emily’s posterous

 One shot shows Readerware open on my computer as I make edits to the catalog while labelling another shelf-ful. The second picture shows how we are labelling a collection of rarer books with archival ID slips instead of spine labels.  Steve is taking the opportunity to familiarize himself with some of his books that he hasn't read yet.

   

Click here to download:

Documenting_the_labelling_phas.zip (585 KB)

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Working together, my client and I have labeled about 15 shelves out of 55, in about 10 or 11 hours. The routine works very well, especially to rock and roll, jazz, or classical music  accompaniment! We retrieve all the books from each shelf and set them out in order in front of us on the work surface.  We each have a heavy duty tape dispenser and roll of library tape. The labels have been printed out in the same order in which I catalogued the shelves, and each label sheet is labeled with the shelf number that I had assigned. I had pre-printed out a “shelf list” listing all the books in the correct LOC order to consult as we are labeling, one page per shelf.  We make sure the books in front of us are in the same order as the shelf list, and check the list as we are applying labels.  The list is an excel spreadsheet with abbreviated title, author, LOC number and shelf number.  Note that the books on each shelf had been arranged in LOC order, but the library as a whole is not. I estimate about 10-20 hours just getting the labels and shelf lists ready, because I do not have the automated software that a real library would have. Readerware does print labels and catalog cards under the report function, but I couldn’t figure out how to customize it for the 2” x .75” labels that I have, so I used Excel and Word merge.

We apply clear archival library tape to the spine to protect it (and make labels easier to remove if that is ever needed), then apply the label, then cover over with another piece of tape.  Because of this double taping and my underestimation of how much tape we needed, we plowed through two expensive tape rolls already (they run almost $20 each) and I ordered 5 more rolls (hoping that a total of 8 2” rolls @36 yards each will do it).

The books now resemble freshly labeled library books. The only problem is, how to distinguish the numerous “real” library books the professor already has on his shelves! He decided to segregate those to their specially designated shelves, and we may tag all of our beautiful new labels with a yellow permanent highlighter marker (from Staedtler – Lumocolor).

For pamphlets, the best would be to have some archival envelopes, but we can label the lower front, or use the archival ID strips.

Next phase will be reorganizing 1700 books in LOC order, leaving “slack and gap” as Zack put it. I also have to make sure my client has Readerware properly installed with the customization that is needed to glean LOC call number and subject headings from the LOC website  (when new books are added) and that my corrected records are exported to his database.
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   Just to add to my comment/description above, the rate of books catalogued per hour was also slowed down by the fact that Library of Congress often did not have the items (pamphlets, self-published books, etc.) in this very special library, at least not by the title of the edition that I had in front of me. Many of them however could be found in libraries that specialized in or were local to the issues being written about. WorldCat was one way of quickly locating the item in a library. Then I “copy catalogued” what call number that librarian had assigned to the item. Often times, two libraries (for instances, both in the UC System but at different universities) would catalog the item differently. Here it wasn’t too useful to split hairs, as the main purpose of the catalog was to group like items with like items, and to be able to find the damn book!

    Another interesting fact is that often times the professor I was working for would have gathered some interesting fiction that related to or illustrated a particular subject or era in history and shelved it (in his informal system) with the nonfiction (perhaps for use with a special class that he had taught). But in our new system, the fiction will be shelved far from its nonfiction cousins. However, Readerware stores keywords and subject headings, so I hope that the works of fiction can eventually be found again by consulting the catalog.

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This is a response I made to a very thorough report of a cataloging project similar to one I embarked on last month:
http://www.zackgrossbart.com/hackito/the-library-problem/#comment-2629

I concur with Zack that Readerware was the best choice I found for my recent project cataloging a 1700-book personal library of a U.S. history professor. I have a mac laptop and he has a PC, so it had to be cross-platform.

I cataloged all the books shelf by shelf, labelling each item in the database with its shelf number (arbitrarily/temporarily assigned, 1-53). Because I am slightly a perfectionist, I averaged 20 books an hour because so many ISBN's (paperbacks mostly) were incorrect and many books did not have barcodes (I did purchase a high quality barcode scanner by SerialIO - the LaserChamp).  

In addition, he wanted labels. I ordered my labels from Brodart as they also supplied very detailed templates so I could create a custom label in MS Word (Avery doesn't have any appropriate labels).  I planned to use the merge feature with Word, using Excel or Word as the datasource.

Exporting from Readerware to Excel is a breeze. In Excel I cleaned up the Library of Congress call numbers but found that it did not alphabetize totally correctly (how do you tell Excel that HD 51 is a whole number and not a decimal so that it will place HD 51 before HD 4000? Excel experts out there - please help!). I did a bit of tweaking and further imported the data into a Word table in order to insert paragraph spaces so the labels would wrap correctly. (Used a combination of search and replace and manual techniques.)  I used the Word tables imported from Excel as datasources for my merge because of the better editing tools and better merge results.  The result of the merge are beautiful labels but a lot of hand correcting is needed. After they were perfect, I printed out all the labels and they are ready to apply shelf by shelf. The labels are in same order as each shelf of books, very nearly.  

Only then will we attempt to organize alphabetically by LOC number. Any suggestions? Each shelf is in LOC order but the whole library now has to be reshelved in the proper order.  We are also deliberating on whether to protect the books with clear tape first, and whether to apply the tape over the label as well. Some of the books are splendid volumes from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and I purchased archival book ID strips, and will apply labels to those (they stick out the top). Wish us luck in the next phase!  

I will try to convince the professor that importing his books into Google Books or LibraryThing will be rewarding. In Google Books "My Library" you will have cover images (you can have them in Readerware as well if you auto-update using Amazon), and be able to search instantly by keyword and even for text snippets if the book has been digitized! However, the books will appear in no particular order that would be useful to you, though they are instantly findable.  You can carry your Readerware database around in a Palm-based system or on your netbook, or you can consult your "Google" or LibraryThing library to avoid buying duplicates.  

I imagine that in order to maintain this book catalog, newly obtained books will need to reside on the "new shelf" and when enough are accumulated, they will need to be scanned in to the catalog, and labels created, and then added. Leaving space in the most popular subject categories sounds like a good idea.

I live in Oakland, CA and I'm looking for my next project!!
-Emily

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Vitruvius also said, Eurythmy and Symmetry.

Now, cataloguing is not exactly a visual art, although the graphical display has become very important. MARC21 is what enables these displays because the producer of the online public access catalog can designate which elements are wanted and how they think the user will best be able to decipher the bibliographic elements. But I think the meaning may need to be taken a bit more metaphorically.

What did Vitruvius mean by Eurythmy and Symmetry?

Eurythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breadth suited to their length, and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically.

Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts and the whole general scheme, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard. Thus in the human body there is a kind of symmetrical harmony between forearm, foot, palm, finger, and other small parts; and so it is with perfect buildings. In the case of temples, symmetry may be calculated from the thickness of a column, from a triglyph, or even from a module; in the ballista, from the hole, in a ship, from the space between the tholepins, and in other things, from various members.

Certainly, the functionality and beauty of a catalog comes from the interrelationships, the accumulation of accurate details, the granularity, emphasis on level of detail within each part, corresponding to the kind of user, the kind of catalog desired, whether it is a learned environment or a popular library. You could visualize this as breadth and length. Certainly, if you have too much detail, the catalog will be too long, and the amount of effort needed isn’t proportional to the function of the catalog.

Symmetry is about standards, “selecting a certain part as a standard.”
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“Write what you don’t know and find something out!”  --T.C. Boyle


OK, this is my mantra for graduate school as well. Just start writing and what I know will materialize, somehow.

This competency is stated as:

Every graduate of the SLIS program should understand the system of standards and methods used to control and create information structures and apply basic principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge.


What happens for me in these discussions is that I want to know what is happening NOW in the field. I don’t want to state old and tired truisms that I learned in a stodgy class that dealt with last-century principles, methods, and standards. But what I am finding out, in researching the new Resource Description Access (RDA) which is going to replace the old Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR) (latest version 2002), that even RDA is based on a profound respect for cataloguing traditions. The work of generations and generations of cataloguers will not be thrown out. It made me want to go back to the book that Charles Ammons Cutter wrote, Rules for a Dictionary Catalog, and distill the principles that he said were central to the field, and see how they compare to the principles that are being suggested now.

It also made me curious about other professions having “principles.” What are principles? The principles of cataloguing are to provide guidelines for writing the rules. In a sense, the rules will never be finished; that is a changing, evolving set. But there should be some eternal principles, and they have come down to us through Pannizzi, Dewey, Cutter, Lubetzky, the Paris Principles, AACR, and now RDA.

The first set of principles ever written down for architecture were by Vitruvius. They were:
“Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety and Economy.”

It might be pushing it, but these probably correspond to some eternal principles of cataloguing, too.

Taking the last first: propriety and economy. Vitruvius was saying that the design ought to fit the client. You don’t build a palace for a peasant, and a cottage for a banker. In cataloging, the entries are designed for the convenience of the user. When faced with a choice, go for what the user will look for. A principle can be modified for the sake of the user. Don’t stick to lofty principles if it means the user can’t find what he or she is looking for. Economy is another principle of cataloguing. Pick what is simplest. Also, don’t redo everything if it will cost a tremendous amount.  Research, but don’t attempt perfection if it will take too much time.

Now let’s take Order and Arrangement. How perfect is that? Cataloguers have been arguing about that for decades if not centuries. Cutter described four systems for arrangement.

By the way, what is cataloging? The main elements of cataloging are as follows:

• Bibliographic description
• Subject analysis
• Assignment of claassification notation
• Preparing items for shelf
  

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In this competency, I need to talk about the fundamental concepts of information seeking behaviors. I feel I need to relate them to my career. Most obviously, I use them everyday in my studies. I have been through the process of paper writing many times which brings to mind the first concept. Belkin and colleagues devised the term, ASK – Anomalous States of Knowledge. Not a concept but a model of information seeking. This implies that the “seeker” knows there is a problem but cannot clearly articulate it yet. There is a “process of clarification” that has to happen before even getting to the search request.  This model or framework implies that the system can be helpful if it helps the seeker reiterate their request, while they are focusing.  Marchionini says, “the ASK model serves as a theoretical basis for the design of highly interactive information systems.”  This concept will of course be helpful to a future reference librarian, coping  with the seemingly unfocused questions of students who have papers to write but don’t know what it’s going to be about yet.  Or the topic is so broad in the beginning that, ditto, they don’t know what they’re going to focus on.  The librarian supplies some information that will help bridge the gap, but it only moves the student on to the next situation. The search interface can also supply related terms that help sharpen the focus of the search.

Belkin’s research was preceded by a few years by Dervin in 1977 who influenced people to focus on the users’ needs. She said, people have a need to “make sense of the world” The user goes through three phases.  1) Establish a context. This is called the situation. “People find a gap between what they understand and what they need in order to make sense of the current situation.”  2) They come to a gap “between what they understand and what they need in order to make sense of the current situation.”  3) The answers they find or hypotheses move the seeker on to the next situation.  This is called the “situation-gap-use” model — adopted by researchers in information science and communications  (it was useful to other fields as well) as they study the information-seeking process. (Marchionini, p. 29).

The ASK state: hommage to Chihuly
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