Welcome to Litsy!

Enjoying these two.

This was a fast, interesting read. I think my favorite part was getting to see handwritten card catalog cards for a bunch of books again. But I did actually learn a lot of new things along with all the nostalgia. My one complaint is that I found myself tempted to skim large stretches when the writing style was less dynamic, or info I already knew was being related.

My current impulse read is this fascinating nonfiction that in surprisingly simple language gives an overview of the history of cataloguing itself dating back to ancient Sumeria, and a history of the library of congress in particular, and includes a treasure trove of over 200 full color images from the library‘s collection. #Card #DivineDecember @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

“You add to the existing surrogate record and make this a second copy. In reality, your students don‘t care which edition they have, and they will get confused if they see two records for the same title. But, speaking as a cataloger, you have an edition that was created with the same type image with just a change in distributor. Make a second 020 for the Scholastic ISBN and be done with it.”

“The Resource Description and Access rule together with ISBD rules determine the content of the information included in the fields for physical description. However, RDA is not as concerned about the punctuation rules of ISBD as was AACR . . . The MARC21 rules determine how that information is organized for presentation in an electronic catalog.”

🥳🥳🥳

My favourite part was the “surprise final forum post” you unlocked after finishing the “last quiz” 🤨

Almost had my grand desk clearing day of editing derailed by a desk shift at another branch but the library gods smiled on me and happily the other branch sorted their roster woes out without needing me. I‘ve printed out 5 pages of spine labels - which will be a job for next week 😜

Niche content - but one of the funnest cataloguing mistakes I‘ve made (recently)

Why not add a random J to a Lonely Planet travel guide… it‘s not like anyone understands suffixes anyway 😅😂

#newbookday!

Although the alphabet has more or less maintained its order even across different scripts, it took a surprisingly long time for alphabetical order to become the standard basis for storing and retrieving information. Judith Flanders describes that faltering process in this book, which it must be said turned out to be rather drier than I was expecting.