This blog to give me a place to vent about cataloging issues I encounter every day.
Although I use Destiny Library Manager from Follett Software Company and have access to their Alliance Plus records I never accept catalog records from elsewhere without editing to make them suitable for my own catalog.
I love cataloging for a lot of reasons:
  • My mind runs to organizing stuff
  • I love learning about new things and trying to figure out how to make information resources accessible to my students and teachers
  • I'm a bit obsessive about making sure subject headings, keywords, classification numbers, etc. are consistent.
Follow this blog to learn how I catalog my collection, my pet peeves with subject and classification schemes, maybe a little about RDA, the new cataloging rules which are set to replace the old Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and whatever else I'm inspired by.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

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/

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