Cataloging maps- Part deux

Weeks 9-10

Compass Rose

I have now cataloged approximately ten maps, about half of them being AAA maps and 3-4 being original cataloging. I’ve got AAA maps down to an extent. Once you have one map by one publisher, all of the others quickly fall into place. What I am most amazed by is how different each map is as to what information it provides about its origin and where that information is placed in the map (which is usually all over and often in miniscule type). I’m still a bit confused by what is considered to be the main source for title information.  In AACR2, I have just found the rules that I should have been using for the last few weeks to determined the title and statement of responsibility.  

Lady cartographer

Cataloger’s desktop is a great tool, and I feel that it is more or less organized, the only problem is that it contains so much information that it can be difficult to know where to find what you are looking for.  Would it really hurt to find a way to incorporate all of the map information in one place?  As of now there is: AACR2 rules for cartographic materials, Cartographic materials, Maps cataloging and Maps cataloging toolbox.  I understand that they are all created by different agencies…but come on people! You would think that catalogers would know better and want people to find information with less fuss. Anyhoo…here are the rules that I have just located in Cataloger's Desktop, which clear up all of the confusion.  I will attempt to interpret them into lay language for anyone who actually reads this, but also for myself.  

"1F6. If there is more than one statement of responsibility, transcribe them in the order indicated by their sequence on, or the layout of, the chief source of information. If the sequence and layout are ambiguous or insufficient to determine the order, transcribe the statements in the order that makes the most sense. If statements of responsibility appear in sources other than the chief source, transcribe them in the order that makes the most sense. (1.1F6)" 
-Transcribe as it is written, unless the statements are in more than one place, then use your brain to figure out what is most important and transcribe according to your own brilliant theory. My brilliant theory would have any cartographer as the first entry, then any agency it may have been produced for, then possibly the publisher or distributor. i.e [cartography by] NAVITEQ,[ produced for] AAA, [published by]Seeman’s

"1G4. If a cartographic item lacking a collective title consists of a large number of physically separate parts, supply a collective title as instructed in 1B7. (3.1G5 mod.)"
-If you don’t see an obvious collective title and there is not an obvious main title, make up a logical title (such as the name of the general area shown in map).

"G5. If, in a cartographic item lacking a collective title, one work is the predominant part, treat the title of that work as the title proper and name the other work(s) in a contents note (see 7B18). (1.1G1 mod.)"
-If there is no obvious collective title but here is one obvious main map-use the title of the main map as the title for the whole.

"1F8. Add a word or short phrase to the statement of responsibility if the relationship between the title of the item and the person(s) or body (bodies) named in the statement is not clear. (1.1F8) Maps of the Mid-west [GMD] / [edited by] D.M. Bagley"
-If you know that a corporate body had a large part to play in the production of a map but it is not listed what that role is, use your best judgment to determine the relationship is and add it in [brackets]-assumed information.

This little exercise has led me to believe that there may be a need for a “Plain language” cataloging book or website. Maybe I could sell the idea to the “…for Dummies” folks. Probably not, as I don’t see there being a large audience for a title called “Cataloging for Dummies”.

Maps!

Weeks 7-8

Fantasy

I had been seduced by the idea of cataloging old cartographic materials. I imagined myself wearing gloves so I didn’t get any fingerprints on the precious, weathered paper; using a magnifying glass to read the small cursive script to unearth the name of the cartographer or publishing company. While that still may happen at some point down the road, for now I have started by cataloging free maps of Santa Rosa that the head cataloger picked up while he was there at a conference. Not nearly as glamorous, but will do the job for learning purposes. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Reality

(Update! Cate took me on a tour of the maps department down in the bowels of Suzallo. It looks like will be moving onto more official maps in a few weeks, I may even do some of my cataloging down with the maps because there is more room to spread out with the bigger maps).


So far, I am excited by a few things:

• Cataloging maps is much faster work than movies. The records are much shorter since there are few people and subjects to trace. You don’t have to use any machinery to operate a map.
• The subject is usually quite obvious-whatever geographic location the map is of.
• There is math and a special tool involved in order to determine scale. While I will probably use the tool (can’t recall the name for it), I would like to know the equation and try it once or twice that way as well. (One thing that I discovered when preparing for entry into grad school…I love math!) 
• If you can’t find a record for whatever map you are using you can always start by copying another map of the area or a different area by the same publisher..this way you have a few fields to start with as a guideline.

But I am also wary of a few things as well:

•  I don’t have my own password to catalogers desktop- a tool that my supervisor thought I had been using this whole time but had never even used in my cataloging class. It basically contains all of the AACR@ rules and changes as well as specific manuals such as the Maps Cataloging Manual (MCM) that is more or less essentials when learning how to catalog cartographic materials. (Update: they got me a password to use while I am UW! Whew!)  
•  There is a new set of fixed fields to learn and I never quite grasped the ones for movies. 
• I am disappointed to know that there are few true “cartographers” anymore. Most maps (especially the type I am cataloging to start) are copies of maps by major map publishers and the main entry is given to the publisher in most cases. 4. Chief source is much harder to determine on maps. It could be anywhere as opposed to books where it is always the title page and verso and movies, where the chief source is the title screens and credits.

Example of GIS mapping

• There is something called GIS which scares the bejesus out of me. According to Wikipedia GIS is “…the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology.” Cate asked me if I was interested in this and I hesitatingly said yes, because I do believe it’s a good idea to be exposed to as much as possible now as opposed to later but as of right now, I really don’t see myself getting to the point where I am comfortable enough with maps to the move onto working with GIS and electronic maps ( at least not in the next 6 weeks).
• There are way too many things about geography that I am not familiar with or ( I hate to say it) then I really want to become familiar with which brings me to the following conclusion….

Just a little geeky, not super geeky.

Cataloging has definitely brought out my geekier tendencies but it has also helped me to define just how geeky I will go. I doubt that I will even become a specialized cataloger at a large university, like Cate is. I am and always will be a generalist. This internship has been a great crash course into the world of more difficult cataloging and really helped me to define further what it is that I am looking for and what I am not looking for as far as a career is concerned.

Taking off the rose-colored glasses

Week 6

This week I had the opportunity to sit on a big department meeting with monographic services at UW.  “Monographic Services” is the name that has been given to the department that does the majority of acquisitions and cataloging work for UW.  The exceptions to this rule are the East Asian library, Health sciences library, and serials, which do some if not most of their own purchasing and cataloging. 

ok...maybe not that boring but how cute is this cat?

Having read the five page summary of what the meeting was going to about beforehand, I went into this meeting with one opinion of the issue at hand, but I definitely left with another. The gist of the summary and purpose of the meeting was to discuss some suggestions that a committee and outside efficiency expert had made upon observing the organization of the monographic services department, focused mostly on Acquisitions. The changes being proposed are that all cataloging and acquisitions should happen in one place.  By consolidating these services, it is thought that the university will save money on but would be, “…better for communication, more effective allocation of resources, and better use of the subject librarian time”. ( If the subject librarians in East Asia and health sciences no longer had to purchase and catalog their own items).  Most of the discussion revolved around Acquisitions’ with implications that cataloging was next in line for recommendations .The head of monographic services basically wanted to meet with his department to get a feeling for the reactions of his employees.  They went through the suggestions one by one and everyone had the opportunity to express their concerns and questions about any changes that might be coming down the line.

 

My first reaction to having been invited to this meeting was excitement.  I have never sat in on a departmental meeting in a large inter-nationally acclaimed university. After just a few minutes though, my bubble had been burst, which is probably for the better. The less rosy my glasses are when entering this field, the less likely it will be that I will be disappointed down the road. This meeting was very similar to  the multitude of meetings I had attended in my years as a manager in food service. The difference was that I was in a room full of technical services introverts and people were generally polite and professional. Otherwise, it was more or less the same drill.  No matter where you work, there always seems to be an “us” vs. “them” mentality playing out in some way.  In this case it was an interdepartmental feud that has been going on for years.  Unfortunately the issue at hand added fuel to the fire. 

The one department that had been omitted from this whole departmental review was Collection Development (CD), who are responsible for the selection of items and also contains the librarians who work on licensing for materials. Why they were left out appears to be a political question.  It would only make sense if they were brought in on these changes, because normally, the collection development and acquisition departments work hand in hand and usually are housed in the same location.  Not so at UW, CD is in an entirely different location and from what I can gather, they do not communicate often or well with Acquisitions.

To make a long story short, nothing was decided in this meeting except that whoever made the suggestions obviously did not know enough about the departments or think through things very clearly.  I believe that the idea of consolidation is a great one, only if the plan to do so is complete.  The main concern is that if the subject librarians at the specific schools are no longer doing acquisitions or cataloging work for their schools, then who is?  This question does not seem to have an answer.  There may be an underlying assumption that the work is going to be absorbed by the existing acquisitions and cataloging librarians, who are already stretched very thin in their current positions.  One thing is for sure, there are no plans to hire on additional staff except to replace the one or two people who are retiring. 

I’m really not an idiot

Week 5

These are my current mantras,“I am not an idiot”, “I am smart and capable”. Maybe if I keep telling myself these things, I will stop making so many silly mistakes. 

"I will not make (too many) cataloging errors"

After having left my notebook at home the week before and not having tried my hand at assigning accession numbers of basically dealing with the Millenium OPAC (they call it iii, so that’s how I will refer to it from now on), I took a stab at it this week. Now, Cate had showed me how to do all of this two weeks prior, unfortunately, if I do not physically use the information I have been taught within a few days, I may as well have never heard it at all.  I was able, after much trial and error, to sign into iii, but that’s where it came to a halt.  It's so frustrating how not knowing just on tiny step, one tiny click, can bring your work to a standstill. But as it had been said, the best way to learn is to make a mistake….or something along those lines.

So when Cate came in she showed me the link I was looking for and all went well with assigning accession numbers and adding barcodes.  Easy, schmeasy.  The next challenge was bibliographic overlay.  I and e-mailed myself the document on how this is done and read it over, but having never seen it done, it was like reading gibberish.  I had no conceptual model to apply it to so I used the conceptual model that we use at the community colleges, thinking, “How different can it be?” Very different. Unlike at SCC UW does batch processing which means that they do not import records directly from OCLC to iii, instead they use a field ( 948) and enter a code  (.b) that signifies what record to overlay on top of the existing record in iii (either a stub or just a bad record).  It took a bit of explaining to fix the mess I made by mistakenly uploading multiple copies of a record.  I think this was the biggest mistake I had made so far at UW…and to be honest in the scope of things, it’s not really that big.  

My brain on cataloging.

It feels good to look back in hindsight and realize this and now I can pretty confidently say that I will probably not make that mistake again.   So…two big lessons learned this week. Two more pieces of the puzzle to try and wrap my brain around.  Next week I get to sit in on a big departmental meeting about some major restructuring that will be happening in UW Acquisitions and eventually, Cataloging, departments.  I will also be interviewing the Assistant Acquisitions librarian to get a sense of what that position entails.  Stay tuned….  

Just when I thought I was "getting it"...

Week 4

Defendants from the Nuremberg trials

So this week, things were shaken up a bit with the addition of nonfiction films. I felt that I had a good grip on fiction films so figured it was time to take the next logical step.  It would be one thing if I went to a fiction film to a somewhat recent, feature length nonfiction film but I had to choose two tricky VHS tapes to catalog.  The first was called “War Crimes” and was more of a collection of newsreels from the WWII era about the Nuremberg trials.  After the newsreels came a short documentary called “Trial at Nuremberg”.  I’m not sure if documentary would be the right word for it, seeing that it was so full of speculation and dramatic narrative but then, Michael Moore’s movies are called documentaries, aren’t they?

The biggest challenge of this record was where to enter the specific information about each piece of this film.  Does it all get thrown into a 520 field?  The record I was augmenting had it set up this way.  Cate explained that it would be easier to trace and add detail to each part of the film (such as the narrator and length of each clip) if instead, each piece became its own 505 note.  This, I could understand but then it got even trickier with the addition of having to remember which delimiters to use and how to format the sub-fields.

…then came time for subject and genre headings.  There were some great one’s already in the files.  I added “propaganda films” as a genre heading and am pretty curious to see how Cate responds to this. It was a risk but I feel that I can back it with the information found in the authority file. (Excuse me while I pat myself on the back for realizing that despite some struggles, I have learned a lot in the last few weeks).

Next I cataloged a copy of the "Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute" aka "Freedomfest" concert from 1988. This brought back many a memory, since I think I was glued to the set when it first aired in order to see George Michael, who I though was a pop god at the time. As far as genre heading are concerned I now know the difference between “Filmed television concert” , “Concert films” and “Filmed performances”.

George Michael at "Freedomfest", 1988

Yes, there is a difference.  Concert films are feature length films of concerts that were taped for the reason of being released on video. “Filmed performance” is a live performance from start to finish, without editing.  I would think this may be use more frequently for plays and whatnot.  The Mandela concert was a “Filmed television concert” It was filmed specifically to be televised and was then edited and released as a VHS.  Got that?  Good because there’s a lot more where that came from.

Movin on up!

Week 3

After three weeks of correcting multiple errors on my VHS records and getting to a point where the errors are dwindling, it looks like I am ready to start to tackle some more complicated formats.  This week I will take a stab at DVD’s and documentaries. My site advisor informed me the same movie in DVD form is going to much trickier to catalog than in VHS because of the added features and options that are available in DVD’s such as; commentary, deleted scenes, and subtitles. Documentaries may not have many more fields than a regular full length feature movie, but when it comes to subject headings, it becomes much more important that your headings are correct.  Unlike a fiction move where you can add multiple subject headings to describe general themes of a movie, a documentary is usually about a specific thing or person.  Bring it on!

I had the privilege of cataloging a movie last week called “Nasty Rabbit” aka “Spies a Go-Go”.  Produced in 1964, this is a B movie about a Russian spy who unleashes a nuclear bunny in the Wild West (see green glowing bunny to the left).   I watched a good portion on the movie while trying to determine the subject headings and credits and enjoyed how completely silly it was.  It did make me wonder though, how likely it will be that anyone would ever want to check this movie out of a university library and if it is pretty unlikely, is cataloging and processing this move worth the effort being put into it? I can understand that it is rare and that the particular copy we had did not have a great record.  I get the importance of cataloging and archiving objects of popular culture and am glad that someone is doing it. 

Upon doing some additional research on the importance of cataloging movies (or moving images) I came across The AMIA ( Association of Moving Image Archivists) website, which puts forth a very convincing argument on why it is important to catalog even what might appear to be the most ridiculous looking movie.

    “More than a reflection of society and culture, moving images are primary documents that can serve a wide range of research purposes. The director Sydney Pollack has said that cinema is “the most vivid and valuable record of who we were and what we were, and what we thought and what we believed. " (retrieved from http://www.amianet.org/)

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, but…

My concern is that, when the time comes that I would be responsible for deciding on adding an item such as this, a) would I feel it worthy of the labor that needs to be invested to make it a good record and b) why go to great lengths to catalog a format that is essentially dead (VHS)? The University of Washington is one of the rare exceptions in that while struggling financially, they have a school of library science which provides a plethora of free labor (such as myself-even though I don’t attend the iSchool). Cate did explain that the only reason that VHS tapes are still cataloged is because the titles have not, and probably will never be, released in DVD. (Side note: this particular movie had been released in DVD format, both on it’s own and part of a double feature along with a gem called “ Prehistoric Women”). Maybe this falls back into the catch all category of cataloger's judgement. There are so many factors to consider when building a collection and deciding what to catalog. On top of that, each library, institution, collection and user base has it own distinct needs. More than learning the ins and outs of the skill of cataloging, I believe it is these factors that would be the most important to learn when transitioning from technician to cataloging librarian.