Radio Ballet

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Manga Guides, the complete package

What you see on the left is a whole lot of awesome, all 6 of the Manga Guides currently available from No Starch Press. If you can't read the titles, they are The Manga Guide to
- Molecular Biology
- Calculus
- Physics
- Electricity
- Databases
- Statistics

I've read the one on molecular biology. I thought it was ok, but not great. Still, I love the idea of learning a bit more about a subject via a format that I enjoy, manga. From what I understand, all six guides wrap their educational content in a simple story. In the molecular biology one, a professor has two students in his introductory molecular biology class who are failing, so he tells them they have to do special make-up work. On his private island. Yes, he has a private island, complete with virtual reality teaching tools and holographic image projection capability, which he uses to give his students minor heart attacks and hands on experience with the concepts he teaches. By the end of the book, the girls have learned a lot about molecular biology, and they also learn a secret the professor has been keeping from them. I knew that the story was going to be pretty simple and likely silly, so I didn't have a lot of expectations in that area. My biggest problem with the book had to do with its information, which didn't always seem very balanced and which I'm pretty sure left out a few important bits (if I remember my high school biology classes correctly). Also, chunks of the book were just text, with heads in the margins to show who was speaking - pretty boring.

But just because I didn't think the molecular biology book was all that great doesn't mean I don't want to try out the other books. The ones on statistics and databases are next on my list - I'll have to see about requesting them via ILL sometime.

Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto

I just realized that I finished this a while back, and I haven't really written about it much. Like any book of essays, some of the essays are better than others. I'm probably not "radical" enough for some of the writers who contributed to this book, but I appreciate that some of them care enough about certain issues (like queer subject access, or the classification of Native American materials) to force the cataloging world to change, however slowly.

I think, for me, the most enjoyable and potentially useful section of the book was part 3, which included essays on innovative cataloging practices. One essay (Michelle Emanuel and Susannah Benedetti's "Browsing Berman, finding Fellini, cataloging Kurosawa: alternative approaches to cataloging foreign language films in academic libraries") would be good for me to consult, if only to get myself in the proper mindset, if we ever decide we need to do a cleanup of our DVD/VHS call numbers and subject headings (or genre headings). I've started trying to formulate and follow a plan for how I construct call numbers for DVDs such as those based on plays or books, but that doesn't take care of previous inconsistencies in practice.

Another good essay I'm going to have to go over again sometime is Wendy Baia's "User-centered serials cataloging," which includes tips for serials cataloging damage control. I don't know that we'd necessarily want to follow all those tips, but I can understand why she thinks they're necessary, and it wouldn't hurt to look through them and at least consider them and figure out what their implications would be for both our users and future serials record maintenance. Or maybe I'll just recommend this essay to Janie - I'm sure she'd like some of the tips.

Although it was short, I enjoyed Robin Fay's "'Why isn't my book on the shelf?' and other mysteries of the library," which was about error reporting. The author's library's catalog has links to an error reporting form at the bottom right of the screen - sometimes users report actual errors in records, and sometimes the "errors" they report are actually indications that the library needs to be clearer about certain things (for instance, the meaning of the word "discharged," letting students know what they need to do if they can't find a book the catalog says is there, etc.).

Jennifer Erica Sweda ("Dr. Strangecataloger: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the tag") and Dana M. Caudle and Cecilia M. Schmitz ("Drawing reference librarians into the fold") also wrote essays I enjoyed, although, with me anyway, they were preaching to the choir. Personally, I love the idea of user applied tags (in conjuction with the continued application of LCSH by catalogers, which I'm a little worried about the future of, after reading Thomas Mann's "What is going on at the Library of Congress?"), and getting input from reference librarians on how to improve the catalog seems like a no-brainer to me.

I'm going to have to take a closer look at Dana M. Caudle and Cecilia M. Schmitz's "MARC: it's not just for cataloging anymore," although I think some of what they describe in their essay is stuff we accomplish with ItemCat1 and ItemCat2 in our item records. However, I love their description how their library maintains its lists of electronic databases - using information drawn from the MARC records in their catalog, Perl scripts generate updating A-Z and subject-specific lists. Database cataloging might seem a bit less like slogging through thigh-high mud if I knew that the information I was inputting might end up being used as more than just a bandaid for confused students. I keep putting my database cataloging off in favor of other things.

An essay I was particularly looking forward to reading was Carrie Preston's "High-speed cataloging without sacrificing subject access or authority control: a case study." I already do some of the things Preston mentions, like making use of macros (although I really need to figure out how to create a macro that strings together several macros, so I don't have to run each one separately). Some of what Preston writes is a little more painful, like choosing not to enter certain information that is considered optional. One thing I've incorporated into my current regular cataloging is the elimination of bibliography pagination - I still check it if it's already in the record, but I don't add it if it isn't, and probably no one will ever miss it. I consider table of contents notes or summary notes to be more worth my time than bibliography pagination, and, using a combination of copy and paste and several nifty macros, I can create summary and contents notes more quickly than I used to be able to. One thing I incorporated into my cataloging of our databases was sitting down and figuring out which fields absolutely need to be there, which fields need to be checked if present but don't need to be added if they aren't, and which fields don't even need to be checked. Having a set list of things I need to pay attention to has helped speed things up a bit (when I actually choose to work on the project, which I've been really bad about).

The thing about all "radical" cataloging decisions is that they need to be applied consistently. If a cataloger decides, for the good of his or her library's users, to do something differently from what the rules say and what other catalogers do, that's fine, but those decisions need to be documented for future catalogers.

One thing I think also needs to be taken into consideration is whether or not the benefits of any local changes to the rules outweigh the drawbacks. For instance, Brian R. Thompson's "Monographic collections structure and layout revisions: or, how to tweak LC call numbers for the good of your users" details how his library came up with an implemented a huge reclassification project that tweaked LC call numbers so that books were grouped together in a more user-friendly way. This sounds great (and exhausting to do), but it also means that this library may never again be able to use call numbers in records they import as they are - in order to keep their clean, user-friendly arrangement, they might need to tweak the call number of each book they have to catalog. That works fine if you've got enough catalogers, or at least enough people trained in assigning call numbers that follow local practices, or if catalogers don't need to catalog much, but otherwise it's potentially a nightmare. Currently, however problematic LC's assignment of call numbers sometimes happens to be, I accept almost all LC-assigned call numbers without question. I can't imagine having to at least look at, if not tweak, each call number I encounter. Cataloging takes long enough as it is.

Overall, this book was pretty interesting, and some of the essays would probably even be readable by noncatalogers (it should be noted that not all of the essay authors are catalogers). However, catalogers in particular should be able to get something useful out of this, even if only a different way of thinking.

The most horrific children's book ever

I just did a quick search to see if we have Don't make me go back, Mommy : a child's book about ritual abuse. We don't. The scanned pages are horrific (particularly in the "part 2" post). I wonder how many people have actually read that book to their children? Are there really parents who worry that someone may be trying to perform satanic rituals on their children and who therefore feel that their children must know what kinds of behaviors to report?

OCLC article in Radical Cataloging

I'm reading a book called Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto. It's readable enough that I think even non-catalogers could get something out of it without necessarily having to consult dusty old notes from their Intro to Cataloging class.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Beall's contribution, "OCLC: A Review." It's a very critical look at OCLC, its products, its practices, etc. There are some things in the article that I agree with, and there are some criticisms of OCLC that have been made on AUTOCAT that I agree with that aren't mentioned in this article (OCLC's attempted and much-protested Record Use Policy came up, and died, after this book was published - it would have been perfect fodder for this article).

So, here's my brief critical paragraph. Criticisms of WorldCat's attempts at FRBRization are ignored or dismissed as being the complaints of too few for OCLC to take serious notice (see Lorcan Dempsey's blog post - I'm surprised there aren't more comments, particularly from people who have noticed serious problems in the way music materials are FRBRized). Like Beall, I, too, hate it when Connexion (OCLC cataloging software) goes down, although I'm not as crippled by that at DSL as I was at my previous library - at my previous library, pretty much all I could do during the downtime was clean my desk and twiddle my thumbs. I think OCLC pricing it outrageous, particularly when products like WorldCat depend upon catalogers at member libraries to edit and add records. True, OCLC has catalogers, too, (I interviewed for a job with them, and have even met some of those catalogers in person) but I doubt WorldCat would be worth anything if most of OCLC's customers decided they could no longer afford its services and left. I hate that OCLC has a monopoly as a bibliographic utility for cataloging (SkyRiver may change that, but I imagine it faces an uphill battle).

Beall's article bashes OCLC, and it's true that OCLC isn't all sunshine and flowers. However, it's not completely evil either.

1. They at least communicate with their customers more than some companies do (Janie would know which company I'm thinking of...).
   
2. Beall is extremely critical of Connexion, and one statement I found particularly interesting was "Libraries choose instead to download the records directly into their online catalog and fix up the records there, where the editing process is easier and generally quicker" (p. 88). This statement wasn't made in the Connexion section (it was in a section commenting about the horrible quality records with which WorldCat is riddled, aka the dreaded Level 3 records), but, lacking an explanation for what is meant by "easier and generally quicker," I can only assume that it's a criticism of Connexion. I'm unfamiliar with the bibliographic record editing capabilities of most ILSs, but the capabilities of our ILS are dismal. Say what you like about Connexion, I can edit a record far more quickly with it than with our ILS, and the results are generally less likely to have errors. Connexion gives me the ability to use macros (I don't have the skills to create a macro more complicated than the one that adds my 949 field at the end of my records, but several talented people have made their wonderful macros available to the OCLC cataloging community, for which I am very grateful), it has spell check, it has record validation, and I can use my keyboard to do most of my record editing. Our ILS has no macro capabilities, no spell check, no record validation (not entirely true, but what it does have is almost worthless for my purposes), and I'm forced to use my mouse to even add a new field to the record.
3. Connexion has batch processing options which save me lots of time. In the past few days, I've done work using Connexion's batch searching and processing that would have taken me years to do one at a time.

I could probably come up with more (and I'm only looking at this from a cataloger's perspective), but it's late and I'm tired. Basically, yes, there are lots of things one can criticize OCLC for, but I'd still be sad if we could no longer afford their services. If I had better alternative options for single-record editing (as opposed to batch record editing, which MarcEdit accomplishes nicely) and record-finding (the Library of Congress would probably be a great alternative source for most of our book records, but cataloging music, audiobooks, and DVDs would get a lot harder if I couldn't access OCLC's pool of records), I'd be a lot less sad.

More books online

I've been using Podiobooks a lot lately for my work listening - I think I burned out on webcasts, so getting back to audio books has been nice. I've listened to 3 complete works so far (almost 3, actually) and enjoyed 2 of them. I'm on the very last file of the 3rd work, so I'm going to have to decide what to listen to next. One thing I do wish the site had is the ability to limit a search to completed books and to a particular category at the same time. The closest I've been able to come to doing this is to limit my search to completed books and then do a keyword search for the category as it is listed in the category list. Still, it'd be nice if there were something like an advanced search - that's going to become more important as Podiobooks collects more titles.

If I had an e-book reader, I might also find myself visiting Internet Archive a lot for my home reading. It might take some doing to find stuff I'd actually want to read during my free time, but there's quite a lot here.

Where's my cow?

I cataloged Terry Pratchett's Where's My Cow? (and was the first person to add a 2nd cutter number to the call number in the master record) - I'm not sure what children would think of it, but, as a fan of Pratchett's Discworld, I thought it was hilarious. I had some trouble thinking of Sam Vimes sitting down and reading a silly picture book, but, once I got past that, his "Where's my daddy?" was perfect. Young Sam is a very odd-looking child, though.

It's not actually possible to get everything in this book unless you're familiar with the Discworld, but young children might still have fun with some of the things they'd get to do when certain characters come up (not sure that their parents will necessarily appreciate the spitting).

Book - A Guide to a Course in Government Documents by Helen Q. Schroyer

I just finished the book (actually, short guide) A Guide to a Course in Government Documents by Helen Q. Schroyer [Z674.I52 no.135]. I'm not really as knowledgeable about government documents as I'd sometimes like to be. However, even I know that there are parts where this book, published in 1978, is out of date. Still, there were portions that I found to be very helpful. After doing a long-term government documents clean-up project at the previous library I worked at, I thought I had gained a little bit of an idea of how SuDoc numbers work, but this book made me realize that there was a lot that I hadn't even noticed. I think I probably would've gotten more out of this book if I'd had the time and willpower to actually try to do some of the assignments listed at the end of every section - trying these assignments out would've at least shown me more areas where this book is either out-of-date or still relevant. If, in the future, I'm asked to work with the Dick Smith Library's government documents, I may return to this book and try some of these assignments out, but for now I'm not really all that interested.

The next library science book I plan to tackle deals with the organization of information, so I'm looking forward to that. It seems much more theoretical than this one, so I guess I'll have to see how I deal with that. Eventually, I'd like to try something on FRBR, which is still a topic that confuses me more than I'd like.