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

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)

Subjective

I met with Mary to discuss using the Quaker Subject Headings list; developed jointly by Haverford College, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, and the American Friends Service Committee. The list is based on LCSH: Headings that are allowed in LC are listed as 150s; when more specification (i.e., free-floating subdivisions) or different headings altogether are requred that are not allowed by LC, the heading is listed as a 190. The format of the list is kind of unwieldy; I said I would put the information into a spreadsheet and see what I could do about making it more readable for us.

Also! It looks like they’ll be going with the Surpass Online Backup. This means that, not only will all the files be safe, they’ll be able to access the collection from any computer on which the Surpass software is installed.

Thursday, 17 Jan: 10:30-2:30 (onsite)

Changing the Subject

Okay! Found some links to resources to start creating a local thesaurus for the library:

http://www.swarthmore.edu/x7873.xml
http://www.quaker.ca/Publications/qbs/2008-09-QBS-booklist.pdf / http://www.quaker.ca/Publications/qbs/qbs.html
http://www.haverford.edu/library/technical/Cataloging/quaker.htm

Also! It turns out our software (Surpass CL) offers an Online Backup Service; I’m going to talk to Mary tomorrow and see about setting that up for the library.

Things are looking even better!

Wednesday, 16 Jan: 8:30-9:30 (research)

Beginnings

After last week’s somewhat confusing start, I have a better idea of how the Surpass software works. Mary and I decided that I will come on Thursdays around 11 or so to overlap a little bith with the volunteer staff hours; they will work on copy-cataloging and processing, putting aside complicated items or those items needing original cataloging. When I arrive they can brief me and ask questions. Then I’ll research or catalog the items they’ve left me as well as work on subject headings.

As for subject headings… Mary gave me a few suggestions for places to look for thesauri ideas, namely the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Catalog, Earlham College, Quaker Theological Seminary, and maybe Haverford and Swarthmore. We also discussing putting the collection on LibraryThing so it can be shared as soon as possible as well as to generate interest in and awareness of the library.

I also became aware of a big problem: The catalog is stored on the laptop, and nothing is being done in terms of backing up the files. I don’t know if this is within my scope of responsibility, but I don’t feel comfortable moving forward without taking steps to ensure that the files will be safe. Hopefully this can be resolved next week.

Thursday, 10 January: 9:00-12:30, 6:30-8:30 (onsite)

Field Work

This is where I will keep track of work I am doing in my Library Science program, specifically the work I do in my field placement, which involves creating a computerized catalog for a Friends Meeting library. Hello, world; let’s see what happens.

First I am researching theological subject headings, which I think I’ll use in conjunction with LCSH to create a catalog that will be both useful to the members (the first priority) as well as future researchers. The library hopes to serve as a research archive eventually.

Thursday, 3 Jan: 8:30-12:30pm (onsite) || Wednesday, 9 Jan: 10:30-11:30 (research)