Library Catalog Research Articles

Book monument imprint: Identifying via foreign information resources

The author reviews foreign science publication, websites, digital databases, catalogs and methods to be used to specify imprints of book monuments and their history as exemplified by 16-th century collection of Russian Academy of Arts Library. The collection comprises over 60 books published in Western Europe; with the special attention to the collection in architecture, in particular books published by Sebastiano Serlio (1475 – c. 1554). To attribute the publications, the catalogs of foreign museums and libraries, bibliographic, fulltext, factographic and objectographic databases in the art market, e. g. ArtPrice, MutualArt, Invaluable, were used to reveal various guides in 16-th century architecture, catalogs of private collections, and auction sale catalogs. The author discusses the methods to use the identified sources to attribute book monuments, as exemplified by Sebastiano Serlio’s books in architecture, and to investigate into this area further.

The Sears List of Subject Headings: Social and Cultural Dimensions in Historical, Theoretical, and Design Contexts

The Sears List of Subject Headings was first published in 1923 to provide guidance to subject catalogers in small libraries in the United States. The Sears List, now in its 22nd edition, is still widely used for subject cataloging in small- and medium-sized libraries and in children’s and school libraries, but the Sears List is not nearly as widely studied as the more comprehensive Library of Congress Subject Headings. This paper aims to expand the critical discussion of the Sears List and to contextualize the List in contemporary cultural and social dimensions by reviewing its history, theory, and design. The paper looks specifically at how Black people and culture, Indigenous peoples and cultures, and LGBTQ+ people and cultures are represented in the Sears List throughout its history and how warrant, design, and theory inform this representation.

What Is Genre? How Do We Talk About Fiction?: Assessing Complementary Schemas and Approaches

Describing fiction is notoriously problematic. One aspect of this is the designation “genre” which can mean different things to different communities involved in the book trade, such as publishers/authors, readers, and information professionals. Using sources created by all three (i.e., ProQuest and New York Times Book Review, Library of Congress bibliographic records, GoodReads categories, New York Public Library catalog user-supplied content, and Amazon categories), aboutness and isness metadata are harvested for two novels. Ultimately, we find that although the vocabularies each have different purposes and intended audiences, the compilation of terms from different sources presents a coherent image of a title. Future work in knowledge organization (KO) should consider how best to harness information from multiple sources in providing library users with a more robust perspective on fiction titles.

The books and booklets on librarianship published in post-Soviet Russia (1992–2020 bibliological review)

The publishing business in post-Soviet Russia differs a lot from that of the Soviet period. The number of books and brochures has significantly increased, though the circulations have drastically decreased, which is evidenced by the national press statistics without interpreting indicators related to the subject. After USSR’s collapsed, many complete and reliable resources have appeared to study librarianship publishing repertoire in various aspects, e. g.: target readership of publications, their target audience, publishing chronology, main publishers; circulations. With these criteria, expert assessment of key publishing repertoire components is made. The Russian Book Chamber databases based on acquired mandatory copies of publications, as well as Rosinforkultura, Institute of scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, largest library catalogs and several bibliographic catalogs and indexes on the subject under examination, make the main source of statistical and bibliographic information for the authors. The authors identify the main problems and trends in librarianship publishing so to change situation to the better. The authors also focus on publication identification elements, i. e. their imprint.

In Writing and in Sound

Abstract Copies of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt (Proofs of Good Deeds) by the Moroccan Sufi saint Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī (d. 870/1465) were in high demand in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. This required producing manuscripts in large numbers and, later, printing the text. These mostly lithographic copies and corpora of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt, when combined with references to biographical dictionaries, inheritance records, inventories, library catalogues, and endowment deeds, reveal a great deal of information about the public and private prevalence of the text, within and beyond the empire. The Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt appealed to many individuals, from Ottoman sultans to royal women, and from madrasa students to members of the learned class. Its copies were endowed to mosques and libraries, held in different book collections of the Topkapi palace, and were available from booksellers. Be it silently or aloud, the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt could be read in private homes and in mosques from Istanbul to Medina, a feature of pious soundscapes across the empire.

Review: Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation, by Hannah Turner

Review: <i>Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation</i>, by Hannah Turner

Cards, Cabinets, and Compression in Early Stock Photography

Using the case study of 1920s stock photography pioneer H. Armstrong Roberts, this article argues for a historical perspective on the iconomy, or the cultural condition in which images circulate according to market logics. The article argues that compression is a predigital cultural technique that coordinates physical, technical, and narrative structures. Using custom-cut cards, contact prints, a ready-made card catalog system, and an original subject-based alphanumeric ordering system, Roberts produced an analog image database that compressed his visual inventory into discrete bits of information, reflecting a broader conception of the image as alienable content and creating a new commercial aesthetic.

English Literary Studies in Sweden 1950-2019: Doctoral Research Projects and Disciplinary Renewal

The focus of doctoral research is of great significance for the development of an academic discipline and the potential for innovation. A significant number of PhD graduates however expect to be employed as university teachers, and the correlation between competence needs as suggested by the undergraduate curriculum and PhD research appears to be weak. Based on library catalogue data and digital archives, this study investigates interrelations between the initial research orientation of individual scholars and the development of English as a university subject in Sweden. Dissertation topics 1950-1999 indicate a gradual shift from a dominance of linguistics in the earlier decades to a dominance of literary studies towards the end of the period. Dissertations in the field of English-language literature between 2000 and 2019 demonstrate a growing interest in literatures outside England and the United States, a predominance of studies of prose and a move towards contextual modes of criticism centred on social or political theories. Studies of modern or contemporary literature dominate greatly whereas there are few dissertations on older literature. Undergraduate course plans and literature lists for 2020 from the major research universities show a strong connection between first-term literature courses and current research, as indicated by the topics of PhD dissertations from the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The teaching of older literature is not supported by new research to the same extent, however, which means that it may become increasingly difficult to ensure the close links between research and study programmes stipulated in the Swedish Higher Education Act (1992:1434).

An Automated Approach to Describing Fiction: A Methodology to Use Book Reviews to Identify Affect

Subject headings and genre terms are notoriously difficult to apply, yet are important for fiction. The current project functions as a proof of concept, using a text-mining methodology to identify affective information (emotion and tone) about fiction titles from professional book reviews as a potential first step in automating the subject analysis process. Findings are presented and discussed, comparing results to the range of aboutness and isness information in library cataloging records. The methodology is likewise presented, and how future work might expand on the current project to enhance catalog records through text-mining is explored.

The Prophet Shaving: Persians and the Origin of the Malay Hikayat Nabi Bercukur

Abstract This article is about a well-known anonymous folk story in the Malay-Indonesian world, called Hikayat Nabi Bercukur (“The Story of Prophet Shaving”), found in various different languages across the region. The only scholarly conjecture about its origin is based on the copy of a Malay manuscript held in Leiden which has been deliberately blackened and struck through by a reader who stated in the margin that the story is written by a Rāfiḍī and should not be believed. Although earlier scholars mentioned the title or the synopsis of this story in their works and bibliographical catalogues, the question “what is the origin of this story?” remained unanswered. In order to follow up on previous studies and to find an answer, this essay examines numerous original manuscripts and texts in various languages and provides a comparison between the Malay versions and their prototype. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the first edition and English translation of the prototype are presented.

ТИПЫ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИХ КОНФЛИКТОГЕНОВ И ИХ РОЛЬ В РЕЧЕВЫХ И ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ КОНФЛИКТАХ

Problem statement. Conflicts that arise in communication are created by the system and speech characteristics of the language means used. The study of the phenomenon of linguistic conflict trig-ger will allow us to distinguish between different types of conflicts, as well as to describe the types of language units and the features of their actualization that can provoke conflict interaction. Taking into account potentially conflict-triggering language phenomena will make it possible to implement a preventive speech strategy aimed at harmonizing communication. The purpose of this article is to identify and characterize the types of language units in speech that trigger conflicts (conflict triggers), to distinguish them from similar, but not identical units (inten-sifiers); to reveal the mechanisms of conflict interaction that arise when interpreting specific linguistic means and to identify the role of the verbal component in conflicts of different types. Methodology (materials and methods).The research material is a card catalogue of conflict in-teraction examples from literary texts and the media, jokes, Internet memes, and recordings of spoken speech. The main methods of analysis are the descriptive method, the method of semantic analysis, and the method of conceptual analysis. Research results. The analyzed examples show that only a linguistic means that has special sys-tem characteristics or contextual content that create a space of communicative tension and generates various types of conflict interaction (speech and psychological conflicts) can be classified as a linguis-tic conflict trigger. The typology of linguistic conflict triggers, based on the semantic and pragmatic aspects of the linguistic sign, includes three types: systemic, usual, and contextual conflict triggers.

Notes Fields in Metadata Records Generated by the Children’s and Young Adults’ Cataloguing Program: Exploration of Support for General Specific Needs of School Library Users

Notes fields in metadata records used in school library catalogs provide important value added and facilitate resource discovery for students and teachers. Variety of notes are intended to support general user tasks, as well as specific user tasks of school library users. The study reported in this paper examined levels and patterns of application of summary notes, audience notes, grade level notes, reading interest level notes, study program information notes, table of contents notes etc. in the bibliographic records created by the United States Library of Congress Children’s and Young Adults’ Cataloguing Program for fiction books between 2014 and 2020.

Seed Libraries Can Be a Promising but Challenging Way to Support Community Engagement and Social Innovation in Public Libraries

A Review of: Peekhaus, W. (2018). Seed libraries: Sowing the seeds for community and public library resilience. Library Quarterly, 88(3), 271-285. https://doi.org/10.1086/697706 Abstract Objective – To describe and investigate the establishment, operation, function, purpose, and benefit of seed libraries within public libraries and local communities. Design – Exploratory study. Setting – Public seed libraries in Arizona, California, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Subjects – 10 librarians actively involved in creating or maintaining seed libraries. Methods – 60-75 minute interviews, primarily over the phone, with subjects selected by means of purposive sampling. Main Results – According to the participants interviewed, starting and operating a seed library requires front-end effort from the “host” library, active participation by a dedicated librarian and community members, as well as ongoing funding, usually on an annual basis (estimated by one participant to be $2,500/year, mostly for the purchase of seeds). Participant descriptions of their seed library operations differed, but most had a dedicated seed librarian. Participants noted that primary activities included deciding what seeds to put in the collection, arrangement of the seed collection, development of checkout and return procedures, and ongoing education. Several participants noted that such operational work was seasonal and not steady. None of the libraries included in this study had enough seeds donated to sustain their collections, but rather they relied on purchasing seeds in bulk or asking for donations from seed companies. Cataloging procedures varied in terms of complexity, and participants from one library system reported the use of a seed library cataloging template as being helpful. All participants noted they gave patrons containers to return seeds. While educating patrons in formal sessions is often difficult for reasons such as resource limitations, the interview informants agreed that seed libraries fit into the missions of public libraries by furthering information sharing, access to resources, and knowledge development. Conclusion – Seed libraries are an active service that assist public libraries in responding to social challenges and in engaging with their local communities as a type of knowledge commons. Seed libraries align with public libraries’ shift in priorities from increasing physical collections to enriching lives by providing knowledge and tools to support food autonomy, self-sufficiency, civic engagement, and community education. These libraries are a novel service that engage and attract patrons and support libraries’ positions as community hubs.

Re-imagining (black) comic book cataloguing: increasing accessibility through metadata at one university library

ABSTRACT Cataloguing single-issue comic books has been a challenge that has flustered librarians for nearly half a century. At one Mid-Atlantic public university’s library, rapid growth of their trade comic book collection necessitated finding ways to make its contents more useful, usable, and accessible in the library catalogue. Familiar tags meant to increase the findability of these comics, such as pencillers, inkers, characters, and story arcs, were added to these records. The need for this project accelerated as the library began developing a collection of Black comic books, highlighted by characters such as Black Panther and Vixen and creators like Dwayne McDuffie and Ta-Nehisi Coates. This required an acknowledgement of the historically silenced contributions of members of the African diaspora and how things such as Library of Congress Subject Headings have ascribed normativity to white comic book characters and creators while tokenising the contributions of those from marginalised groups. This essay explores the technical and ethical challenges of demographic metadata using bibliographic and authority records. The aspiration of this project is increased access to the entire comic book collection, especially through socially-engaged metadata enrichment.

Adding LCMPT Terms to Local Catalog Records for Notated Music for Voice and Piano

ABSTRACT Medium of performance is a valuable way to find music materials, but it is challenging to search by medium in library catalogs. Songs for specific voice types are especially difficult to look for using legacy metadata such as subject headings. This article describes a project to add terms from Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music to records for scores for songs with piano in an academic library catalog. Appropriate terms are identified by examining subject headings and uncontrolled fields in the records. Adding these terms can enhance discovery and enables deeper analysis of the collection.

Subject search in modern library information retrieval systems

The author reviews in brief the library catalogs as the origins of subject search in the modern search systems. He examines the concept of “subject search”, offers its definition (lacking in the state standards – GOSTs), specifies the types (subject search, search by keywords, systematic search) and characterizes them. The libraries use intensively all three types of subject search while the Internet-based search engines offer just one type, i.e. search by keywords. The universal search systems, like Google and Yandex, do not entail cataloguing, however the possibility of subject search by keywords is designed within html-code and tagging system. The author investigates into the application of systematic search on the Internet. He concludes that this search type emphasizes is intensively applied to the resources related to libraries or science and research (library e-catalogs, abstract databases, etc.). He suggests that in time tagging, the Internet popular subject search system, will tend to classifying and systematic search.

Cataloging Psychological Tests in an Academic Library

Often relegated to a side note in conversations about curriculum materials collections, psychological tests deserve their own consideration in library cataloging. Libraries that are dedicated to psychology (or psychology and a related field, such as education) lend psychological tests either for reference or for usage in clinical training programs. These libraries, largely academic, have a need for guidelines regarding the cataloging of psychological tests, as those developed under the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition (AACR2) are no longer satisfactory for Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloging. This paper provides an overview of AACR2 cataloging guidelines and proposes new RDA best practices when cataloging psychological assessments, including kits.

Literature Counts: The Feelings of Overwhelmed

Literature Counts: The Feelings of <i>Overwhelmed</i>

LibraryThing and Literary Works Revisited: Are Social and Library Cataloging Just as Complementary as they were a Decade Ago?

Providing access to literary works remains a challenge for catalogers and metadata librarians, notwithstanding modern advances such as the introduction of the Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama etc. and the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms. This study explores how harnessing the social cataloging of fiction and other belles-lettres might help meet this challenge. Samples of records from the catalogs of a university and a public library were compared with their equivalents in the LibraryThing (LT) platform, using a similar study reported in this journal ten years prior as a baseline. Most of the library titles were found in LT, and most were linked to tags that still offered additional access points of considerable value beyond the subject and genre headings included in the library records. However, the number of relevant and useful tags attached to each title varied considerably, as indeed did the quantity and quality of the headings. The authors analyze how the tags complemented the headings and identify genre, setting, theme, characters, and authorial attributes as key elements of description for social catalogers of literary works.

Development of an authoritative file of subject headings

At present, the formation of authoritative files system is an obligatory condition for organizing and managing electronic catalogues of large scientific libraries. SPSTL SB RAS is managing its own authoritative file of subject headings, the work on which began in 2008, and is actual until today.The paper describes the results of creating and managing an authoritative file of subject headings of SPSTL SB RAS in the period of 2011 – 2020: the history of the file creation is mentioned; the importance of linguistic support of the electronic catalogue for conducting information search is marked; the necessity for analyzing the current state of affairs and evaluating the authoritative file quality is pointed out.The analysis is based on the results of implementing the statement of work for creating the authoritative file; the program of step-by-step works is reproduced and the results of accomplishing each stage, the complexity of the tasks are evaluated.The article indicates the need to edit subject headings in accordance with the requirements of the method of objectification; to pair information search languages: library and bibliographic indices of classification and subject headings. It also indicates the problem of filling the authoritative file with new subject headings, reveals the necessity of checking the vocabulary by alphabetical index. The conclusion forms the notion about the current state of the authoritative file, the terms of work on implementing the statement of work. The main problem of completing the creation of an authoritative file of subject headings of SPSTL SB RAS is indicated; ways to solve this problem are suggested.