Book shopping

Right now is all about getting the book ready.

The biggest challenge is finding books to exemplify cataloguing features.

Mostly, I’ve been able to work from items already on my bookcase, but as the deadline for the first complete draft approaches, I found myself trawling the shops for memorable titles that fulfilled the cataloguing rules we still needed to exemplify.

On the whole I was pretty impressed with my local cheap bookshop yesterday and my haul of:

• Jazzy jars – odd title and a US publisher containing both a “Co.” and an “Inc.”
• 50 mathematical ideas you really need to know – starts with a number; series title embedded in main title
• Mrs Beeton’s book of needlework – facsimile ed.; statement of responsibility part of main title; author name includes a title of address

All this cataloguing action for less than ten pounds!

Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world

At the Cataloguing & Indexing Group conference in September, Ken Chad put out a plea for participants for a briefing on how the UK HE sector collaborates (or doesn’t) to creat catalogue records.

The briefing, commissioned by the Research Information Network, is out this week. I remember at the conference, some of the die-hard cataloguing community was a bit bemused that RIN had commissioned someone outside the practice area to look at this issue, but, on a first-read at least, the briefing seems to do what it says on the tin: it summarises what is happening in university libraries with regard to creating and sharing catalogue data.

While it may not be saying anything that we cataloguers have not know, oh, forever, it does, I think do a good job of highlighting the issues we face largely in non-technical language and a way that will hopefully be accessible to non-cataloguers (including senior managers), which has to be (a) a generally good thing and (b) a vindication of RIN’s commissioning strategy.

Now all we cataloguers have to do is go through it carefully with our Gimlet eyes and fine tooth combs and then take up the debate …

Research Information Network. Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world. (Research Information Network report). RIN, 2009.

JISC Study on HE Social Networking

“Do you work in the UK HE sector? Are you using any of the Web 2.0 tools and services as part of your work?” If so, UKOLN would like to hear from you for its new JISC-commissioned study:

JISC is funding this landscape study on the UK HE sector use of content, communication and social networking services developed outside the sector by global enterprise. The study is being carried out by Ann Chapman and Rosemary Russell at UKOLN.

Although JISC has developed a number of services (e.g. JORUM, JISCmail) specifically for use within the UK HE sector, people within the sector are increasingly using services developed outside the sector, either in addition to – or in some cases instead of – JISC provided services. And as well as using such services, people are also engaging in ‘mashups’ where combinations of services and content are used to provide new services or to provide added value to data already held.

Since evidence of this usage is fragmented and often anecdotal, this study aims to provide a snapshot of the current situation in the UK. (‘What’s It All About?‘) 

You can contribute in a variety of ways, including by leaving comments on the JISC SIS Landscape Study blog …

I checked with Ann last week, and for their purposes, the Higher Education sector does include professional bodies and educational institutes, even if they are outside universities. So, if you have an opinion to offer or an experience to share, visit UKOLN’s blog to take part.

Quick Post: Miksa on RDA

Not read this yet (train reading for the commute in tomorrow), but as it’s by Shawne, it will be good:

Shawne Miksa. Resource Description and Access (RDA) and new research potentials. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 36 (5): 47-51.

(Via Cataloguing Futures on Planet Cataloging)

Cilip in London : Proctor’s Diaries

I can’t see it on their webpage yet, but have received a mailing about Cilip in London on Tuesday, which looks fantastic:

The Private Diaries of Robert Proctor

Date: Tuesday 9 June 2009
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: The Sekforde Arms, Sekforde Street, London EC1
Map: http://digbig.com/3pmf
Speaker: John Bowman

Feminist Library at ILI2009

The case study presentation that Kate Lomax and I submitted to Internet Librarian International has been accepted for a session on Open Source Libraries:

Open, free, easy? Building a catalogue from scratch on open source software

This case study presents work carried out in the last year to build a catalogue for the Feminist Library, an independent collection of Second Wave Women’s Movement materials run entirely by volunteers. It describes the set-up of the Koha Library Management System and the use of the catalogue as inventory, sales tool and record of a unique collection and system of thought. The challenges faced include technical open source issues, working with an entirely volunteer management and workforce, training and time management. Based on their experience, the presenters highlight their recommendations for anyone else wanting to use open source LMS and pinpoint pitfalls as well as benefits of open source cataloguing.

ILI is always worth attending, and I can’t wait to see the full programme, which will be announced soon.

WRITELondon

It’s been a busy May – SALIS Conference in Canada, family visit and lots and lots of marking.

One of the highlights was the reading Jasmine Cooray organised for participants in WRITELondon at the Betsey Trotwood. It was fantastic to meet up again and hear everyone read their work. It was the first full reading I’ve done in ages (as opposed to open mic / floor spots) and therefore a real confidence boost.

Thanks to Jas, Cath, Zillah, Lavina, Jackey and Ellie and to everyone who came along to support. And if you’re looking for an innovative and supportive writing course in London, look no further than WRITELondon.

Journey of the Book

Today the Guildhall Library ran an innovative event for library professionals, in which the Bibliographic Services team took us through a book’s journey through the department and ready to be issued by City of London Libraries.

In the case of the 11.30am tour I attended, the book in question was John O’Flynn’s  The Irishness of Irish music, and we saw it from arrival, through being checked against its invoice and order record, through cataloguing and classification to shelf-ready.

City of London is one of the few public libraries in the UK that still maintains a full cataloguing department – the uniqueness of some of its rare books, local history and other special collections makes it more cost effective and efficient to have professionally qualified staff and highly trained paraprofessionals rather than buying in records from suppliers.

Daily tasks range from checking shelfmarks to creating complex records for maps, rare materials, even toys, and maintaining guides to the libraries subject headings, classmarks and shelfmarks.

As I always am whenever I meet the Bib Services management team at conferences and events, I was in equal measures impressed by their efficiency – in cataloguing, management and maintaining their staff’s professional profile – and saddened that the Chief Cataloguers of other local and unitary authority libraries have not been able to maintain the same standards and the same large team of staff.

The Guildhall Library is to Bibliographic Services as the Mitchell Library in Glasgow is to reference work – exemplary, rare and seldom (sadly) replicated elsewhere.

Cavendish Cemetary

Gothic and sentimental as always, the real highlight of my Prince Edward Island tourism was L.M. Montgomery’s graveside.

Montgomery grew up in Cavendish, staying with her grandparents, and returning to nurse her grandmother in the final years of her life. She met her husband in Cavendish, and although they moved away to Ontario and then Toronto, this is where they were buried, a few rows behind Montgomery’s grandmother’s grave, and the grave of her mother, who died when Montgomery wasn’t quite two years old.

I’ve seen photos of the grave in summer, when it’s overgrown with flowers, but there was something quite moving about seeing it pre-season, when the Earth was still bare. And something moving about how well-tended it is, unstrewn with tatty offerings like Blake’s stone in Bunhill Fields and unpopulated by dandelions and other weeds like Plath’s in Heptonstall.

Avonlea

I expected that there could only be one Canadian experience to top buying a Canadian edition of Anne of Green Gables (pictured left) in Canada - visiting the “real-life” Avonlea.

I was extremely lucky that my cousin had moved to Prince Edward Island just two weeks before my Halifax conference and that her lovely husband was willing to come and collect me from my hotel and take me back to the airport (a three or three-and-a-half hour trip each way).

 

L.M. Montgomery is BIG business on Prince Edward Island. I had expected something like the cult of Robert Burns in my native Ayrshire, but nothing could prepare me for the giftware and pictures, the summer festival and plays and musicals and even tea-tins branded with Anne of Green Gables.

The centrepiece of Anne-mania is Avonlea Village, set in Cavendish, where Montgomery grew up with her grandparents. We took a run out there and looked over the low white fences at tightly-packed old-stylee shops and the Church Montgomery attended (below), which was apparently relocated from elsewhere in Cavendish to form the centrepiece of the theme-park. In the season, the village is populated by actors in Edwardian dress, including and Anne, Gilbert Blythe and Diana Barry, and people come from all over the world to see it, pay tribute to Montgomery and buy hats with red nylon pigtails stitched in (the PEI equivalent of the Scottish ‘See You Jimmy’ hat).

I was, on the whole, glad to be there slightly off season, glad to have just come from Halifax, so recognisable from Anne of the Island as the university Anne and Gilbert Blythe attend (Montgomery read Literature at Dalhousie), and glad that before coming to “Avonlea” we’d gone for a walk on the shoreline, on the sand dunes that stand out in my imagination as the scene of Anne’s own walks and heart-to-hearts with Diana when she was just beginning to outgrow the Avonlea of the books … the real Avonlea, books often being more real than buildings and houses … sand and sea more evocative than actors in a theme park, however professionally done.