My 15 Minutes

I’m pleased to say that the project and the Museum are getting press, even if everyone seems a little fixated on Jackie.

LibraryThing Catalog

Reading this post from the Cataloguing Librarian has gotten me thinking again about how the Friends library can use LibraryThing for their library. I had lunch with Mary a few weeks ago, and she told me she was still adding new books to their LibraryThing account. We were just exploring the options when I got my new job and couldn’t go the Meeting House on a regular basis anymore. They do use Surpass to catalog, but they’re not interested in spending the money for an OPAC based on that catalog at this point. (We both agreed, however, that it was important to have the quality full cataloging somewhere, even if it wasn’t being overtly used at this point.) Most of the patrons are in the Meeting House every week for Meeting for Worship, so they can browse the catalog locally on a laptop in the library. LibraryThing might encourage more people to take a look at the collection, though, and would also let members know when new books are added. I guess I’m just not sure whether they need to incorporate LibraryThing into a website, like Palmerston North City Library, or just promote their LibraryThing account more. I would venture to say the latter, since, as I said, they are fortunate in having a membership that is in physical proximity to the library every week.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Being new to archives, assigning series and subseries kind of throws me for a loop. My brain thinks “subject headings” and “classification” — “many” and “one” — describing an object and putting it in its place. The world of series and folders is sometimes confusing, even more so now that we’re creating records in the museum’s database, which is not created for — and not ideal for — archival material. For example, there is no established hierarchical relationship between box level records and objects/items, or between objects/items and their pieces. This relationship is demonstrated by the accession number, but the database design makes it difficult to apply consistent metadata to the objects. The problem with the series is that the database only allows for two levels, whereas our list of series and subseries — or categories and object headings — is a locally developed, multi-level vocabulary based on the AAT. We follow the rule of applying the narrowest heading possible. If I catalog a purse, I apply the subseries “purses (bags),” and it lives in the series “costume/personal accessories.” Under this series — between “costume/personal accessories” and “purses (bags)” — is also the subseries “bags.” However, if someone searches just for “bags,” the purse will not show up because the vocabulary and hierarchical structure is not built into the database. We need to look at the database more carefully to figure out if there is another way — hopefully a simple way — to create a combined search to take care of this. It may just come down to our friend Keyword.

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