I have started working with the Institute Library and am trying to get my head around what we'll be able to do with the place. The library has mostly books in English, and at all different reading levels so that the students can use them no matter how much English they know. Stael recently hired a librarian
named Maru, and we are working together to get the place in shape. They have a database, which was designed and is maintained by an analyst, but it is discouraging that we have not had much luck getting a hold of him to come and make the changes we see that the system needs.The main improvement we're hoping to provide is subject access, which Stael is very enthusiastic to have and will be useful for the teachers. They do not have a controlled vocabulary (a system that controls what words can be used to describe books or other documents) but I believe we'll be able to use the ERIC thesaurus, which is a well-known vocabulary maintained by the US Dept. of Education.
There are 42 categories that the books fall into, though many of them overlap. Because most books fall into two subjects but cannot be placed in each spot on the shelf, librarians describe in the catalog both subjects that the book is about. Then we classify it (give it a call number) based on the more prominent of the two categories. When books should be in two different places--for example, Spanish fiction--we describe the book both with "Fiction" and with "Spanish language" so that a reader can find it regardless of how they enter the catalog.
All of the books have on their spine the corresponding letters to indicate a category and the first three letters of the author’s last name. Surnames which begin with the first three letters are described further with a 1, 2, 3, and so on. This system is not the worst, and does allow the reader to find the book that they are looking for. There is the problem of Reader’s
Digest books, other anthologies, and reference books which only have the editor rather than an actual author. I'll have to look in the cataloguing rules to see what we are supposed to do in this case. Al final, the labeling system that the library has, is not all that bad. In non-fiction sections, though, it is critical that we have better access for the shelf reader than just by the author’s last name, which is often not what the reader knows about the book they are looking for.The actual catalog entries are fairly bad shape: there are many missing words, letters, and fields that should otherwise be there. This will take some updating and manual catalog work, but that is
what we have a librarian for, and those are problems that we can actually see a result from and begin to have better searches. I think that this is the least of our problems: they are there because the system has been underused for several years.
All said and done, there are many good things that can be done to make access to the library better, and I am excited that we will be able to see a difference in a small amount of time. I need to come up with some concrete things for Maru and I to do so that we start noticing the changes, rather than just come in here and poke around and be kinda useless. Today is the first day that I have spent entirely at at the Charles Dickens Library.
2 comments:
Nic, how are you going to pack that sombrero home? They charge alot for huge packages! Keep busy down there, you're time is half up and there is much to accomplish. For being the middle of winter it looks pretty nice down there. Dad
This was a very interesting post. People are always asking what you are doing and I was on the right track but this makes it clearer. Love the pics!! Stoker
Post a Comment