. 2” style monograph title didn’t seem much better, so I considered the piece to be collection of two articles with no collective title. That choice, plus the parallel titles, makes this the longest 245 I’ve seen in recent memory. (I wonder what the longest one in my catalog is?) It is also a nice reminder that 245ǂc is “Statement of responsibility, etc.” because it can also include additional titles and their subtitles, parallel titles, statements of responsibility, etc.
Connexion was initially upset with me for including both Polish and German accented characters in one field, so I had to hunt them down and convert them all to MARC-8 style combination. Thanks to the speaker at Midwinter who told us about Connexion’s “Edit -> MARC-8 Characters -> Verify” function, this will go more quickly next time!
Katalog der Handschriften des Augustiner Chorherrenstiftes Klosterneuburg / Alois Haidinger. (OCLC #36123526)
How many numbers does this thing have? Band 434, “Reihe II, Band 2”, Teil 3, COD 201-300? Ack! Teil 2 of this set (Band 225 of the series) has two volumes itself (“Katalogband” and “Registerband”) plus a supplement (“Beiheft”), so this was an exercise in series statements/labeling that hopefully turned out legible.
النهاية في مجرد الفقه والفتاوى / لأبي جعفر محمد بن الحسن بن علي الطوسي. (OCLC #15744405) and others.
Where is UAR on the shelf? (Uncataloged ARabic?)
About 20 years ago, the library received some Middle Eastern books which were then cataloged for circulation purposes, without being fully described. We eventually hired students to transcribe the title pages so that they could be fully cataloged, but some of the original (very brief) provisional records were never replaced.
Are these records useful now? Some have LCCNs as call numbers (!), and we do have some of those titles in the catalog on full records. We have migrated systems since the brief records were created, so no history is attached to them.
I am deleting the records for now; if these books ever materialize from their mysterious location, I’ll catalog them properly at that point!
Слова & Рисунки / Борис Ванталов ; [drawings] Б. Констриктор. (OCLC #870153748)
This book has a stylized title and statement of responsibility (even in the running title) crediting Boris Vantalov for the words and B. Konstriktor for the drawings. It turns out that these are the pen- and brush-name respectively of the poet/artist B.M. Axelrod, each with an established authorized access point to relate to the record.
Teoría y práctica del análisis cinematográfico : la seducción luminosa / Lauro Zavala Alvarado. (OCLC #670478948)
RDA 7.15.1.3 on Recording Illustrative Content says to disregard illustrated title pages and other minor illustrations, but what makes an illustration minor? Just drop caps, or little flowers between sections?
This particular book has clip art at the start of each chapter, like a film canister, a movie screen, or a director’s chair, but never anything so substantial as a photo of a director, or a still image from a film. If a patron were using the record to help choose a book (Cutter’s 3rd objective of the catalog), recording that the book has illustrations might mislead them, so I chose to disregard.
Московский метрополитен / О. Емельянов, Л. Карпухин. (OCLC #869836375)
I am puzzled by RDA 3.4.5.9 which describes how to record plates, but also says to disregard unnumbered sequences of plates unless (a) they form a substantial part of the resource, or (b) include a plate that is referred to in a note. In practice, I am continuing to see even small numbers (8, 16) of unnoted plates recorded in the extent. Do you still record them?
This book about the subway system in Moscow was about half made up of plates, so I was able to record the “55 unnumbered pages of plates” without worry.
Традиционный костюм народов Прикамья / [автор М.Г. Морозова]. (OCLC #31783562)
A colleague told me about a workshop she went to long ago called “Russian for Catalogers”. I imagine it sounded like: “A is still A, and E is still E, but H is N, and P is R. Backward N is I and backward R is IA. T is still T, unless it’s cursive, and then lowercase m is t, and g is d. Knowing your Greek letters will help, but only sometimes. Here’s a table. Sorry.”
We have found Wikipedia helpful, as well as this Field guide to Russian letters.