Is it Art and technology or Technology and art?

Image courtesy of the Rhode Island School of Design

So here's another little dilemma Sears provides. I'm working on the subject heading "Art" and the note states "SA (See also) ...art and other subjects, e.g. Art and mythology...." A title appears in the collection which has the heading "Art and technology." When I peruse the heading "Technology" there is a similar note saying, "SA technology and other subjects,..." My question then has to be: which is it? "Art and technology" or "Technology and art?" Since both are valid headings both must be considered. Since "Art" comes first alphabetically, I'll use that for now. More later when I've had a chance to look at Library of Congress Authorities (The whole LoC system is down right now for maintenance). In the meantime, what's the relationship between "Art and technology" and Art--Technological innovations?" Research to follow.
In following up I discovered that LoC does indeed use Art and technology with a cross-reference from Technology and art. And it doesn't give the same direction about "Art and ... [other topic]" ot "Technology and ... [other topic]" which Sears gives.

Beyond "Architecture"

I'm up to "Armed forces" in the subject heading list now but had to pass through "Architecture" to get there. Fortunately, there is no discrepancy with LC on the basic heading but many with indirect headings did need to be changed. Several years ago (I'm not sure which edition it was) Sears changed from indirect heading such as "Architecture, Greek" to direct, "Greek architecture. With few exceptions, mostly geographic, such as "Tahoe, Lake" and "Everest, Mount (China and Nepal)," Sears uses direct phrasing rather than indirect. Whether this is an improvement or not is debatable, but the conscientious cataloger using Sears will eliminate headings which are indirect in favor of those which are direct.
Another issue which Sears is very clear about is the admission that the Sears List cannot account for every possible heading. "The general references in the List should reinforce the point that the List does not aim at completeness and must be expanded. Even where there is no general reference, narrower terms for types of things and examples and instances of things must be added as needed." (Page xxxv) This gets us back to "Armed forces." Based on the previous quote, I added "Special forces (Military science)" to the List for a title The visual dictionary of special military forces. How did I decide upon the exact wording of the heading? I used the Library of Congress Authorities, a resource which every cataloger should be intimately familiar with.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/2vjbak/mexican_special_forces_participate_in_a_military/

Archeology vs. archaeology

For some reason Sears editors prefer to use the spelling a-r-c-h-e-o-l-o-g-y instead of the spelling used by the Library of Congress, archaeology. I'm not sure why this is the case. I noticed that as I'm entering the term into a record my computer actually sees it as a misspelling. I think the editors thinks it's kind of pretentious to put that "a" in the middle of the word but if the entire world recognizes the word with the "a" then what's the issue?

A new catalog, a new beginning

As you can see I haven't posted to this blog in quite a while. Now I have a new motivation to do so. For the past several months I've been working on the Oakland Unified School District online catalog. My major task is fixing subject headings, but in the process I'm also merging duplicate records, finding or creating better records, deleting records with no copies, and so forth. I started at the beginning of the alphabet (actually, numerals first) and am already up to archeology. Woo-hoo! My main motivation for continuing this blog will be concerns and criticism of Sears List of Subject Headings. I'm finding typos all over the latest edition (21st : 2014) and will point those out as I go along but there also other issues which crop up including incomplete cross-references, interesting lapses in included subject headings, and many more. I encourage comments on my posts. I have my opinions which you certainly may not agree with. Let's get a conversation going!

I am such a cataloging nerd that I am checking the cross references in the catalog to make sure that all of the genre/form headings from LC are in the authorities database. Actually, I think this will help patrons when they are looking for materials of a certain type. The headings I've checked and added as necessary so far are types of: Cartographic materials such as Globes and Relief maps, and for Law materials such as Statutes and codes and Law for laypersons. There approximately fifty individual types of law materials and about a dozen cartographic materials headings.
The next group I will tackle is a big one--Motion pictures. I have many of those, e.g. Science fiction films and Comedy films, already in the authority file, but will be double checking to make sure all legitimate references are in the file. There are approximately one-hundred different film genres listed in the LC Authorities database.

Nowadays most library automation systems use keyword searching for all types of searches, Whether searching for titles, authors or subject headings, the results displayed are those which have the words the user searches on in the particular field they have chosen to search. (The default for most catalogs being a general keyword search, of course, one does have to select a particular type of field to the get specific results for that field, something librarians need to continually stress to their patrons.)
One result of this is that the older lists of titles, authors, subjects, etc. which used to present themselves as the initial search result, are no longer so obvious to the patron. In the Follett Destiny catalog, for example, the patron needs to click on a very small link which asks "Browse subjects?" to get to that list. My guess is that most patrons don't know what that means or bother to find out. One more opportunity to educate when we get the chance.
Because of this keyword default in searching any field, one thing I've begun doing in my cataloging practice to to put multiple subject headings where one used to do. Here's an example: instead of Sports--History--Great Britain, I make two headings: Sports--Great Britain and Sports--History. If the patron searches using the terms "great britain history sports" or "sports history" or "history sports" or any of a number of other combinations this title will appear in the results list. In the past with a strict alphabetical listing of subject headings it wouldn't have been as easy to get this item in the results list except through a full keyword search. I definitely like the new keyword searching capabilities of the catalog but it can also create traps. More on that next time.

Music

Image via WikipediaMusic is great fun to catalog if you're not a musician. I'm being sarcastic.
Recently I've been going through the music subject headings and it can be a challenge for those of us who are musically challenged (and even those who know a little something about the subject).
One thing about Sears is that they direct one to use the "names of musical forms expressed in the singular, ... for both musical scores and for materials about the musical form, e.g. Concerto...."
LC allows two subject heading for such items, Concerto for the form and Concertos for the musical scores.
LC also uses the singular form for musical instruments, e.g. Piano, whereas Sears uses the plural form, Pianos. Both allow for forms like Piano music for the music played on such instruments.

I had to catalog videos about several Japanese instruments: the biwa, the shamisen, and the koto (kinds of lutes), and the shakuhachi (a kind of flute). I used the plural form for each instrument, e.g. Biwas, Shamisens, Kotos, Shakuhachis, with additional headings, Musical instruments--Japan, and the headings for Lute music or Flute music as appropriate. I could have used Biwa music, etc. but decided that was going too far.

Dewey can also pose a challenge for musical instruments because not all such exotic instruments are indexed and so trying to figure out whether an instrument fits in 787.7 (Zithers and lyres) or 787.8 (the plectral lute family) can also be difficult. Fortunately both biwas and shamisens are indexed as part of 787.85 (flat-backed lutes), but kotos are not indexed and even Wikipedia is not much help to the uninitiated. Using OCLC's Classify I found that others had classified the koto in 787.75. It seems that the instrument is a kind of "plucked zither." Who knew!

The best online tool right now for getting Dewey numbers for exotic topics is OCLC's Classify website. It shows the classification (both LC and Dewey when available) for items with specific subject headings. This site has been a godsend for me and I have it open along with the LC Authority page and WebDewey (subscription required) whenever I'm cataloging.