AMIA Compendium of Moving Image Cataloging Practice
Edited by Abigail Leab Martin
Written and compiled by AMIA Cataloging and Documentation Committee’s
Subcommittee for the Compendium of Cataloging Practice
A Review
This book, the first monographic publication from the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), is based on surveys sent out to institutions that need to catalog moving images. It was published in partnership with The Society of American Archivists. The majority of the twenty-seven institutions that took part in the survey are academic or educational, but broadcast institutions, government archives, a historical society, a non-profit moving image archive, and an institution with a specialty in stock footage are also included. The seventy-eight questions on the survey included questions on the institutions themselves about such things as type and size of collections, number of staff members, and educational levels of staff members. Other questions were on cataloging practices in general such as whether the institution’s catalog is in machine-readable form, whether it is accessible via the Web, whether the institution uses the MARC format, and how much of their collections are fully cataloged. The rest of the questions dealt with specific cataloging practices. For example, one question was if a work was known by different titles, does the institution enter them all under a uniform title.
The book includes tables with background information on the institutions’ collections. Some of the summaries of the answers to the questions on cataloging policies include whole or parts of bibliographic records. The appendices include detailed information on each institution that participated in the survey, the survey questionnaire, "terms and definitions for film elements and video generations" from different institutions, and a brief explanation of the MARC format and a chart of MARC tags. There is also an online appendix that includes every cataloging example from each institution along with parts of their cataloging manuals.
This book would be useful to institutions either making decisions on cataloging their collections of moving images or reevaluating their cataloging procedures. The book provides information on how a variety of institutions handle a particular cataloging question, and what approach is the most popular among the institutions in this small sample. The appendices also contain useful information. The only error I found was on page 25 the compilers say that field 246 may now be used to list the titles of components of a work instead of field 740. Field 246 should be used only for titles that apply to a work as a whole, and component titles should still be traced as 740 fields. This mistake was not repeated in other places in the book where the 246 field was discussed.
Published in 2001 by: Association of Moving Image Archivists and The Society of American Archivists, Beverly Hills, Calif. and Chicago. (vii, 272 p.) ISBN 0-931828-23-6. $40.00.
Reviewed by: Katherine L. Rankin
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Last updated: April 7, 2003
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