Welcome back to Season Five of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. This season we are working through some skills that people in any kind of library will need to be successful in their work.

This week we are starting the season on a foundational skill for any library: cataloging. You need this to keep track of your materials, to know where they are, and to help your patrons locate just the things they need for their information searching.

This week we have a special Guest Host: Violet Fox, an editor on OCLC’s Dewey team.

NOTE for school library people, or others needing Clock Hours/Continuing Education credits: you can get an hour of CE time by heading over to our material for this topic. After you finish the podcast and read through any shownotes below, click here, take the quiz, watch the video. We will have instructions in the video for you to receive your certificate for one hour of credit for your work here.

The Basics:

We will have a lot of vocabulary this week. Don’t worry if you don’t catch everything. You can always review our shownotes, and then follow the links we give you for further information. We are also available to talk with you about any questions you may have after this.

Let’s start by defining cataloging. What is it?

“In library and information science, cataloging (or cataloguing) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as creator names, titles, and subject terms that describe resources, typically through the creation of bibliographic records. The records serve as surrogates for the stored information resources.”

In the United states there are two popular classification systems used: the Dewey Decimal Classification and the Library of Congress Classification. There are several other systems in use in different types of libraries, and of course in different countries; but most libraries in the United States will encounter one of these two.

“Bibliographic control provides the philosophical basis of cataloging, defining the rules for sufficiently describing information resources to enable users to find and select the most appropriate resource. A cataloger is an individual responsible for the processes of description, subject analysis, classification, and authority control of library materials.”

Ronald Hagler identified six functions of bibliographic control.[2]

• “Identifying the existence of all types of information resources as they are made available.”[3] The existence and identity of an information resource must be known before it can be found.
• “Identifying the works contained within those information resources or as parts of them.”[3] Depending on the level of granularity required, multiple works may be contained in a single package, or one work may span multiple packages. For example, is a single photo considered an information resource? Or can a collection of photos be considered an information resource?
• “Systematically pulling together these information resources into collections in libraries, archives, museums, and Internet communication files, and other such depositories.”[3] Essentially, acquiring these items into collections so that they can be of use to the user.
• “Producing lists of these information resources prepared according to standard rules for citation.”[4] Examples of such retrieval aids include library catalogue, indexes, archival finding aids, etc.
• “Providing name, title, subject, and other useful access to these information resources.”[4] Ideally, there should be many ways to find an item so there should be multiple access points. There must be enough metadata in the surrogate record so users can successfully find the information resource they are looking for. These access points should be consistent, which can be achieved through authority control.
• “Providing the means of locating each information resource or a copy of it.”[5] In libraries, the online public access catalogue (OPAC) can give the user location information (a call number for example) and indicate whether the item is available.

WebJunction highlights the importance of cataloging: “The efforts of catalogers enable users to locate what they need in the library collections. As the world of information evolved from physical materials occupying physical places to digital resources in a multiplicity of formats, catalogers have adapted with richer metadata sets, linking repositories and institutions, and delivering resources in-person and remotely.”

Your library rests on the catalog. It lets you keep track of everything you have, and to know (generally) where it all is. You can build from there, but it is the foundation of it all! This is one of the main tools patrons will use to interact with your library – so you want it to be good.

A lot of this revolves around the MARC record. What is that? “MARC stands for MAchine-Readable Cataloging. It is a standard that ensures computers can read and interpret cataloging data and display this data to users in an online catalog.

MARC-21, the current version of the standard, consists of variable fields and fixed fields, along with their subfields and indicators. Common MARC fields include:

• 100 author of a work
• 245 title of a work
• 260 publication information
• 300 physical description
• 490 series statement
• 5xx notes”

(If you are using a 500 field, you would want to use the appropriate one from OCLC, and add in notes on local interest material. It can really enhance the usability for your patrons!)

Most library staffers involved in cataloging will do copy cataloging. Some of you will do original cataloging. We recommend copy cataloging whenever possible – it saves you time and effort, and it can reduce the amount of errors that can get introduced to your catalog.

Copy cataloging is taking the records for a book from a standard source – usually OCLC records. “Copy Cataloging is the process of building upon original cataloging. It involves matching an established bibligraphic record, examples are the OCLC WorldCat Catalog or Library of Congress Catalog which hold millions of catalog MARC records, with an exact duplicate item described to be added into a collection.” You add those records to your catalog, and your patrons can see them.

In original cataloging, you create the record yourself. “Original cataloging is most often needed for unique items, such as materials pertaining to local history, archival materials, rare books, manuscripts, maps, some sound recordings, etc. Original cataloging takes a good deal of training and apprenticeship. It requires proficiency both in descriptive cataloging and subject cataloging, and a strong familiarity with common cataloging tools such as AACR2, Library of Congress Rule Interpretations (LCRIs), the five volume Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or other common subject thesaurus (Sears, etc.), MARC21 standards, and at least one classification scheme such as LCC or DDC or UDC.”

Resources for you to consult:

OCLC: OCLC is a global library cooperative that provides shared technology services, original research and community programs for its membership and the library community at large. We are librarians, technologists, researchers, pioneers, leaders and learners. With thousands of library members in more than 100 countries, we come together as OCLC to make information more accessible and more useful.

Cataloger’s Desktop (Library of Congress): Cataloger’s Desktop combines the most widely used cataloging documentation resources into an integrated, online system.

RDA Toolkit: a package of data elements, guidelines, and instructions for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focused linked data applications.

Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service: “We publish and distribute many of the Library of Congress cataloging records and cataloging-related tools and resources. Whether you need web-based cataloging tools or cataloging records in various formats, the Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) provides the most current and authoritative bibliographic resources produced by the Library of Congress.”

NOTE for school library people, or others needing Clock Hours/Continuing Education credits: you can get an hour of CE time by heading over to our material for this topic. After you finish the podcast and read through any shownotes below, click here, take the quiz, watch the video. We will have instructions in the video for you to receive your certificate for one hour of credit for your work here.

Books Read

Check out the books we discussed in this episode! As always, the information below is from Amazon.com. If you click thru a link to buy a nice book, or anything else, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits on your purchase. Thanks in advance for your support of CMLE’s podcasts!

In his first book, Justin Timberlake has created a characteristically dynamic experience, one that combines an intimate, remarkable collection of anecdotes, reflections, and observations on his life and work with hundreds of candid images from his personal archives that range from his early years to the present day, in locations around the world, both on and off the stage.

Justin discusses many aspects of his childhood, including his very early love of music and the inspiration behind many of his hit songs and albums.He talks about his songwriting process, offering the back story to many of his hits. He muses on his collaborations with other artists and directors, sharing the details of many performances in concert, TV comedy, and film. He also reflects on who he is, examining what makes him tick, speaking candidly about fatherhood, family, close relationships, struggles, and his search to find an inner calm and strength.

Living a creative life, observing and finding inspiration in the world, taking risks and listening to an inner voice—this is Justin Timberlake.

Cruising the Library offers a highly innovative analysis of the history of sexuality and categories of sexual perversion through a critical examination of the Library of Congress and its cataloging practices. Taking the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemologies of the Closet as emblematic of the Library’s inability to account for sexual difference, Melissa Adler embarks upon a detailed critique of how cataloging systems have delimited and proscribed expressions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in a manner that mirrors psychiatric and sociological attempts to pathologize non-normative sexual practices and civil subjects.

Taking up a parallel analysis, Adler utilizes Roderick A. Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black as another example of how the Library of Congress fails to account for, and thereby “buries,” difference. She examines the physical space of the Library as one that encourages forms of governmentality as theorized by Michel Foucault while also allowing for its utopian possibilities. Finally, she offers a brief but highly illuminating history of the Delta Collection. Likely established before the turn of the twentieth century and active until its gradual dissolution in the 1960s, the Delta Collection was a secret archive within the Library of Congress that housed materials confiscated by the United States Post Office and other federal agencies. These were materials deemed too obscene for public dissemination or general access. Adler reveals how the Delta Collection was used to regulate difference and squelch dissent in the McCarthy era while also linking it to evolving understandings of so-called perversion in the scientific study of sexual difference.

Sophisticated, engrossing, and highly readable, Cruising the Library provides us with a critical understanding of library science, an alternative view of discourses around the history of sexuality, and an analysis of the relationship between governmentality and the cataloging of research and information―as well as categories of difference―in American culture.

In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it’s Lei they’re after — the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king’s interest.
Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king’s consort. There, she does the unthinkable — she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world’s entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge.

Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes seventeen-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist—a nearly impossible dream for a girl.

After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind: her clandestine application to the Royal College of Art; her participation in the suffragette movement; and her growing attraction to a working-class boy who may be her muse—or may be the love of her life. As the world of debutante balls, corsets, and high society obligations closes in around her, Vicky must figure out: just how much is she willing to sacrifice to pursue her dreams?

Here are the first two volumes of Proust’s monumental achievement, Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove. The famous overture to Swann’s Way sets down the grand themes that govern In Search of Lost Time: as the narrator recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, exquisite memories, long since passed—his mother’s good-night kiss, the water lilies on the Vivonne, his love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte—spring vividly into being. In Within a Budding Grove—which won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, bringing the author instant fame—the narrator turns from his childhood recollections and begins to explore the memories of his adolescence. As his affections for Gilberte grow dim, the narrator discovers a new object of attention in the bright-eyed Albertine. Their encounters unfold by the shores of Balbec. One of the great works of Western literature, now in the new definitive French Pleiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.

Conclusion

Thanks to Violet for working with us to talk through all these cataloging ideas.

If you want to hear more about books, subscribe to our bookgroup podcast Reading With Libraries. Check out our our quickie looks at books with a five minute look at a new book each week with Book Bites.

Thanks for joining us this week! And check back in with us next week for another library competency!

NOTE for school library people, or others needing Clock Hours/Continuing Education credits: you can get an hour of CE time by heading over to our material for this topic. After you finish the podcast and read through any shownotes below, click here, take the quiz, watch the video. We will have instructions in the video for you to receive your certificate for one hour of credit for your work here.