Cataloging project - the labeling phase - with music
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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