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