Subject Headings that RAWK

Limited and boring subject headings means your desired item will show up in a sea of boring, unrelated, equally poorly cataloged items.  But if you use sparkly subject headings like these, and if more librarians KNOW about them, your delightful and fantastic item will show up with its equally delightful and fantastic peers.

Vade-mecums
or
Handbooks, Vade-mecums, etc. 
(the etc. just slays me...it could be anything...Toadstools, Ink Pens, Large Orange Pants)
These are items intended to be carried with you at all times, an indispensible tool/font of knowledge. 
     
Some examples:
     
What? what? what? astounding, weird, wonderful and just plain unbelievable facts
Author Thomas, Lyn
ISBN 1894379519 Publication Date c2003 Publisher Maple Tree Press
Physical Description print 128 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Life's big instruction book : the almanac of indispensable information
Author Madigan, Carol Orsag.
ISBN 0446517577
Publication Date c1994 Publisher Warner Books
Physical Description print xxv, 881 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Eccentrics and Eccentricities
(self-defining)

True Brits : a tour of Great Britain in all its bog-snorkelling, shin-kicking, and cheese-rolling glory
Author Daeschner, J. R.
ISBN 158567656X
Publication Date 2005 Publisher Overlook Press Physical Description print 338 p. : ill., 1 map ; 21 cm.
I'd agree that those sound like eccentric activities.  We have a Redneck Games here in Dublin, Georgia, where there is a bit of mud puddle jumping.

Bachelor brothers' bed & breakfast pillow book
Author Richardson, Bill
ISBN 155054439X
Publication Date c1995 Publisher Douglas & McIntyre Physical Description print 194 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
The records in PINES (our statewide catalog) doesn't say much but this is a non-fiction title, has had many editions and pressings and shows up in multiple records.  So I assume it is quite eccentric.

Essence, Genius, Nature

I got this one from a book I'm using for this study called Magic Search: Getting the Best Results from Your Catalog and Beyond by Kornegay, Rebecca, Heidi E. Buchanan and Hildegard B. Morgan.  Published by the ALA in 2009.

It sounds very cool and if you are a religious person you can use it to narrow down what you are looking for in terms of spiritual writings, such as

God is a verb : Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism
Author Cooper, David A.
ISBN 1573226947 Publication Date 1998, c1997 Publisher Riverhead Books

But I'm not religious and this term is limited to such, it seems.

Bildungsroman
These are coming-of-age stories and I generally like them.  Just a personal choice, plus it's a cool word.

This is a catalog record for a hiccup

150 $a Hiccups
450 $a Hiccoughing
450 $a Hiccoughs
450 $a Hiccuping
450 $a Hiccupping
450 $a Singultus
550 $w g $a Spasms
550 $w g $a Symptoms
670 $a Web. 3 $b(hiccup or hiccough; hiccuping also hiccupping, hiccoughing)

I found this in the Library of Congress Subject Headings search, and felt a little deflated.  It's been done, well of course it's been done. 

BUT what hasn't been done, it seems, is the cataloging of an INDIVIDUAL hiccup. 

I spent about an hour going through the fields and subfields and delimiters trying to decipher it all.  It isn't available in one place.  To find out what the 670 field was I went to The United Nations website (because I googled "MARC tag 670") which told me what it was (the source of the information on this particular item we are speaking of in field 100) but then I had to go to  Library of Congress via the UN site because when I searched the LOC in a general kind if manner I got this response about the 670 field:
 
659 - 679 unassigned  (you'd think the LOC wouldn't contradict itself.  Or maybe I am missing something.  I hope it is that, that i am simply dumb and/or impaired because if the LOC is confused then we're all going to hell in a handbasket)
 
So eventually I was able to figure out what 670 is.

Now there was the questions of what the two 550 fields were (550 being the "issuing body note", that is, a note from the person who cataloged it.  I think.) and what did the subfield $wg mean?  For that I went to this part of the LOC which WOW! Had nothing to say about the $w subfield.  Surprise!

Somehow I found LOC Tracings which finally told me that $w means a control subfield (which you don't really have to understand) and that $wg means that the word following it is a Broader Term.  Which makes sense, spasms are a broader term for hiccups.  If there was a narrower term it would be shown as $wh.  And then the next subfield within that 550 field, immediately following the $wg is $a The Broader Term itself.

You can also use $wd to show the acronym (I don't think there is one for hiccups), $wa for an earlier heading, maybe $aHonkHonk, and then $wb for a later term like, $aHOoOOoOoo. 
You would use these subfields if in the past we refered to and cataloged hiccups as HonkHonks and in the future (I guess you would have to add this to the record later) they are known as HOoOOoOoos.  That's in the future, when we mix capital and lowercase letters to indicate an entire additonal 26 character alphabet with perhaps currently unpronounceable sounds. 
If you have read this far then you are either a cataloger or you are truly my friend.

Vegetable Garden, cataloged, a start

082    $a635.13
245    carrot $h [realia] = Daucus Carota var. sativus
300    $aSpecimen: scarlet nantes :
          $bOrganic compounds; orange ;
          $c20 cm. x 25 mm. at top tapering to 5 mm. at base
500    title supplied by seed package
500    Grown from Park's Seed by Suzie DeGrasse
520    Common edible root vegetable grown in gardens and farms for human and animal consumption.
650    $aVegetables; garden crops ; horticulture
651    $aGeorgia $y2009 $zPocataligo

082    $a635.13
245    Zucchini $h[realia] = Curcubita pepo
300    $aSpecimen, Dark Green :
          $bOrganic compounds ; green
          $c27 cm. x 8 cm.
500    Title supplied by seed package
500    Grown from Plantation Seed by Suzie DeGrasse
520    Edible fruit of the squash family grown in gardens and farms for primarily human consumption.
650    $aVegetables ; garden crops ; horticulture
651    $aGeorgia $y2009 $zPocataligo

MARC 21 makes me want to pass out

I haven't cataloged for about a year.  I'm using Unlocking the Mysteries of Cataloging: a Workbook of Examples by Elizabeth Haynes and Joanna F. Fountain to get started cataloging ephemera and things like toys, realia, artifacts, etc.  I'm about to fall asleep as I write this.  Not necessarily because it's a quiet, rainy Sunday, but because my brain is overwhelmed and wants me to stop right now and just rest.  I did exercise 107 in the book and followed the AACR2 rules they said would be needed, but didn't do it in MARC.  The records I have seen for ephemera aren't in MARC, and apparently there are so many MARC wizards (programs, not magical people in hats with wands) out there it's a possibility that catalogers don't have to have MARC memorized.  I'm in the process of downloading a trial version of MARC Magician from Mitinet to see how that works, and I printed out 10 copies of a MARC template.
So my first record, for Choo-Choo Charlie the Train, was kind of a disaster.  Didn't do it in MARC, misunderstood some of the AACR2 rules, the pencil is ugly, and now I am about to keel over and pass out.
I'm going to have to allow my brain this because I'm wasting it's time trying to force it to learn.

Rust, Joseph Cornell and Zines

I was looking at the CLIR site on Cataloging Hidden Collections and found this cycles grant applicants: none of whom have been awarded anything yet.  It looks exciting!

Purdue University Arthur Herbarium
More to come, but this is a library of plant rusts!
I emailed them today (9/18/09) to find the contact for cataloging questions.

Wonderland: The Joseph Cornell Study Center Collection.
This is a library at the Smithsonian of Joseph Cornell's source materials and private library: he's one of my favorite artists.
No url, but I'm going to email the curator tomorrow and see how she does it.
Note to self: always save the url of places you stumble upon because you may never find them again, even after searching for an hour.
Additional note to self: re-read your blog before getting lost looking for something.  I looked up and saw CLIR and Cataloging Hidden Collections and said, DUH...because that is where I found the Joseph Cornell Wonderland.
Emailed Caroline Hennessey 9/18/09 while canning tomatoes from the garden, which yes, I have yet to catalog.


Richard Hugo House Zine Archive and Publishing Project (ZAPP)

Oberlin College's Mail Art Collection

Cataloged Soap and Gum

Description 1 picture album in case ; 12 x 16 cm. + 6 bars of soap


Note Title from case

Edition of 200 copies

Typeface for silkscreen and lithograph in Stone Sans and Stone Serif. Cover embossing and lithograph printing by Stamperia Valdonega of Verona. Linen from Gori Tessuti of Prato, soap from Saponificio A. Gori of Arezzo

Both case and soap are wrapped and tied as indicated in the summary note

Summary "This artists's book tells the story of a young woman in Calabria, Italy during the 1950's, whose real life reads like a fairy tale, or a soap opera, in six installments. In order to give lasting form to this oral history, the reader must release the text, silk-screened on linen pages, from six tiny bars of soap, with numbers imprinted with lead type. After hanging to dry, ironing optional, the rags slot into six acid-free pages with oval die-cuts, through which the text remains visible. The pages are bound with a linen rag into a handmade, cloth-covered album, with the title embossed into a raised oval on the front cover. The book is housed in a matching cloth-covered box, lined with rags and sealed with a color-lithographed soap label."--From the soap bars wrapper

Note Library has two copies, no. 184 of 200 and letter "P" of 200, both signed by the artist

Copy 1 is an intact, pre-performance set, the linen pages still encased in 6 bars of soap and not yet inserted into cloth-covered album. Copy 2 is a performance set, used by the artist to demonstrate how to assemble the book. Copy 2 includes fragments of soap used in demonstration at Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, Nov. 2, 2006

Includes explanatory 5-page "Soap story recap," written by the artist

Angela Lorenz was a visitor to CC as part of the show "Book as object: an international survey of sculptural bookworks," November 2006

Subject Artists' books -- Italy

Link to: Soap Record
 
Description 4 sticks of gum ; 2 x 8 cm


Note Cover title

Four sticks of chewing gum, each in inner and outer wrappers, the whole in printed wrapper with pull string (dental floss)

A "performance book," with aphorisms from Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, and the I Ching printed on both sides of sticks of gum, to be read, chewed, and reflected upon

Includes gum chewed by the artist at Coburn Gallery opening, November 2, 2006

Includes author's explanatory statement, and text of words that appear on chewing gum

"First edition of 50 copies"--Laid-in description

Angela Lorenz was a visitor to CC as part of the show "Book as object: an international survey of sculptural bookworks," November 2006

Subject Artists' books -- Italy

Link to Chewing Gum Book Record

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.  I thought it wasn't something inventable.  Alternately, I though Al Gore invented it.  (No, I know he didn't.  He invented the Internet.)

From 025.431: The Dewey Decimal Blog

This is a very neat blog which is RESPLENDENT with question-beggers.  T1s and hierarchical force and sentences that make sense to them like "you are taken out of that by the reference at...".  Thank goodness there's a glossary.  I had to look this one up:

Scatter note
A class-elsewhere, see-reference or relocation note that leads to multiple locations in the DDC. See also Class-elsewhere note; Relocation; See reference.

I guess it's a see-also.  And I "see-also" that I made a typo in my comment on the blog!  Arrgh!  How embarrassing!
I'm at the point where I haven't received any feedback or emails from my professor who is grading me on this independent study and so have no reference other than a self-referential sort of feeling as to whether I am doing enough or not enough while teaching myself this.  I have hits from all over the country: but most of them friends that are politely viewing it (and saying "whaaa...huh?") and my librarian friends.  I haven't cataloged the carrot yet, I'm not procrastinating, I'm amassing.  One exciting thing is that if you google the phrase, without quotes, how to catalog ephemera, this blog shows up on the first page of hits!  Maybe I will find someone else who is attempting the same thing.  I am sure I am not unique in this endeavor and it has been done before, I just can't find them.  Maybe they're in Bolivia and they have cataloged those little purple potatoes.
Now I'm going to have to read the entire glossary.

          Classification by attraction

The classification of a specific aspect of a subject in an inappropriate discipline, usually because the subject is named in the inappropriate discipline but not mentioned explicitly in the appropriate discipline.

  what?

Some articles and websites to check out

Cataloging Hidden and Special Collections

The Emergence of Ephemera

Controlled Vocabulary Is Often Quite Helpful

How to Catalog Your Masonic Library

Do You Have a Restless Urge to Catalog???

How to Catalog Zines

How to Catalog Props and Consumeables

The California Ephemera Project Blog

Someone's Paper on Ephemera

Cataloging of audiovisual materials and other special materials a manual based on AACR2 and MARC 21

The only useful chapter for me was 10, p. 265-281, Three-Dimensional Artefacts and Realia. It was essentially a restating of the AACR2 rules, but in a different verbiage and more detail, although that wasn't necessary. It's very helpful from a MARC cataloging standpoint and I will be saving my notes for future reference, when I do MARC cataloging of carrots and hiccups and such. Here is one paragraph that demystifies an AACR2 phrase I wondered about:

"Artefacts not intended primarily for communication." This phrase is used in 10.4C2 through 10.4F2. The intent of the phrase is unclear. For example, a Civil War-era cannonball is an artifact, and definitely communicates something about the horrors of war. Ben Tucker explains: "I remember rather clearly the discussion that went into the formulation of the rule. The words 'not intended for communication' mean nothing more than 'not published,' or 'not issued in an edition.' Another term that might have serves is 'not commercially available in multiple copies.' (Ben R. Tucker, LC, letter to Nancy Olson, Dec.17, 1984)

Unlocking the mysteries of cataloging: a workbook of examples

Oooooooooooooooooh this loooooooooooooooookssssssssssssss wonderful!!!!!
I found a bunch of exercises directly related to ephemera!!!!
I'll be doing exercises 107 through 116, 119, 122, 129 and 130.  I'll post the results and a few here.

The future of cataloging : insights from the Lubetzky symposium : April 18, 1998, University of California, Los Angeles

'Modeling Relevance in Art History', Sara Shatford Lane, p. 33

The first task, then, was to figure out what art historians are studying; the second, to figure out what the attributes of art works are; the third, to figure out how to match up the two; and the fourth and final, to analyze the data.

'Creating Efficient and Systematic Catalogs', Allyson Carlyle, p. 42

Tillett's Taxonomy of Bibliographic Relationships as a Scheme for Display

• Equivalence Relationships, including:
• equivalent texts, which share identical content and authority
• near equivalents, which in addition to identical content and authorship, share other characteristics as well    honestly, I can't understand this pair of sentences.  Why are 'near  equivalents' more alike than equivalents?  Do I not understand the word 'equivalent'?  I always thought 'equi' was relating to equal, or the same.  Or it's related to horses.
• Derivative Relationships, including:
• revisions
• adaptations
• translations
• extractions
• amplifications
• Whole-Part Relationships
• Sequential relationships
• Descriptive Relationships
• Shared Characteristic Relationships

The standard catalog entry and how it can be applied to a carrot

Some explanatory notes:

Black Ink text comes from my notes on the AACR2 Standard Rules   striken-through means I realized it was not used for carrots.
Green Ink text comes from my notes on how it can be applied to a carrot
Red Ink text denotes further reading from the AACR2 chapter on Artefacts and Realia.  (yes, artEfacts, it means an object made or modifies by one or more persons) (no, artEfacts is just the British way of spelling artIfacts, it isn't a different thing)
Important: spelling the word carrot too many times makes it never looked spelled correctly.

• Title and Statement of Responsibility what would the title of a vegetable be?  AACR2 says if it is Realia, a brief descriptive title is ok, but to [bracket a devised title]  For example:  Carrot [realia]?  I don't know yet.  There is NO statement of responsibility for a carrot and AACR2 says do not make one up.  In Realia, the chief source of information is the object itself with any accompanying container. [carrot]  Statement of Responsibility could contain first farmer to hybridize, first discoverer, but this would be in the Notes section.  Which is now looking to be the main part of a Realia entry.
• title proper = parallell title (other languages only if well known) : other title information  Title Proper versus Collective Title versus Uniform Title.  Peppers.  For separate iteations of this species, see   Jalapeno.  For separate iterations of this genus see   Vegetables.
• Edition none for a carrot unless it is a second planting, I guess
• Publication and Distribution  no place of publication because it is a naturally occurring object.
• place and name of publisher
• name of distributor
• place and name of manufacturer
• dates maybe could be date of planting and date of harvest? In Realia, date of publication becomes date of manufacture.  I could put the time from germination to harvest.
• Physical Description
• extent of item : other physical details ; dimensions.  Carrot : orange; 17 x 6 cm.  Or, Pecan; in shell 5 x 7 x 8 cm (world's largest) (not really, I'm just making numbers up) MARC record format is object : material, color ; dimensions.
• Series (current iteration or all issues and parts)   see my notes in the notes
• Notes (all iterations and any other sources)
• nature, scope or artistic form  nature of the item...edible part of Carrotus Americanus. 
• language generally english but garbanzo beans might not be english
• source of title like Rodale's Guide maybe
• variations commonly known as 'tater.
• edition and history could be: grown in the United States since 1845.
• physical decsiption ovoid object made of carbon, hydrogen, etc. ?
• series If I am describing a crop as opposed to a single iteration, would it be a series? Carrot, no. 17. If I do two plantings could I say, Carrot; v.2, no.17?
• audience for all mammals with scondary molars
• other formats maybe issued also in sizes from 2x2 cm to 17x18 cm.
• summary
• contents If there is more than one usaeble part- contents: edible seeds - flesh - root
• numbers associated maybe for apples 3 would be associated because of some Trinity thing
• copy being described specific details about that carrot that may be different than the usual: has extra root so it looks like a little man.
• library's holdings  garden conatins 75 carrots.
• restrictions on use  for humans only, not intended for rodent or lupine (rabbit) visitors.
• Standard number and Terms of Availabilty Accessible after 23 days of growth.  Inaccessible after October 15 (first frost date)
• references The See and the See Alsos.  For a tomato could be See: Love apple.  For the collective species you could say, See Also, root vegetables.  And then in the Root Vegetable entry you'd have to put See Also, Carrot, Parsnip, etc. ' See'  leads one way, See Also has to be two-way.

AACR2 and the hidden frustrations of blogging as a tool for school

it ate it all. twice.