EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW
ABOUT AV CATALOGING --
PLEASE ASK!
Nancy B. Olson
The traditional Question and Answer session was held after the OLAC Membership Meeting on June 21, 2003, in Toronto. The panelists were Verna Urbanski, Jay Weitz, John Attig, and Jean Weihs; the moderator was Sandy Roe. My comments to the questions are enclosed in square brackets.
First, a picky point. I listened to part of the tape of the meeting, waiting for it to turn into the QA session, and heard someone use the term "listserv." Several years ago there was quite a bit of discussion on Autocat about this, as the company owning the trademarked computer program named Listserv objected to the use of that term in a generic sense. Autocat is a computer discussion list, or an electronic list. "Listserv" is a computer program used to run such lists.
Two or more kinds of media packaged together
The first question was from someone in a public library who had a Sesame Street product that contained a DVD and a compact disc. The question was how to handle this. Some discussion helped determine that, in this case, the DVD was the predominant item and the CD was a sampler of songs, so all agreed this would be cataloged as a DVD with the CD treated as accompanying material. If each were equally important, each could be cataloged separately [or the package treated as a kit--NBO].
Someone pointed out that other commercial packages exist in which the compact disc, or discs, are predominant with the DVD being something like a home movie of the band performing the songs on the discs--in which case the compact discs would be predominant, the DVD accompanying.
This provides a good reminder that one cannot establish standard ways of treating packages of material--each has to be examined carefully to determine what is in hand and what, if anything, is predominant. And, of course, one might decide to discard one or more items in the original package before cataloging anything! Toward the end of the QA session there was a discussion of the problems of new formats, and of AV cataloging in general, as there are the problems of cataloging, and of coding and tagging, but there are also problems of shelving and packaging and how to handle certain things in your library. Cataloging is so much more than just descriptive (and/or subject) cataloging.
Electronic resource
The next question was about cataloging an online database that "might have been a serial at some point." There was considerable discussion about this one, and Jay Weitz pointed out the problems of cataloging something that was not available--questions were asked that could not be answered without having the item itself available to examine.
It was pointed out during the discussion that, if the database were an online service, it would be cataloged as a type "m" item, but if it were primarily textual, such as a bibliographic database, it would be done as type "a."
There was agreement that, if it were updated, whether regularly or not, it would be an integrating resource, though special coding for this aspect cannot be done at this time. In any case, the item, cataloged on a type "a" workform, would need MARC21 fields 006 and 007 for the computer aspects, and field 006 for the serial aspects. BibL "m" would be used, though sometime in the future "i" will be used for this value.
The OCLC document written by Jay Weitz, Cataloging Electronic Resources: OCLC-MARC Coding Guidelines
<http://www.oclc.org/connexion/documentation/type.htm> is probably the most useful guidance for this type of cataloging problem.
Universal coffee-pot
Kevin Furniss brought in an object to be cataloged--much of this discussion was accompanied by his show-and-tell, and by much laughter. Evidently the item was packaged in a container with 4 languages printed on it, leading to a discussion of parallel titles. It was decided that the item was realia, and all the information needed for cataloging was found and/or supplied. Someone suggested a note about title from container. [For realia, all sources may be used without making special notes (unless the title is supplied by the cataloger)].
I believe I heard someone summarizing the physical description area approximately as follows:
1 coffeepot (3 pieces) : stainless steel ; __ x __ x __ cm.
There was also discussion of the problem of subject headings and/or genre headings for such items.
CD-ROM of scores
Someone asked how to catalog a CD-ROM that contains scores; scores could be printed out from it. After some discussion it was agreed this would be cataloged on the workform for scores, but with the GMD [electronic resource]. As the score workform would be used, MARC21 fields 006 and 007 would be needed for the electronic aspects. The physical description area would be for the CD-ROM. The contents of the CD-ROM (the scores) would be described and/or listed in notes.
Next QA session: a plea for help
It is difficult to do this column from a tape of the session. Typically the questioner is far from the microphone. Sometimes the discussions get quite lively with many people speaking simultaneously. Frequently laughter covers parts of the responses. It would help me prepare this column if the moderator could (1) restate the question into the microphone, and (2) summarize the answer for both the audience and the recording. In this case, the panelists were not introduced, so I listed them at the beginning of this column from those voices I recognized. I apologize for anything I missed.
When submitting email questions to me for this column, please put in the subject line "Question for Nancy B. Olson" so that I do not delete it without looking further.
Contact Nancy B. Olson at:
P.O. Box 734, Lake Crystal, MN 56055
avnancy@ic.mankato.mn.us
(please put in the subject line "Question for Nancy")
Phone: 507-726-2985
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Last updated: September 3, 2003
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