[LM_NET] Hit: Destiny cataloging

[Mary Ann Shaffer <maryanns@GMAIL.COM>]

I emailed on May 18th: Okay this is getting really irritating.  There is a
standard with cataloging. In the library world we do not capitalize all
first letters in titles as they do in bibliographies. Someone in my district
keeps going in and correcting titles to the ‘correct bibliographic format’
with all first letters capitalized which is NOT the library standard.
Someone is also adding asterisks to the title entry - I guess so they can
find books easier. Do any other districts have this problem with their union
catalogs?
Or maybe cataloging has changed in the last several years??

I received several responses - more than are shown here because it seems I
must have accidentally deleted some of them...but here is what I received in
case anyone else was interested...

One of the responses that I accidentally deleted mentioned, in a very nice
way, that there are bigger problems in the world. Working at a Title 1
school I do know that - it's just bugs me when we are supposed to be
professionals and I am almost positive that the person doing this is
probably, as many suggested, not a professional and does not know or care...

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We have this problem ALL the time. It is one of the hazards of a union
catalog.   Someone in one building capitalizes everything in a title
record.  Some people have their clerks do the cataloging. Someone is putting
AR information with the title. WE have several  people who have taken a test
to be a "librarian" and have had no classes whatsoever on anything. They are
happy to turn over cataloging to volunteers or clerks.

BUT with a union catalog it is also nice to see what resources others have
when I need to borrow in a hurry.
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Sounds like somebody is editing on the template instead of editing their own
title. That doesn't happen here unless somebody gets confused and edits the
template.
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Mary Ann, you have a well intentioned aide or volunteer somewhere. I would
send out a message to all of the participating libraries letting them know
about the problem. In a nice way, of course. <g>.
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Who has the Administrator Rights to your district Destiny program?  Perhaps
the person does not realize that "Copy" info only should be changed rather
than "Title" changes which are global
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I think you are correct about the form of titles in MARC records. Our
district got Destiny this year, & we agreed not to edit each others'
cataloging.
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and then there is a different point of view......
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I confess: I am changing my catalog to reflect the rest of the real world.
One of the elementary teachers complained that her kids were having trouble
with the discrepancy, so I decided to change mine during my next big weed.
I seem to recall the explanation given in cataloging class, that
capitalizing on manual typewriters was another opportunity for typing
errors, but I'm not sure that's an accurate explanation.
In any case, capitalizing on a computer keyboard is no big deal, so I
changed.
(Without doing any research, I might guess that the lower-case conceit was
one of Mr. Dewey's "simplification" ideas. Which is why he spelled his name
Melvin instead of Melville, and why we refer to the catalog instead of the
catalogue. Just a hunch)
************************************************************************************************************************

-- 
Mary Ann Shaffer
Media Specialist
Ivey Lane Elementary School
209  N. Silverton St.
Orlando, FL  32811
407-296-6420 ext 2227
MaryAnnS@gmail.com

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