Access points in our library catalogue in our ever-changing digital world

This past week we were to look at the catalog record for a number of items and check to see if and how the ISBD areas are organized. I chose fairly recent acquisitions to our library and, as such, the entries were quite uniform and complete.

I did notice, however, that the subject headings in the catalog record were few and far between for some items. The most complete list of subject headings was for the DVD: Noémie, le Secret coming in at 10 headings. The other items averaged only 3 subject headings each. I have found this low number of subject headings to be problematic in our library when I am searching for resources on different topics. I may know of a book that fits a certain theme but it will not come up when I do a keyword search for that particular theme.

Another discrepancy that I noticed was the lack of entry for "target audience" for quite of few of the items. This would be beneficial for a teacher, but may not have any bearing on a student's decision to go look for the book. In reading my classmates' postings in the discussion forum this week, I learned that a few others are also working with Follett Destiny and  that some of them have access to TitlePeek. Now, this is a feature that I know appeals to students with the option of seeing the actual book cover, table of contents, excerpts and even published reviews. Unfortunately, it comes as an additional cost to the Follett Destiny package and our district has opted to spend its money elsewhere (after polling all the teacher-librarians).

After spending a week looking at how search engines work, I found the catalog system to be quite inefficient. I have been disappointed when looking for books on different topics to have my searches come up with very few resources when I know that we have good books on the topic. I learned why this week when I saw how few subject headings that each book/resource actually had. I guess that this means that I need to go back and add appropriate subject headings to the different books/resources that support the topics and themes that are taught in the school. This is where the book/resource needs to have a digital record that includes a portion of the book in its record. That way, maybe key words or subject headings wouldn't have to be manually entered? I wonder what the future holds for catalog records...

From here:

 

 

 

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deborahfitchett/2970373235/

 

 

To who knows where?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/louish/5371825855/