Tag: classification

Categories
Uncategorized

Map worlds : a history of women in cartography / Will C. van den Hoonaard. (OCLC #830352925)

This book on our shelf had the same call number as this book on a very different topic:

Sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps / Chet Van Duzer. (OCLC #844705228)

Both were classed under GA203, a general special class number (under Cartography–History) which is for special aspects of the subject as a whole which don’t have their own place in the classification. I moved the sea monsters book to GA781 (Cartography, European maps) which was more specific; the sea monsters aspect is still accessible via subject headings.

No new “general special” numbers are being established, and there are generally only narrow ways these classifications should be used (amorphous works, too new subjects). However, GA203 has a scope note specifying that it should be used for “cartographical sources, value of maps in boundary disputes, popes as geographers.” The topic “women cartographers” seemed similar in scope, and I couldn’t find a more specific appropriate classification, so I left it as general special.

Categories
Uncategorized

中国民俗故事 = Chinese folk tales / 编绘 侯冠滨. (OCLC #46315682)

This book has as its first subject heading Tales–China–Juvenile literature, which according to Classification Web is most highly correlated with GR335 (Folklore, China). I do like the classification already in the record though (PL1117: Chinese language, Readers, Intermediate and Advanced); the piece is a picture book with text in both Chinese and English, so will likely be more useful to our library’s foreign language learners than to our folklorists.

Categories
Uncategorized

安妮日记 / 安妮 · 弗兰克著 ; 奥托 · 弗兰克, 米莉亚姆 · 普雷斯勒编 ; 高年生译. (OCLC #436270933)

I classed this diary of Anne Frank (translated to Chinese from the original Dutch) under DS135.N6 (The Jews, Netherlands, Biography and memoirs) to parallel what Libray of Congress did – so why does Anne Frank have a class number in her authority record (PT5834.F68: under Dutch authors, 1800-1960)?

It turns out that Anne Frank did author more than her diary, and these works, along with any criticism of those works are classed there. There is a spot under this classification for autobiography (PT5834.F68 Z46) but the DS classification is probably more helpful.

Categories
Uncategorized

明鑼移山 / 文・圖: 阿諾・羅北兒 ; 譯: 杨茂秀 (OCLC #36945691)

Despite being in Chinese and being set in ancient China, this is actually a translation of an English-language picture book, “Ming Lo moves the mountain” by Arnold Lobel, author of “Frog and Toad are friends”.

Many libraries would class this under PZ (Fiction and juvenile belles lettres) but our main branch doesn’t really collect in that area, so we avoid it when we can; I classed under the author’s number (PS3562.O18) and extended the title cutter to indicate Chinese translation. It does include the English version, but in the back, and with much smaller pictures, so I considered the Chinese to be primary.

Categories
Uncategorized

夏綠蒂的網 = Charlotte’s web / 懷特 (E. B. White) 著；威廉斯 (Garth Williams) 圖；黃可凡譯. (OCLC #56323966)

In this Chinese edition of Charlotte’s Web, the illustrations of Charlotte’s words in the web (like “some pig”) are done with Chinese characters (something like 非凡豬, meaning “extraordinary pig”). Cute!

To build the call number, I took the call number for our existing copy of Charlotte’s web and extended using the Translation table to indicate a Chinese translation.

PS3545.H5187 C43 1952 - our existing copy of Charlotte's web
PS3545.H5187 C43127 2003 - Chinese translation

(Thanks to Chinese-speaking friends for looking at this one!)

Categories
Uncategorized

Mensonges d’États / Xavier Daugreilh ; mise en scène de Nicolas Briançon. (OCLC #859669542)

This play is no. 1351 of the series “Avant-scène. Théâtre”. The authority record for that series suggests classing together (PN2003: Drama, Periodicals, French). The branch that bought this volume has only a couple of others from that series, all classed separately. I followed this practice, classing the title as a separate work under the author’s class number (PQ2664.A78), and recorded this variation in our local authority file:

    646 __ ‡a c ‡5 DLC
    646 __ ‡a s ‡5 YOUNG

Now the title is more easily discoverable on the shelf among works by similar authors, and there is no stray call number ending in “no.1351”, leaving you wondering where the other volumes are.

Categories
Uncategorized

Small : thoughts and projects / Carl Turner Architects. (OCLC #868008743)

Where to classify a book when its subject has more than one facet? I often class architecture books under one of the “Special artist” call numbers for the country where the firm is based (e.g. NA997 for England), but this title is about a specific type of architecture: small buildings.

I searched our catalog for other titles in the small buildings classification (NA7533) and found quite a few; we must be collecting in that area, so I classified there.

Subject headings will provide access to this title for those looking for English architects.

Categories
Uncategorized

Comment le voile est tombé sur la crèche / Caroline Eliacheff. (OCLC #864819163)

Many class numbers (including BP65, Islam in Europe) are subdivided “By country, A-Z” or “By region or country, A-Z”. Since this title is about France, I am using the standard geographic cutter .F8. The only geographic areas specifically mentioned in the schedule are the ones that vary from standard usage. For example, under BP65, the cutters .S7-.S72 are reserved for Spain (usually just .S7) as there are likely to be more titles about Islam in this country.

Categories
Uncategorized

This shelf range caught my eye as I was waiting for the compact shelving to open, and one of the titles looked a bit out of place. But it wasn’t!

Sex in public : the incarnation of early Soviet ideology / Eric Naiman. (OCLC #35450552)

Though other title information is not technically a core element in RDA (only title proper is), there are times when it gives needed context! Other title information is core for LC and NLA.

Not that we depend solely on the title for discovery; the record also has two good subject headings:

651 _0 ǂa Soviet Union ǂx History ǂy 1917-1936.
650 _0 ǂa Communism and sex ǂz Soviet Union.

and has been classed with other books about the first one (DK266 = History, Soviet Regime), though depending on the actual content of the book, it could also reasonably go under HX550.S49 (Communism and sex).

Categories
Uncategorized

Fundamentals of matrix-analytic methods / Qi-Ming He. (OCLC #829754638)

The preface of this book was incredibly helpful in assigning the call number. The copy in OCLC already had a subject assigned (“Matrix analytic methods”) but needed a full call number. I did a correlations search in Classification Web which gave the class number QA274.2, which corresponds to “Stochastic analysis”, a broader term of “Matrix analytic methods”. So is that the right class number?

The preface of the book has a nice section called “Topics and organization of the book” which lists the broad topics of each chapter, including Poisson processes, Markov chains, and Queuing theory, all of which are narrower terms of “Stochastic processes” (a broader term “Stochastic analysis” even). I went with the broader class number, QA274, and added a few more subject headings for the other topics covered in depth.

QA274.2 may not seem far from QA274, but in my library, there would be about 100 books between them!