Hi all,

I inherited a graphic novel collection that is all under 741.5. All spine labels read 741.5 and the first three letters of the author's last name. Fiction and nonfiction all have the same number. I want to keep the collection somewhat together but I need to designate fiction from nonfiction. I don't even know if Manga is supposed to have a special number? Science? Biography? History? I am confused and this is not my area of expertise.

What do you suggest for a middle school library? Please help.

Hi all! I'm working in Sierra, and the record is displaying cover art for a book that is definitely not the book the record is for. I thought there was a MARC field for that in the bib record, but I'm not able to find it. Does anyone know how to change or just get rid of this picture?

We all know about the Dewey Decimal System for books. But how would we start to catalog websites? Or software code repositories on github?

Los índices deben verse como una empresa y no utilizarse. La lista estructurada puede, sin mucho esfuerzo, ayudar a construir una marca. Además, las estructuras de lista bien pensadas con datos aplicables pueden ayudar a las Venta Por Catalogo USA. Puede afectar la elección de compra de los clientes al abusar abiertamente de los artículos del inventario.

Hello all!

I've recently started an undergraduate cataloging course and was given an assignment to reach out to catalogers and discover some common issues that pop up in cataloging. Of you had to pick 1 common issue that frequents cataloging work, what would it be?

If you think you have a unique problem specific to where you work, I would love to hear that too!

With Team4eCom a professional catalog data entry company get highly accurate data entry services to enhance the quality of your eCommerce store. We provide most reliable catalog data entry services at an unparalleled price. Get in Touch at info@Team4eCom.com !

Hello all! First time poster to this sub. I work at a corporate library and it's my first time cataloging. We use MARC records and a conventional ILS. For corporate publications I would like to start recording all levels of the departmental hierarchy, with the objective of being able to search each level in order to pull reports as requested. The hierarchy would be:

• Business unit
• Division
• Program
• Sub-program
• Department

According to MARC I imagine this would look something like this:

110 - Business Unit|bDivision|bProgram|bSub-Program|bDepartment

If I'm leaving all subordinate unit data in subfield B however, how can I search a specific level of the hierarchy?

It is not uncommon for this library to start making their own fields in the 900s, so maybe I should just do that?

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

II was asked to map codes from Onix 3 / Thema to ecommerce categories. But I don't know how to define Novel with a code. Anyone with experience?

I volunteer at the library of our local horticulture centre and college. We have a small (~2800 item) collection that's currently in Readerware. We have a very small budget but we'd like to migrate to a system that has an OPAC...that's really all we need besides a cataloguing module, so no need for a full-featured ILS.

We've looked at quite a few systems, most of which are way too expensive, and have narrowed it down to Libib and LibraryThing/TinyCat. Does anyone have any comments on or experience with either of those two products? Recommendations? Suggestions for other options?

Thanks for your help with this!

I work for a public library that's closed but offering curbside. Our pages and cataloguing staff work away from others. We wear gloves when we shelve (post-quarratine) books and catalogue new stuff. The library is considering requiring we wear masks to keep our germs off the collection. Is anyone else doing this?

I've got a lot of old records with control numbers like wln97217146, which I believe indicates the Western Library Network, which merged with OCLC. Are these numbers indexed anywhere, can they be linked to anything anymore? They haven't been kept in the OCLC records. Are they useful for anything anymore?

I'm also finding numbers that start with WaOLN, which I can't figure out what it stands for, does anyone know if that one is useful for anything, too?

Thanks!

I’m a MLIS student starting her second internship at a small special library at a historical/cultural site. They have a library which has never had a librarian. The curator basically just decides what topic they fit under, puts them on a shelf with that label, and that’s it. He doesn’t use LCSH or any other controlled vocabularies. He says the system makes sense to him, but acknowledges that it doesn’t make sense to researchers, so if he isn’t there to help a researcher, they are generally pretty lost. He says he would like to have a more formal system to organize the materials (mostly books). Right now they don’t even have an inventory of their items anywhere.

One issue is that a fair amount of the books are published by small/vanity presses, and so don’t have even an ISBN. That, I feel, is navigable however.

The major concern is they have ZERO budget to spend on OCLC subscriptions or any other subscriptions. Even if they did have a budget to spend, I would feel it wasn’t my place as an intern to tell them to spend it on such a service, especially OCLC which really needs someone with some library training to use it. Additionally, the library currently does not loan any materials, nor are there immediate plans to do so.

I am aware of several free/open source cataloging programs (e.g. Omeka, Koha), but my concern is a) some of them require you pay after a certain number of books, which is possible the library will exceed, b) some of them are not very instinctual to use, and I want these programs to be as easy to use as possible. While I would love for this position to turn into a paid job for me, I am not holding my breath, so I am making sure that this is a program that can easily be used by someone with no library training. I am leaning towards Libib or LibraryThing because they seemed the most instinctual to me as far as not requiring special training to use them, but if the library exceeds 5,000 items then they would cost money.

What I have been doing thus far is using a spreadsheet to, at a minimum, inventory their items and indicate some controlled vocabulary (or at least tags) that could help the items be discoverable assuming they do decide to reorganize their system of shelving. That way also I can see approximately how many items are in the library and determine if one of the free/open source programs would be appropriate to recommend.

I feel like I am going about this all wrong, but I am not sure what I could do differently given a) the absence of any budget, b) the need to make sure the system is usable after my internship is over. I am open to your suggestions, librarians of Reddit!

I'm looking for references on the state of debate over the use of Unicode within library and other bibliographic data, particularly discussion arguing both for and against widespread adoption.

Briefly: coming from the background of working in technology, conducting research, and having an interest in knowledge resource management, I can see both merits for accurate representation of non-Latin texts, and a strong awareness of the numerous technological and practical, UI/UX, utility, political, cultural, and related challenges of full internationalisation and Unicode adoption.

For myself as native English speaker, Romanisations of non-latin scripts are all but certain to be of more utility to me than a faithful representation of, say, Hebrew, Arabic, Malay, Kangi, Hangul, or other distinctly non-Latin scripts. A situation which would likely be reflected for native users of other charactersets. (Some Latin-adjacent scripts, such as Cyrillic, are more accessible.) Computer support, especially in older systems and/or tools, tends to be limited, especially for multibyte charactersets, with inconsistent or unexpected results ocurring. And the opportunities for confusion or intentional misrepresentation based on similar characters with different codepoints is a real threat in other areas (domain-name and URL representations being well-established instances), though the use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies (LCC, LCSH) may obviate the more obvious of these.

I'm not looking for an answer or debate on those questions for the moment, but rather some of the more cogent arguments for AND against Unicode representation and use, I'd very much appreciate it.

The academic library I work for will start buying a lot of e-books, and I need to cataloging them, but I've never done this before. Does anyone know of any (preferably free) resources that provide instructions on how to catalog e-books, particularly for academic libraries?

Good morning everyone,

I have a question for you : I am updating our cataloguing manual to RDA and it seems like two rules are contradictory regarding initals and acronyms spacing :

At 1.7.6, it says :

"If separate letters or initials appear on the source of information without full stops between them, transcribe the letters without spaces between them, regardless of spacing on the source. If such letters or initials have full stops between them, omit any internal spaces."

And when you read 8.5.6.1 and 8.5.6.2, it says :

" When recording a name of person or family:

a)
if an initial represents a given name or a surname, and the initial is followed by another initial or a name, leave a space after the full stop following the first initial
b)
if the name consists entirely or primarily of separate letters, leave a space between the letters (regardless of whether they are followed by full stops or not)
c)
if the name includes initials or abbreviations forming part of a title or term of address, leave a space between the initial or abbreviation and a subsequent initial, abbreviation, numeral, or word.

​

When recording a name of corporate body:

a)
if an initial is followed by another initial, do not leave a space after the full stop, etc., following the first initial
b)
if separate letters or initials appear on the source of information without full stops between them, record the letters without spaces between them."

​

I think that RDA's chapter 8 is about added entries, but i am not sure.

I cannot quite figure out which rules to follow so if someone can shed some light on this it would be really useful!

Thank you very much!

Subject Headings for Conductor/Pianist James Levine?... if subheadings under Subject Headings for Conductor/Pianist James Levine (James Lawrence Levine) included materials other than performances, what are some standard subheadings?... for a) music compositions/b) composition sketches/c) composition studies/d) orchestrations/e) etc... for example from f) earlier student years studying music or g) noting corrections to composers' scores.

Hello Redditors! I'm excited to have landed an interview this week for a catalog librarian position in a public library. Right now I'm a reference and young adult librarian and previously a library assistant. All very different from cataloging, so I don't really know what to expect. I do have experience in archives, digitizing materials, and non-professional cataloging, but it's been a while. Does anyone have any information/resources they can share as to what theories, terms, questions, etc. I should familiarize myself with?

Hey y'all. I have taken to the forums to ask if anyone knows of a library cataloging software where I can store the patron files locally on my computer, however still maintain the circulation information online? Most catalogs I find are entirely cloud or online based, but I cannot store parton information on a cloud because of possible FERPA violations. Let me know if y'all have an idea, please!