Messengers to Microprocessors

Image via WikipediaImage by Carosaurus via FlickrMessengers isn't a given Sears subject heading but is inferred from: Persons SA classes of persons, e.g. Elderly; Handicapped; Explorers; Drug addicts; etc. [to be added as needed]
One of the nice things about Sears is those generic terms which can be expanded "as needed." I do check LCSH Authorities to see whether such a heading was listed and it was.
Unfortunately, Microorganisms does not have a similar note so the list of choices is limited to Bacteria; Protozoa; and Viruses. Not very helpful. I had to catalog a film about the red tide (a toxic dinoflagellate bloom) so I added Dinoflagellates and Red tide to the record. Both are LCSH. I could have used the more generic Algae for dinoflagellates but specificity is good in a record. Besides, dinoflagellates are curious critters since both botany and zoology have claimed them. It's only fairly recently that some kind of agreement has been reached about their classification. See Wikipedia article for more info.
BTW, Sears is mistaken to make Marine plants a broader term for Algae since not all algae are marine. It also doesn't cross reference Algae from Microorganisms, which could be helpful.
I just confirmed that the use of Dinoflagellates can be inferred from the following: Plants SA ... names of categories of plants, e.g. Ferns [to be added as need]. Aha!

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Mental illness

Got through Mental illness and Mentally ill with all its subheadings.
In Sears there is no real provision for heading for people with specific illnesses, e.g. Schizophrenics, Manic-depressives, etc. so I use the heading for the disease along with the Mentally ill heading.

Mental health and a problem with juvie fiction

Image via WikipediaFinishing up "Mental health" today.

One problem I've discovered is that when the Library of Congress subject headings are not deleted or changed in a record fiction books can display without the subdivision because "Juvenile fiction" in some library catalog software. For example, the book Border Crossing by Jessica Lee Anderson has two subject headings when it comes from Alliance +, Mental illness--Juvenile fiction (Library of Congress) and Mental illness--Fiction (Sears). The problem comes because our catalog software, Destiny, does not display the Juvenile fiction subheading so it looks like this is a non-fiction book about mental illness. The solution is to either change the LC subdivision to Fiction or delete it entirely. I choose to delete it--along with all the other irrelevant or duplicated LC subject headings. This makes it far less confusing for the patron when searching for non-fiction books about a topic in the catalog.

Curriculum Video On Demand issues

Starting on the subject heading, "Men," today.

I've updated over 2000 of the Curriculum Video On Demand records since beginning of the project--that's about one-third of the approximately six thousand records done at this point. New records are added each month so it will definitely be an ongoing project. I am deleting some older or less relevant records as I go along.

Since they usually don't have good subject headings and many irrelevant or peripheral ones, Karlene, my assistant, and I spend a lot of time just deleting those unneeded headings. Here's an example of a MARC record as it comes from Infobase Learning before editing and here's the record after editing.