[LM_NET] HIT--Fairy tale cataloging

[Serena Hayes <shayes@SYPTEC.COM>]

Clear DayHi all,

I had almost as many requests for a hit as I did answers to my question.  Thanks 
again to all those who took the time to respond.


Here is the original question.

I have a question about fairy tale cataloguing.  I checked the archives
and discovered a hit on this subject but it was primarily how individual
librarians did their cataloguing.  My question is WHY some titles are
under the standard 398.2 and others are listed as Easy.  I noticed this
in a shipment I recently received.  It did not seem to matter whether or
not the story was original or retold.  Hans Christian Anderson titles
were often E while retellings were 398.2   These are all very
traditional tales such as Bremen Town Musicians, East of the Sun, West
of the Moon, Puss in Boots etc.  Anyway there did not seem to be any
rhyme or reason to it.  I know what I will do for our library but was
just curious as to the rationale on deciding which section, 398.2 or E,
a book would be catalogued under.

Answers I received.

IThe FAST reason--is how the CIP is catalogued. I have also noticed this,
and make sure that I go through shipments to reclassify them.

I inherited a library (K-2) where 90% of the 398.2s were in the E, and
only had one very small shelf of 398.2 when I started this year.  Now
there is over 8 shelves of 398.2.  I am beginning to feel more at home.

Serena, I wondered the same thing when I arrived in my library 4 years ago. 
Part of the issue was that there had not been a trained librarian for 
awhile. I make my own choice between 398.2 and E based on the ratio of text 
to pictures and the difficulty of the text. Hope this helps.


We put all in 398.2


The way I determine where I put a fairy tale is by the format/potential
audience.  Any fairy tale book I get that is in picture book format
(lots of pictures, less than half a page of text) it goes in the E398.2
section for our younger students.  Most of my regular 398.2 section has
the collections of tales and those tales published with very few
pictures. These are rarely checked out.

Perhaps the format of the book has something to do with where catalogers choose to 
put them.  Books obviously designed for young children would go in E, while 
adult-formatted books would be in the 398.2 collection.

Examples: 

Books that are over-sized and contain a lot of illustration- especially if they are 
in color- and contain only a single tale in larger print might fall in the E 
category while others that are merely text, are a collection of tales and are more 
"novel-sized" would be in the 398.2.



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