Other sources of cataloguing...

It is interesting to see, in this course, how different libraries can be even within the same province. You would think that the way they operate would be somewhat more uniform. In my district we have a central library that takes care of cataloguing services. This means that neither I, as TL, nor my library assistant need to spend time cataloguing new resources. This frees up my time to teach and my library assistant's time to carry out other administrative jobs.

It looks like Follett and ULS offer excellent cataloguing services at reasonable prices. Follett offers this service at 69 cents per book including: electronic catalog record, bar code label with protector, spine label, and mylar choice. It is only 11 cents per book if you are just looking for the electronic catalog record. ULS offers a basic MARC record for 49 cents per book.

It's good to know about these services even though I do not need them at this point in my library. It would definitely be worthwhile to buy a MARC record for less than a dollar. From my experience, creating MARC records takes time, and I know that my MARC records were not as accurate as they should have been.

From the discussion forum, I have learned that many of my classmates take advantage of these services in their districts. I know that before we amalgamated our library systems into one, with Follett Destiny in 2006, the teacher-librarians in our district were responsible for cataloguing. They would buy MARC records from jobbers in order to cut down on the time they spent on administrative duties.

CIP and MARC records

The more I read and the more assignments that I complete for this course, the more I realize how many layers there are to MARC records. At first I found processing the information for writing the code for MARC records to be very overwhelming. Now, I only find it slightly overwhelming! ;)

It was beneficial to write the MARC records from scratch for a number of items while using examples from AMICUS and The Library of Congress to guide me. This week's lesson is helping me fine-tune my MARC records for my digital library project as I am becoming aware of tags that may have been omitted in actual MARC records that would be very beneficial to include in the MARC records that I am writing.

Being able to read about my classmates' experiences when comparing CIP to MARC records has brought up scenarios that I didn't encounter when examining the three books that I chose for Lesson 7 this week. My three books had relatively complete MARC records,  with complete summaries and appropriate subject headings. I did, however, come across a book that had no CIP data and I had never noticed that in a book before. I learned that this might have been because it was a "mass market paperback". From reading my classmates' postings, I saw that some of them had come across books where the MARC records did not contain summaries and had limited subject headings.

In my two years in the library I have learned that if relevant key words are not included in the summaries or in the subject headings, then it will be impossible to locate appropriate books for teachers for popular themes or topics. In the future, as I come across these omissions, I will note them and submit them to our cataloguing department in our district library, as all changes to MARC records must be made by them.

I am now off to improve the MARC records that I have written for the items in my digital library...

Creating MARC records...

This code is complicated... all the more obvious when you compare MARC records for the same book at two different libraries.

I looked at Adrienne Gear's Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read. I first looked at the MARC record at my elementary school and this is what I saw.

In order to access this MARC record, I  had to be signed in as an administrator. The MARC record was easy to understand, as textual signposts were used. When I looked at the MARC record for the same book at the Vancouver Public Library, this is what I saw. I was able to access the record as a guest.

 

As you can see, no textual signposts were used and symbols were used in place of spaces. I believe that this is because this is the actual code that the computer will read. The call numbers are different for each record and they are recorded in different tags. My school library's MARC record includes a summary, while VPL's does not. I wonder why that is, when there is clearly a summary in the catalogue record for this book in VPL. In fact, the description on the VPL catalogue record is much more detailed than the one at my school, giving a better idea of what the book is about.

There has been much talk in the discussion forum about how involved writing MARC records really is. I was overwhelmed at first (and still am a little...) by all the different tags, indicators and subtags. It seems that the position and choice of symbol for all of these is very important. The more that I write, the more that I understand what I am doing... it is a lot like learning a second language!

Image created at http://www.says-it.com/

Some of my classmates have noticed big discrepancies between the hard copy of the book and the MARC record for that same book. I have not noticed any problems in the books that I have chosen to look at in my own library for this course, but in the past I have noticed that call numbers might not match, or there might be typos in the summaries. One thing that I have come across in my two years in the library is that many books do not come up when doing a keyword search for a certain topic when it is obvious that that certain book fits that topic. I am wondering if adding subject headings to the MARC record could correct this problem.