HIT: Cataloging for the Curriculum

[Catherine Murphy <Murphy@LIS.ADMIN.UNT.EDU>]

The response to my question about using the 520 (review, summary),
521 (target audience notes), and 658 (curriculum objective) tags, was
small and included general as well as specific messages.  The comments
(paraphrased) follow:

520 - This field is one of the most important.
          We urge children to read the summary...to hone in on a book that
          features an aspect that is not covered by subject cataloging.
          Our system also searches the 505 field for contents on a keyword
          search.

          I use the summary line to a great extent.  I try to teach kids and my
          aides to search by keyword so we pick up...what doesn't show
          up in subjects.  For ex., I list people in collected biographies.

          I always write up a summary for 520 using words in the
          sentences that students would use as keywords, like cars
          instead of automobiles (Sears).

521    I often put the reading and interest levels in 521.
          (Others just said they used this tag or thought it was important
           to have this information.)

658    Some people said  they would like to have this info.; one
          thought the curr. obj. would be obvious from the summary. (I have
          done some preliminary research comparing the vocabulary in
          national  mathematics standards to subject heading lists and I can
          tell you that there are many curriculum terms that do not match
          library subject headings.)

MY GENERAL COMMENTS:  Ohio is the state that is the leader in
developing curriculum enhanced records, that include objectives for
curriculum or tests, in a shared database.  Other states are interested
and hopefully will develop ways to share enhanced records..  Some
vendors are responding to the request for enhancements in the notes
field, including reviews, and the grade and reading level tag.  Lorraine
Knigiht of Retrospective Conversions, who recently posted a message to
LM_NET on this topic, has done extensive work in enhancing
audio-visual records in particular.  There are other issues, in the design
of automated systems, that have a bearing on data entry and display of
such enhancements.  When I attended the ALA Conference in
Washinton, DC recently, I reviewed the systems and found that while
you can put in a 658 tag in the MARC editing mode, it doesn't appear by
default.  MitinetMARC is one software program that does have an
automatic 658 default for data entry.  I was recently alerted to a problem
with cutting off lengthy data in this field, in some systems.

INVITATION:  If you are planning to be at the AASL Conference in
Portland in April, I am presenting a workshop on this topic on Saturday at
the 10:30 time period.  I would like this workshop to be an opportunity to
share interest, information and concerns about curriculum enhanced
cataloging so please come.

Please continue to write to me on this topic.  I am interested in hearing
from everyone, including vendors, about services, design issues, etc.  I
will keep posting hits as long as there is interest.

Catherine Murphy
Assistant Professor
School of Library & Info. Sciences
University of North Texas
murphy@lis.unt.edu