Re: Cataloging

[Barbara Allen <BSAllen@AOL.COM>]

Some of the cataloging conventions are not only a waste of time in an
automated environment but actually get in the way of finding nformation.  My
pet peeve is titles.  Most title lists, lists of checkouts, etc. in an
automated catalog show only about the first 40 characters of the title.  This
isn't nearly enough to give you a reasonable display for "Alfred Hitchcock
presents The three investigators in the mystery of the...".  My particular
bete noire was "The JVNC anthology of world music and dance" in our
professional library.  This is a 27 or 28 video set.  Each video covers the
music and dance of several countries.  A teacher would type in a search key
that would sometimes bring up as many as ten of the videos and would have to
go into each entry in the list to find the right one or ones.  I'm not a
cataloger, I actually do tech support, however, in consultation with the
librarians I reentered those at least three times trying to find a solution
that would satisfy cataloging conventions and still display reasonably.  We
ended up making up main titles for each video that described the contents in
the first 30 characters.  I don't think the titles we used actually appeared
on the videos, however, the videos are accessed only by accession numbers so
that wasn't a real issue.  In most elementaries, it would simplify everyone's
life if those Alfred Hitchcock, Nancy Drew, and Hardy boys books were
cataloged with the short title of
"The mystery of the crying cave"  rather than the whole thing.
Just my particular pet peeve!
Barbara Allen
Program Analyst / Library Services
Tucson Unified School District
Tucson, AZ
bsallen@aol.com

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