Work Mark / Cutter / &c.

So, the fun of making up your own classification scheme? Deciding how to handle problems when there are no rules to consult! As I have mentioned before, there are 10 basic classification categories:
A: Quakerism
B: Biographies
[BC: Biography Collections / Collective Biographies]
C: Conduct of Life
D: Spiritual Life
E: The Bible
F: Religion & Theology (non-Quaker-specific)
G: Social Concerns & Society
H: History
I: Peace & Nonviolence
J: Literature & the Arts
K: Children & Young Adults (further broken down into KP–Picture Books, KN–Non-fiction, KF–Fiction, etc.)

Our call numbers go like this: X Abc, where X is the class number (A-KX) and Abc represents the first three letters of the main entry, except in biographies (our B class), where Abc represents the first three letters of the last name of the subject of the biography. Now, in various categories, we’ve had to add a fourth letter (SmiR and SmiJ to distinguish between Richard Smith and John Smith). The fun came in biographies when we had books about George Fox and Margaret Fox. FoxG and FoxM, right? We treat the biographical subject as we do the author in other categories (SmiR and SmiJ).

But what about two different biographies of Margaret Fox? Okay, FoxMJ for one written by Martha Jones; FoxMS for one written by John Smith. (If Harriet Jones wrote one, too, well, our readers will just have to distinguish the two on the shelf. The collection is just over 1,000 volumes.) And what of Margaret’s autobiography? Just plain FoxM. Whew!

Okay, now George Fox… only one of the most prolific Quaker writers ever. We’ve got the biography call numbers down, but what of the autobiographical works? We ended up doing FoxG 1uuu, where 1uuu is the year it was first published. If we have a few editions that haven’t been corrected or revised or enlarged, then we file them with their original publication date.

And what of a memorial publication to honor Rufus Jones (I think), assembled by Haverford College and containing various letters to Rufus Jones and pieces about him? B JonRH, and Haverford College is a 710 on the record. We already had a B JonRH for a biography by Harris or something, but we just let it go.

And that! is how you make up your own on-the-fly, small church library classification system.

Friends

I am very excited to say that we were invited to join the Quaker Meeting Libraries Group on LibraryThing! I hope that we will be able to share practices as well as form a community for Quaker readers around the world. Right now, 2 of the libraries in the group are in Australia; the rest are in the U.S.

I haven’t seen Mary in a few weeks because I was on vacation two weeks ago, and she was away last week, but I hope to see her this week and figure out if we will indeed be upgrading our account so we can put our whole library on LibraryThing.

In other (non-)news, we are plugging away at getting all of the books in the Surpass catalog; the volunteers have worked their way almost through the J’s! (Our classification system is A-J.) However, we had initially skipped over A’s (Quakerism) and B’s (Biographies) because of anticipated difficulty with copy-cataloging. So I have been working on the A’s, and I think the volunteers are ready to tackle the B’s.

I would love to see the catalog complete and visible on LibraryThing before I’m done, except… when am I done? Clearly my field placement is long over, and I’m now another volunteer. I expressed to Mary my desire to keep working with the library, but I don’t know how that works, if I’m not a Friend. Of course, Friends are very welcoming, and it’s doubtful they would turn away someone who wants to help.

17 July 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-4:30pm
24 July 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-5:30pm
31 July 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-4:30pm
14 August 2008 (on site): 10:00pm-3:00pm

Friendly Things

More Quaker libraries on LibraryThing:

• Henry J. Cadbury Library of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
• Newtown (PA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Milwaukee Friends Library
• Frankford (PA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Perry City (NY) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• North Seattle Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Part of Northwest Yearly Meeting)
• Strawberry Creek (CA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• New Market (TN) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (part of Wilmington Yearly Meeting)
• Twin Cities Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Harrisburg (PA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Moorestown (NJ) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Williamsburg (VA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Richland (PA) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• (Not sure who this is yet: the name is “LR_Friends”)
• Lancaster Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

10 July 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-3:30pm
10 July 2008 (on site): 6:00pm-9:00pm (Library Committee meeting)

The Thing

So, yes, it turns out that we do not have our own dedicated, accessible server, and so the solution to providing online access to the catalog will be through Library Thing. I’ve set us up, and some of the catalog is here:
www.librarything.com/catalog/PittsburghFriendsMtg.

If they were going to pay for a web-based OPAC from the Surpass company, then I hope they will decide to pay for an upgraded LT account. I’ve found some other Quaker libraries on there, too, like… the West Australia Regional Meeting of … (Quakers). Okay, that’s the only one so far that I can tell is actually a meeting library.

More soon.

03 July 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-4:30pm

Open Up

Last was spent researching OPAC options instead of working on SH, unfortunately. And although it was educational—exploring Evergreen and the impressive Scriblio—ultimately it breaks down like this: The members of the Library Committee change yearly, and they may not include anyone who is familiar with information technology. The best way to maintain online access to the catalog will be to use the ILS’s OPAC—Surpass Safari. We’ve requested a 60 day free trial, but I’m pretty sure we’ll go with them permanently.

This week I had to use OCLC Connexion to add some older books on Quaker history. I can already see how working at the university library is helping my cataloging! I also worked on my SH for these books, including my new favorite form subdivision, Pictorial works.

08 May 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-8:30pm (Library Committee meeting)
15 May 2008 (on site): 1:30pm-5:30pm

Copy Cat

Things have been slow-going because Mary was out of town for three weeks, so I was supervising the copy catalogers, not leaving much time for subject heading work. Two weeks ago we had big trouble with the DSL connection that couldn’t be fixed, so we had to cancel library committee work. The problem is something to do with how we are connecting the laptop to the Veriz*n DSL. Aida had to speak with Veriz*n reps three weeks ago about this (Mary was out of town), and it seems to be something like… if we just connect directly with the phone cord, and don’t enter the login information through the Veriz*n login screen, it looks like we’re illegally accessing the connection… I hope this is straightened out.

This week I also came early to help with copy cataloging because one of the volunteers couldn’t make it. We did focus on the Quakerism (A) section, though, which requires more looking at OCLC than other sections, which is work I would have to do anyway.

New LCSH of interest: Human ecology.

27 March 2008 (on site): 11:00am-5:00pm
3 April 2008 (on site): 8:30am-2:30pm
10 April 2008 (on site): 9:00am-3:00pm
17 April 2008 (on site): 8:30am-10:00am (technical difficulties day)
1 May 2008 (on site): 8:30am-2:00pm

The One, the Only

So it’s been a while, but the last three weeks have been mostly helping download records directly from OCLC; however, last week I really began to get into assigning subject headings. One snag: the Surpass CL software doesn’t recognize the 690 MARC tag for local subject headings, which will make using the Quaker Subject Heading list difficult. So far, though, I’ve been able to find good LCSH for the items. I’ve started in the “Conduct of Life” section. Wait, back up: One of the major projects that the last intern completed was to create 12 main subject browsing categories for the library:

A: Quakerism
B: Biographies
BC: Biography Collections / Collective Biographies
C: Conduct of Life
D: Spiritual Life
E: The Bible
F: Religion & Theology (non-Quaker-specific)
G: Social Concerns & Society
H: History
I: Peace & Nonviolence
J: Literature & the Arts
K: Children & Young Adults (further broken down into KP–Picture Books, KN–Non-fiction, KF–Fiction, etc.)

So, I skipped over Quakerism and Biographies and went to the C: Conduct of Life section because it’s small and more secular, and I thought that would be good practice. And, as I said, LCSH has been proving very flexible and useful. One of the hardest principles to stick to — and one of the most work-intensive aspects — is to apply a SH that is as narrow as possible. Some of the books in this section can only be called “Conduct of life,” along with some related terms (RT). Some can be assigned narrower terms (NT) within “Conduct of life.” But, as all the books are collocated in the C browsing section — as they would be under any other call number system — library users should be able to find what they’re looking for, or come across something new.

Today I also did some original cataloging for the first time: a little prayer book assembled by the young members of the First Day School (Quaker “Sunday School”). The book consists of 17 pieces of 8.5×11 paper with words, prayers and/or pictures and paintings bound in a three-prong (for three-hole-punched paper) folder. There is an ad hoc title page labeled

“The Prayer Book”
Children’s Edition
Feb 17, 2008

So I did this:

008          080313s2008 paua b 000 0 eng
245  04     The prayer book / $c [Written and illustrated by the First Day School of the {City} Monthly Meeting].
250          Children’s ed.
300          [17] leaves, bound : $b ill. (chiefly col.) ; $c 30 cm.
650  _0     Children $v Prayers and devotions.
650  _0     Experience (Religion) in children.
650  _0     Prayer $x Christianity $x Society of Friends.
710  2_     {City Name} Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends {City, State}

I am still getting a handle on the bytes of the 006/008 fields, but I did this as a manuscript. Whew!

14 February 2008 (on site): 11:00am-3:00pm
21 February 2008 (on site): 11:00am-3:00pm
28 February 2008 (on site): 11:00am-5:00pm
06 March 2008 (on site): 11:00am-4:00pm
13 March 2008 (on site): 11:00am-5:00pm

Business as Usual

This week was fairly uneventful. Mostly I downloaded records from OCLC for books that the volunteers were unable to find using the copy cataloging software. I didn’t get a chance to do subject assigning, but I spoke with Pat about the whole collocation-via-subject headings that correspond with the shelving categories; she advised me to stick with the rule of assigning a subject heading as narrowly/specifically as possible. And that is what I will do.

I’ve also been reading Faith & Practice (leant by Jenny) as well as The Church Librarian’s Handbook.

07 February 2008 (on site): 10:45-3:15 | various (research): 3 hours total

Will You Find Me?

Today I learned this:

010 sh 85109435
040 DLC ‡b eng ‡c DLC ‡d DLC
150 Quakers
450 Friends ‡w nne
450 Friends (Quakers)
550 Society of Friends
680 ‡i Here are entered works on the persons belonging to the Society
       of Friends. Works on the Society of Friends as a religious
       denomination are entered under ‡a Society of Friends.
681 ‡i Note under ‡a Society of Friends

If the work is about Quakers, it can go under Quakers, and “Conduct of Life” is a valid subdivision. So I think that for all the books in the Conduct of Life (indicated by Local Call Number D) section, I will assign LCSH { ‡a Quakers ‡x Conduct of Life } to bring them all together in the catalog. Should they also get ‡a Conduct of Life though? Should all books in D get ‡a Conduct of Life and then books that specifically have to do with Quaker life get ‡a Quakers ‡x Conduct of Life as well?

I’m hoping a conversation with my advisor might help me figure out what to do here. For now, because the D section is so small (15 books or so), I’ve added ‡a Conduct of Life to their records. The software doesn’t need the SH to bring the titles together because the call number will do that, but I’m thinking about the future, and people searching remotely, from scratch. Would people really think to search for Quakers–Conduct of Life? Or, what if they just search for Quakers, and then they can see our heading (Q–CoL)? Ugh. This is a little hard to think about because I’m not sure yet how the catalog will appear when it’s online and searchable.

31 January 2008 (on site): 10:15-2:15

Fits & Starts

Last week was a bit crazy and cut short (I forgot I had a doctor’s appointment), but I did speak with Mary about using the Quaker subject headings (QSH), and she’s all for it. I spent most of my time working on cataloging some books that the volunteers were unable to copy-catalog; I found records in OCLC, so it wasn’t difficult–they just didn’t show up on the usual searches.

I started using QSH; I think I assigned one to only one book, but this week I’ll work on that more. I’m generally going by Haverford’s rules, here:
http://www.haverford.edu/library/technical/Cataloging/quaker.htm

This is what they have to say:

• For “non-Quaker” subjects, the heading must be in proper LC form.
• For “Quaker” subjects, check if it is a legitimate LC heading or not and tag accordingly (650 or 690).
• (Note that if any part of the subject string — e.g., |a, |b, |v, |x, |y, |z — is not based on LC practice, then the field is tagged 690. For example, although “Society of Friends” used alone and “Slavery” used alone are valid LCSH headings, tagged 650 _0, “Society of Friends |x Slavery” is not a valid LC heading and must be tagged 690 __.) Be sure the Quaker heading is on the established list and if not discuss with the Quaker bibliographer.

I also started browsing the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting list of subjects here: http://www.pym.org/pm/library_col.php, although they are catagories, not really SH.

Thursday, 24 Jan: 12:00-12:45, 2:00-5:00 (on site) || Tuesday, 28 Jan: 9:00-10:00 (research)