Legislation on foreign relations through … / Committee on Foreign Relations, Committee on International Relations. (OCLC #3700343)
When cataloging serials already in the collection, we check surrounding areas on the shelf to make sure that any missing volumes have not just been misshelved. We sometimes find them, but this is the first I’ve seen with an explanatory note. Scrawled on the head (top of the text block): “Today is my last day in this work”.
We the people : the American people and their government / [text, Division of Political History]. (OCLC #1288911)
In a SuDoc classification number, the cutter for the title is based on the first significant word in the title that denotes the subject of the resource, also excluding “catch phrases”. For this resource, “We the people” is skipped, and the cutter is based on the word American:
SI 1.2:Am 1/2
More about cuttering in SuDoc can be found in the GPO Classification Manual.
Behavior and neurology of lizards : an interdisciplinary colloquium / edited by Neil Greenberg and Paul D. MacLean. (OCLC #4571831)
In a SuDoc classification number, the cutter for the title is based on the first significant word in the title that denotes the subject of the resource. This excludes words common to government documents (“Symposium”, “Report”), to the particular agency (“Forest”, “Wood” for the Forest Service).
This resource was cuttered on the word Lizards even though it’s the fifth word in the title.
086 0_ ǂa HE 20.8102:L 76
More about cuttering in SuDoc can be found in the GPO Classification Manual.
AHRQ research activities / Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (OCLC #44512447)
In preparation for migration for a new ILS, we’re re-examining our policy of using item records for ebooks, as the migration process will identify any resource with an item record as physical, and we want our ebooks correctly identified as electronic.
Before deleting anything, we searched for items using our generic ebook barcode (“EBOOKNONCIRC”) on print mfhds, and items with more specific barcodes on internet mfhds. We found a couple of irregularities in both searches.
This title’s multi-format government document record had both print and internet holdings, and the item with its specific barcode had been linked to the internet holding; it has now been re-linked to the print.
A catalog of reproductions and publications : color slides, books, catalogs, educational materials / National Gallery of Art. (OCLC #906962810)
It is said that metadata is a love note to the future, but sometimes that correspondence is vague and you end up in a “big laundry” situation.
I don’t know what “OCIR hole punch” means, but the years written on the shelf-list card and the label lead me to believe that we used to have 1969 volume, which was replaced with the 1971 version when it arrived, keeping the same SuDoc number. Lacking any other information, I cataloged the new volume on its own record with this SuDoc number.
Roy Lichtenstein : a retrospective : National Gallery of Art, October 14-January 13, East Building. (OCLC #819413342)
We keep small government documents like this one (88 x 88 mm) in envelopes on the shelf, but put the barcode directly on the piece (in case they get separated). Sometimes there isn’t enough room to put it on there without covering important information (the SuDoc and Depository stickers were already present when the piece came to cataloging).
I brought this piece to a meeting, and several options were suggested:
I brought it to the labeling technician, who just trimmed some of the white sticker around the barcode so that it fit:
Engineering management of design and construction of facilities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; report of the Subcommittee on NASA Over sight of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives. [by Philip P. Dickinson]. (OCLC #57440)
This title came to me as a cataloging problem because though there was a good record in OCLC, the publication date in the record (1959) did not match the date on the piece (1958).
The cover and internal content use the date August 11, 1969, so that seems like the correct date. Also, the monthly catalog record for the title lists the date as 1969 and includes the note:
[Imprint date incorrectly given on title page as 1968.]
so I used the existing record, and added that note to our local copy so it doesn’t cause us confusion later.
A scanning electron microscope survey of the epidermis of East African grasses / Patricia G. Palmer and Alice E. Tucker. (OCLC #6581357)
This set was published as part of the much larger series Smithsonian contributions to botany, but not consecutively in that series. This is reflected in the series statement:
490 1_ ǂa Smithsonian contributions to botany ; ǂv no. 49, 53, 55, 62, 67
but the notes in the record refer to volume numbers within the set (1-5). We have them shelved by SuDoc number in the larger series, so reflect this in the mfhd as:
852 __ ‡b yl,sd ‡h SI 1.29:49, etc.
866 41 ‡a no.1 ‡z [Shelved as: SI 1.29:49]
866 41 ‡a no.2 ‡z [Shelved as: SI 1.29:53]
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. (OCLC #43026739)
This government document is a single sheet of paper, folded like a tri-fold brochure (and housed in an envelope to protect it).
RDA 3.4.5.14 on extent of Single Sheets says “if the sheet is designed to be read in pages when folded, record the extent as 1 folded sheet followed by the number of pages laid out on the sheet, in parentheses.”
RDA 3.5.1.4.11 on dimensions of Single Sheets says “if the sheet is designed to be read in pages when folded, record only the height of the sheet when folded” (as though it is a volume).
So for this document, the physical description is:
300 __ ǂa 1 folded sheet (6 pages) ; ǂc 22 cm
Aliens in the United States (number of aliens in the United States, by States, counties, and nationalities, who reported under the Immigration and nationality act during January 1965) Prepared for the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate. (OCLC #184920)
I know now that the monthly catalog record for this title says “Aliens in United States” (missing a word), which is why my full title searches were not finding it. I continued my search using the SuDoc number instead.
I initially misread the second cutter in the SuDoc, first looking too quickly and seeing only an “A” with a flourish, and then recognizing it as “Ae”. That also turned out to be incorrect.
I had found the OCLC record already (no SuDoc number), so used the Find in a Library feature to check what other people had as its SuDoc number in their government document collections. I found a library with a slight different SuDoc number (another variant!):
Y4.J89/2:A14/5
before finally finding the correct one:
Y 4.J 89/2:AL 4/5
and spotting that those letters must start the cutter for ALiens.