Tuesday, February 04, 2014

The Cataloging Game

The piles on my desk are shrinking...mostly because I've piled the books behind me.  I've shelf-read the whole collection, plus the section of books in the boss's office.  I still need to work on finding an appropriate library software program, but that will take some time.

I've gotten a bit farther with cataloging.  I've created a game.  I take a book, determine if it definitely is within the scope of the library, and then I attempt to read the back cover. (Most of the collection is Hebrew.)  I look at the cataloging schedule that was given to me, and I try to figure out where it goes.  Sometimes before I get to that point, I have to go to Wikipedia to determine historical time periods, or place names (so חלב means milk, but it is also Aleppo..who knew?)

Then I go to ULI....my new best friend.  A million subject heading possibilities for every title. size measurements and best of all, links to other libraries that hold the book...and some even catalog in Dewey!  So far this has made my job much easier.  And back to work I go.....