In June, I gave two all-day workshops on RDA. This month, I also gave two all-day workshops on RDA. That's the same workshop four times in two months. I'm ready for a break from teaching RDA.
There are pros and cons, of course, of doing something like that.
There's a lot of preparation involved for any workshop even though I've given this one before. All handouts have to be reviewed and many updated. Changes are made based on the success (or lack of) of examples and exercises I used previously. But I only had to do the prep once because the workshops were held so close together. That saved me a lot of time.
In giving these one after another, I was able to build up a sort of momentum. I was better prepared for certain kinds of questions because they had been asked just a couple of weeks before. As I began each teaching day, I felt more confident than I did for the previous one.
A lot of energy goes into giving a presentation and I use twice as much for an all-day program than for a half-day (which is usually the schedule for Continuing Education in Library Land). Therefore, I'm pretty tired by the end of each of the days. More so for two of them which involved an overnight because of their distance.
Right now, I'm feeling pretty satisfied. They all went well and the evaluations were very positive. But as I said in the beginning of this post, I'm ready for a break from teaching RDA.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Friday, July 15, 2016
Binge Watching "I Love Lucy" and Reading in Between
I recently borrowed the entire 4th season of "I Love Lucy". This was aired during the years 1953-54.
I've watched so many re-runs of "I Love Lucy" I don't know if I actually saw any of these episodes in first-runs. In those days, I was not old enough to be up and awake when the show was aired even though it wasn't all that late. I do sometimes remember when I couldn't sleep, I'd sit at the top of the stairs and listen to Lucy's antics and listen to my father laugh nearly uncontrollably. I didn't hear my father laugh a lot, so clearly, "I Love Lucy" must have been pretty special.
The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz combination was pretty special. The plots were quite involved. Even though you knew it would turn out all right at the end, there was an extremely circuitous route to get there. When Lucy and Desi split and Lucy continued on with her own shows, I stopped watching. Those later ones are not nearly as witty or funny.
I also stopped watching "Cheers" when Diane left the show. Actually, I reluctantly watched for a couple of more years, but shouldn't have bothered. In my opinion, Rebecca was never as good as Diane. The only television show that continued to be great (if not better) with a change in characters was "M.A.S.H. "
I've also been reading an absolutely wonderful book. I'm nearly at the end and already feeling sad that the journey will be over soon. A woman is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Her son, Will, often takes her to doctor's appointments and chemotherapy treatments and visits with her while she spends the month of March in Florida to escape the New York City winter. Since they are both readers, they recommend books to each other and discuss them. It is an informal book club of two and the book is The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.
Sometimes Will and his mother re-read older books, sometimes newer ones. The subject matter varies greatly as both have widely eclectic tastes: novels, short stories, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, humorous and dark. There is so much information about books, that it is practically an annotated bibliography. And it's so beautifully written it's a pleasure to read.
Someone in my exercise recommended this book to me. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was, but I want to thank her (I'm pretty sure it was a woman), and I fully intend to continue the favor and recommend this book to someone else. I want everyone to read it.
I've watched so many re-runs of "I Love Lucy" I don't know if I actually saw any of these episodes in first-runs. In those days, I was not old enough to be up and awake when the show was aired even though it wasn't all that late. I do sometimes remember when I couldn't sleep, I'd sit at the top of the stairs and listen to Lucy's antics and listen to my father laugh nearly uncontrollably. I didn't hear my father laugh a lot, so clearly, "I Love Lucy" must have been pretty special.
The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz combination was pretty special. The plots were quite involved. Even though you knew it would turn out all right at the end, there was an extremely circuitous route to get there. When Lucy and Desi split and Lucy continued on with her own shows, I stopped watching. Those later ones are not nearly as witty or funny.
I also stopped watching "Cheers" when Diane left the show. Actually, I reluctantly watched for a couple of more years, but shouldn't have bothered. In my opinion, Rebecca was never as good as Diane. The only television show that continued to be great (if not better) with a change in characters was "M.A.S.H. "
I've also been reading an absolutely wonderful book. I'm nearly at the end and already feeling sad that the journey will be over soon. A woman is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Her son, Will, often takes her to doctor's appointments and chemotherapy treatments and visits with her while she spends the month of March in Florida to escape the New York City winter. Since they are both readers, they recommend books to each other and discuss them. It is an informal book club of two and the book is The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.
Sometimes Will and his mother re-read older books, sometimes newer ones. The subject matter varies greatly as both have widely eclectic tastes: novels, short stories, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, humorous and dark. There is so much information about books, that it is practically an annotated bibliography. And it's so beautifully written it's a pleasure to read.
Someone in my exercise recommended this book to me. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was, but I want to thank her (I'm pretty sure it was a woman), and I fully intend to continue the favor and recommend this book to someone else. I want everyone to read it.
Friday, July 8, 2016
The New Office
MLS-Whately is now MLS-Northampton. We've moved into our new office and are getting settled.
My work space is much larger than the one I had before. I don't know what to do with all the room! The downside is that I don't have a separate office. Well, I never actually had a separate office. When I first became the MassCat cataloger, I shared an office with my boss Nora (who is now Director of the Emily Williston Library in Easthampton). However, Nora was pretty quiet and she was there if I had a question about how to do something in Koha.
When Nora left MassCat for her new job, the town of Whately had already purchased the building and began moving offices into it. The remainder of the MLS crew all moved into one office, but that was usually only one other person.
Now I'm in a big room with dividers and can hear other people's conversations. Fortunately, not many people are there most of the time and I'm in a corner, so I play classical music as background.
Here's an image of the Pot Pourri Mall. We have the office in the upper left hand corner.
My work space is much larger than the one I had before. I don't know what to do with all the room! The downside is that I don't have a separate office. Well, I never actually had a separate office. When I first became the MassCat cataloger, I shared an office with my boss Nora (who is now Director of the Emily Williston Library in Easthampton). However, Nora was pretty quiet and she was there if I had a question about how to do something in Koha.
When Nora left MassCat for her new job, the town of Whately had already purchased the building and began moving offices into it. The remainder of the MLS crew all moved into one office, but that was usually only one other person.
Now I'm in a big room with dividers and can hear other people's conversations. Fortunately, not many people are there most of the time and I'm in a corner, so I play classical music as background.
Here's an image of the Pot Pourri Mall. We have the office in the upper left hand corner.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Lisa Scottoline does it again
I've just finished reading Lisa Scottoline's newest book, Most Wanted. I highly recommend it.
Scottoline is one of my favorite authors. I love her Rosato & Associates series, but her other, stand-alone books, are excellent.
It took me a few chapters to really get into the story. I'm not a mother. While, when I was much younger, I imagined having children, I decided at age 29 1/2 to remain child free. I know many women who wanted children and agonized over becoming pregnant. However, it's not a situation with which I can identify. I try not to be judgmental, but sometimes women with fertility issues can sound somewhat whiney.
The beginning of this book reminded me of Jodi Picoult's Sing You Home that features a music therapist who is about 6 or 7 months pregnant and then miscarries. She is desperate to have a child and is consumed with trying to get pregnant again as soon as possible. Again, it took me several chapters to get past my lack of identification with the character and into the story - which turned out to be great.
So back to Lisa. This plot is a real thriller. The pregnancy begins to share top billing with several other issues: Who is the sperm donor? Is he a serial killer? Is that sort of pathology inherited? The twists and turns of this story are myriad (not unlike her other books) and my feelings about the young man in jail went back and forth as the story unfolded.
I like to take breaks from mysteries and read to become educated as well as entertained. A book recommended to me by a friend did just that: Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence. I've never visited the White House though I've been to Washington D.C. several times. Harry Truman was the President when I was born, but I have no recollection of him in office. (I do remember Ike and Mamie.) I was a history major in college and I'm very interested in 20th century American history. I read biographies of political figures and this book fits right in that category. It is about Harry Truman and his family as much as the house he lived in.
I've just begun reading First Women: the Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Anderson Brower. Since I've read a lot of this information in other sources, I'm finding it a little repetitious. It's also a little too gossipy and rambly for my taste. However, I'll see it through to the end (being a somewhat OCD-ish person) and perhaps it will get better.
Waiting for me on the top of the "To Be Read" pile on my bed table is a book by J.A. Jance - another of my favorite authors. Something to look forward to.
Scottoline is one of my favorite authors. I love her Rosato & Associates series, but her other, stand-alone books, are excellent.
It took me a few chapters to really get into the story. I'm not a mother. While, when I was much younger, I imagined having children, I decided at age 29 1/2 to remain child free. I know many women who wanted children and agonized over becoming pregnant. However, it's not a situation with which I can identify. I try not to be judgmental, but sometimes women with fertility issues can sound somewhat whiney.
The beginning of this book reminded me of Jodi Picoult's Sing You Home that features a music therapist who is about 6 or 7 months pregnant and then miscarries. She is desperate to have a child and is consumed with trying to get pregnant again as soon as possible. Again, it took me several chapters to get past my lack of identification with the character and into the story - which turned out to be great.
So back to Lisa. This plot is a real thriller. The pregnancy begins to share top billing with several other issues: Who is the sperm donor? Is he a serial killer? Is that sort of pathology inherited? The twists and turns of this story are myriad (not unlike her other books) and my feelings about the young man in jail went back and forth as the story unfolded.
I like to take breaks from mysteries and read to become educated as well as entertained. A book recommended to me by a friend did just that: Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence. I've never visited the White House though I've been to Washington D.C. several times. Harry Truman was the President when I was born, but I have no recollection of him in office. (I do remember Ike and Mamie.) I was a history major in college and I'm very interested in 20th century American history. I read biographies of political figures and this book fits right in that category. It is about Harry Truman and his family as much as the house he lived in.
I've just begun reading First Women: the Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Anderson Brower. Since I've read a lot of this information in other sources, I'm finding it a little repetitious. It's also a little too gossipy and rambly for my taste. However, I'll see it through to the end (being a somewhat OCD-ish person) and perhaps it will get better.
Waiting for me on the top of the "To Be Read" pile on my bed table is a book by J.A. Jance - another of my favorite authors. Something to look forward to.
Monday, June 13, 2016
So Many People Named John
Now that I've arrived at J in my alphabetic list of possible duplicates, I've discovered how many people are named John - and how many book titles begin with the name John: John Adams, John Brown, John Donne, John Dos Passos, John F. Kennedy.
Checking various websites, John is still a pretty common name, but other names are pushing John further down the list.
I know a lot of Johns. My father is John, although he always went by his middle name. He actually has a brother who is also named John. My brother is John Jr. One of his daughters named her son John, and she was married to a John. My sister has a son whose middle name is John.
My husband's father was John, and my husband has a grandson named John. There is also a John in my exercise class. John seems to be one of those names that persists. There are elderly men. middle aged men, and young men named John.
It's fun to see how different names ebb and flow. There are some one only associates with older people (Bertha, perhaps). I remember when names like Bethany, Tiffany, and Amber were all the rage. Those Bethanys and Tiffanys and Ambers are now adults and I haven't heard of any babies with those names.
Sometimes people have a name that's not uncommon, but has a different spelling. That's happened for a long time - such as Barbra Streisand. However, I just checked IMDb and learned that she was born Barbara Joan Streisand.
In Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, I just finished the part of Chapter 7 on Identifying Persons. Over the years as a cataloger, I've had to determine if the person who wrote this children's book is the same person who wrote that economics text 10 years ago. Maybe, maybe not. One of the things about RDA that really pleases me is that there is so much more information in Name Authority records. It's much easier to determine if the retired economist is now writing children's books.
And one of the great advantages of the Internet is that it is so much easier to research a topic or person. It took me just a few seconds to find out Barbra Streisand changed the spelling of her name.
Checking various websites, John is still a pretty common name, but other names are pushing John further down the list.
I know a lot of Johns. My father is John, although he always went by his middle name. He actually has a brother who is also named John. My brother is John Jr. One of his daughters named her son John, and she was married to a John. My sister has a son whose middle name is John.
My husband's father was John, and my husband has a grandson named John. There is also a John in my exercise class. John seems to be one of those names that persists. There are elderly men. middle aged men, and young men named John.
It's fun to see how different names ebb and flow. There are some one only associates with older people (Bertha, perhaps). I remember when names like Bethany, Tiffany, and Amber were all the rage. Those Bethanys and Tiffanys and Ambers are now adults and I haven't heard of any babies with those names.
Sometimes people have a name that's not uncommon, but has a different spelling. That's happened for a long time - such as Barbra Streisand. However, I just checked IMDb and learned that she was born Barbara Joan Streisand.
In Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, I just finished the part of Chapter 7 on Identifying Persons. Over the years as a cataloger, I've had to determine if the person who wrote this children's book is the same person who wrote that economics text 10 years ago. Maybe, maybe not. One of the things about RDA that really pleases me is that there is so much more information in Name Authority records. It's much easier to determine if the retired economist is now writing children's books.
And one of the great advantages of the Internet is that it is so much easier to research a topic or person. It took me just a few seconds to find out Barbra Streisand changed the spelling of her name.
Monday, May 30, 2016
ICC and the PSs
I'm slowly working my way through the 11th edition of Introduction to Cataloging and Classification (ICC).
The authors explicitly state that reading this textbook is not a substitute for reading RDA (Resource Description and Access), but in my opinion, using this book plus a couple of other good books on RDA (Maxwell's Handbook for RDA and Mering's The RDA workbook), a cataloger is pretty well equipt to catalog most library materials according to RDA guidelines.
RDA defines different metadata elements for describing resources. Some of these elements are "core" which means they are required. Others are "optional". Using only the core elements results in a pretty minimal record, though enough to identify the resource.
LC (the Library of Congress) and the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) Libraries who do much of the cataloging we see, have issued Policy Statements (PSs) giving their explanations or preferences for using specific areas of RDA. Both LC and PSS recommend more of the RDA metadata elements as "core".
One of the things I really like about ICC is that the authors have issued their own PSs. These are their recommendations that may differ from RDA and/or LC. Here's an example from page 215:
ICC11 PS for Optional Omission for RDA 2.4.1.4 Recording Statements of Responsibility: Although abridgement is not generally recommended, use, judiciously and thoughtfully, the option that allows catalogers to abridge SORs when needed. This may prove to be useful if a statement of responsibility is cluttered with extraneous data. Be careful not to remove essential identifying information.
See why I'm finding this book so useful?
The authors explicitly state that reading this textbook is not a substitute for reading RDA (Resource Description and Access), but in my opinion, using this book plus a couple of other good books on RDA (Maxwell's Handbook for RDA and Mering's The RDA workbook), a cataloger is pretty well equipt to catalog most library materials according to RDA guidelines.
RDA defines different metadata elements for describing resources. Some of these elements are "core" which means they are required. Others are "optional". Using only the core elements results in a pretty minimal record, though enough to identify the resource.
LC (the Library of Congress) and the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) Libraries who do much of the cataloging we see, have issued Policy Statements (PSs) giving their explanations or preferences for using specific areas of RDA. Both LC and PSS recommend more of the RDA metadata elements as "core".
One of the things I really like about ICC is that the authors have issued their own PSs. These are their recommendations that may differ from RDA and/or LC. Here's an example from page 215:
ICC11 PS for Optional Omission for RDA 2.4.1.4 Recording Statements of Responsibility: Although abridgement is not generally recommended, use, judiciously and thoughtfully, the option that allows catalogers to abridge SORs when needed. This may prove to be useful if a statement of responsibility is cluttered with extraneous data. Be careful not to remove essential identifying information.
See why I'm finding this book so useful?
Friday, May 20, 2016
Jumping to J
How did I manage to get to the letter J so quickly? Only a couple of weeks ago, I was still on F.
I have a helper. She is a Library Science student who wants to be a cataloger. She's also a Mass Library System employee. Depending on the time of year, her workload is sometimes light and she asked if she could help out with MassCat to get some cataloging experience.
While merging records is not exactly cataloging, this is great experience for her to look at bib records and see what kinds of problems arise. Since I work with an alphabetized list of potential duplicate titles, she has taken the later end of the letter F through the letter I.
I began with "Jazz" and have so far made my way through "Jewel", "Jewels", and "Jewelry". I've started "Jewish" which will keep me busy for a while. When I did a single word keyword search on "Jewish", I received a list of over 5,000 titles. The first 60 or so were in Hebrew, which I don't read, so I skipped past them and hoped they were accurate enough for Hebrew readers to find what they are looking for.
I'm still reading Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, and will be for a while. It's been a great reminder of the entire purpose of cataloging. While working, it's so easy for me to get involved in the specifics of the process - that whole "losing sight of the forest for the trees" thing. As I read through the textbook, the importance of describing the resource "uniquely" (to distinguish it from similar resources) and "unambiguously" (so that the patron knows exactly what he/she is getting) is repeated regularly.
To get a break from cataloging, I've been watching the third season of Hill Street Blues. Back in the 1980s, I watched the series pretty regularly and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I learned that it was out on DVD, I began requesting the seasons (in order, of course) from the library. Every few months, I take several evenings to become thoroughly absorbed in the adventures of the Hill Street station regulars. The stories are funny, sad, and always thought-provoking. The characters are multi-dimensional. The "good guys" have faults; the "bad guys" are sometimes kind.
I think what's most fascinating is the overall culture. No one has cell phones or computers. The cars are big (gasoline was just over $1.00/gallon). People wore aviator glasses. Come to think of it, so did I.
I have a helper. She is a Library Science student who wants to be a cataloger. She's also a Mass Library System employee. Depending on the time of year, her workload is sometimes light and she asked if she could help out with MassCat to get some cataloging experience.
While merging records is not exactly cataloging, this is great experience for her to look at bib records and see what kinds of problems arise. Since I work with an alphabetized list of potential duplicate titles, she has taken the later end of the letter F through the letter I.
I began with "Jazz" and have so far made my way through "Jewel", "Jewels", and "Jewelry". I've started "Jewish" which will keep me busy for a while. When I did a single word keyword search on "Jewish", I received a list of over 5,000 titles. The first 60 or so were in Hebrew, which I don't read, so I skipped past them and hoped they were accurate enough for Hebrew readers to find what they are looking for.
I'm still reading Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, and will be for a while. It's been a great reminder of the entire purpose of cataloging. While working, it's so easy for me to get involved in the specifics of the process - that whole "losing sight of the forest for the trees" thing. As I read through the textbook, the importance of describing the resource "uniquely" (to distinguish it from similar resources) and "unambiguously" (so that the patron knows exactly what he/she is getting) is repeated regularly.
To get a break from cataloging, I've been watching the third season of Hill Street Blues. Back in the 1980s, I watched the series pretty regularly and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I learned that it was out on DVD, I began requesting the seasons (in order, of course) from the library. Every few months, I take several evenings to become thoroughly absorbed in the adventures of the Hill Street station regulars. The stories are funny, sad, and always thought-provoking. The characters are multi-dimensional. The "good guys" have faults; the "bad guys" are sometimes kind.
I think what's most fascinating is the overall culture. No one has cell phones or computers. The cars are big (gasoline was just over $1.00/gallon). People wore aviator glasses. Come to think of it, so did I.
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