Gettin' Stuff Done

Wow my desk is looking clean! I managed to work my way through those mystery deweys today, although I did take a bit of a short cut - rather than deciphering them I checked under subject headings on Libraries Australia and found that other similar, recent books were using the same numbers - a good tip I was shown yesterday!

I've also learned something really important about receiving gift copies - that you need to make sure you get the intended location exactly right, because if you just leave it as AUS and it's actually an AUSLPF copy, you're going to make another holding that will sit around and confuse people for years to come.

Looks like the Web 2.0 project is coming to a close soon, but I for one will be keeping this blog going (and possibly even taking it to whatever job I end up in next), purely for it's reflective quality, which I find really helpful.

Can't trust that day

Mondays are tough because the Sean Keaveny show hasn't happened in the UK yet, so it hasn't been uploaded to BBC6, and so I have nothing to giggle at and make people think I'm crazy.

However, I have managed to work through a couple of the weirder deweys that have been hanging around since last week - no small thanks to Kristy on that one. But there are still a couple to go, and since you're here, I might tell you aaaallll about them. Settle in.

Ok, so we've got this title called 'The invisible thread," see, and it's "The story of Moonambel." Its dewey is currently 994.0099458. Let's investigate.

So we know that 994 is Australia. I'm ok with that. But what's going on with the 00994 after it? Isn't that like saying "Australia: Australia"? And what's the 58? Cry!

The next one I have is for a book called "Maalika: My life among the Afar nomads of Africa." This has a dewey of 323.092. So it's a biography, which I'm happy with, but 323 just "civil and political rights, which just seems too broad. I want to make it about Africa...but then there's the whole not subdivinding biographies geographically...

The last one I have is called "No Peacetime Cinderellas," and it's about the war widow's guild of NSW. Dewey is 369.208654. 369.2 is 'military and patriotic societies,' which I guess is fine. But then we've got 08654, which I just can't seem to find anywhere.

Anyway, I'll have bit more of a think about these tomorrow and hopefully come up with some answers. (Cue thinking music.)

This week, I have been mostly...

• Learning how to cancel purchase orders properly! I can now also unreceive items, which is simple but very handy to know when you've clicked once too many times.
• Getting better at recognising when something that I shouldn't be cataloguing comes across my desk, although I'm still not very sure exactly what 'analytics' covers - at the moment I know that ANU epress are analytics and that if it has a date or number, called a 'project' or 'working paper,' or has a 440 field, it's probably an analytic. If anyone else has any tips for recognising them feel free to share!
  
• Working my way through the RAP list, although at the moment it's covered in post-its to follow up.
• Getting better at recognising strange deweys...and also understanding how to use the DDC books, which is kind of scary in a good way.
  
• Getting more handy dewey tips, such as that if you have a biography mark on your cutter, you'd better have a biography number in your dewey (duh!).
  
• Slowly but surely working my through the back log of dewey updates that go with my set of books.
• Giggling a bit too much at Shaun Keaveny's show on BBC6. I highly recommend it if you like overtired British ridiculousness.

Mystery of the two deweys - solved!

This was interesting - apparently the preference here at the NLA is to group works by subject, even if they do happen to be a biography (like the one I was talking about below) - that way all the works on that topic will be grouped together. Other libraries might group all their biographies together. In any case, it's ok to have two deweys on a record, I think it's just a matter of using the one that is goign to keep your book in the right section.

In other news - daylight savings omg! I've been here since 7:30am! Time to go home!

More Dewey Sweetness

So thanks to a very kind person who may or may not work near me, I've been having a few lessons in making Deweys today. It's been great! I'm finally able to go 'ok, this part means this,' which sounds lame I'm sure but it's a lot better than going 'what a pretty string of numbers that is.'

So, I've got this book here and it has two deweys in the record. That doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm going to try and decipher what each of them are, and then decide which is the best one. (Can you feel the excitement?) This is for a book called 'Holding up the Sky, an African life.' It's an autobiography.

Firstly we have 361.0092.

• 361 = 'Social problems and social welfare in general.' That sounds wrong already. Shouldn't we be starting with Africa? Or biography?
• 0092 is...well 009 is apparently 'historical, geographic, persons treatement' but then it says 'do not use, class in 361.9...Curioser and curioser.
  
• I really need to go get a cup of tea.
  
• Ok, so 092 is the biography part of that dewey. But I don't know where the extra 0 has come from.
  

Let's look at the next one: 307.146092

• Aha! I already know 092 is the biography part. I rock.
  
• 307 is about communities. There's also a .14 here that says 'development.' There's a star next to that which I know is significant...
  
• As I suspected, the 6 is the Africa marker. So if we put it all together it goes 'Communities - Development - Africa - Biographies.' It matches the subject heading pretty much exactly: ‡a Community development personnel ‡z South Africa ‡v Biography.
  

The second one sounds much better, as it actually says something about Africa. But now I'm thinking 'Shouldn't the Africa bit come first? Maybe it can't come first. Maybe you have to subdivide geographically after you come up with a more general topic. And maybe, just maybe, I need to ask someone for help with this one.' (Sorry, I think the assam tea I switched to is a little stronger than my usual.)

Thursday Tips

I understood my first Dewey today. Oh, my god, it was sweet.

But yes, Miss Eternal Student, I would like to look at some examples with you when you have a moment. And to anyone else who feels like talking about Deweys, I'm here to listen.

We had a bit of an interesting one today - a hardback of a fiction book that I noticed after I'd catalogued the paperback. What we decided on was putting the paperback in a polycover, giving them the same label and that way they get shelved together. Made sense to me.

So, we're back to manual reading this afternoon. Lack of sleep may mean this makes no sense. You have been warned.

• There's a little something in here about cataloguing hbk/pbk items actually - I won't try to interpret it here but it's on p. 132 of the procedures manual.
• Apparently more than six subject headings 'would rarely be required' even if you were doing high level cataloguing. I'm pretty sure I've done records with more than six!
• Oh oh! Punctuation tips! Why didn't someone tell me these were here? ;) I've been wondering about things like exclamation marks, and if we need to put a space before them in the title for searching purposes. It doesn't say anything about that in here (and I've seen other records that don't do that) so I'm guessing that's not necessary.
  

I think I might actually photocopy this little cheat sheet and post it on my desk. If you're keen to read it (fascinating I know) it's p. 141 of the procedures manual.

Another thing that's been on my mind is biographies. When is something a biography and when is it just a story about a family, or maybe just a certain time in a family's life? I'm sure there are procedures for this out there somewhere...

Blogging with Terry Wogan

My desk is looking much clearer these days - partially thanks to Lisa explaining to me how to add geographical subdivisions to subject headings. It's easy! All you do is go to the subject headings index, search under structed subject heading, and if it says 'May Subd Geog' next to the subject heading you want to use, you can simply stick a v subfield in your 650 line (for example...I'm not sure if you can do it with all the 600 lines...anyways) and then write 'Australia' or whatever. Then you just add 0994 to the end of your Dewey and you're done! Simple, right? Right.

Other exciting things - I've received about seven gift copies (N and NL) over the past few days, and I'm getting more confident with that process. I'm proud of myself for taking it slowly and paying attention to the details, which I'm finding is the Number One Thing I need to do to work well in this position.

I guess that's what I'd say in my next job interview - even if it's not for a library job I can safely say I've had experience working in both fast-paced, results-focused environments and slower-paced, accuracy focused environments. Of course, the first option is the one I'm more comfortable in, but I'm getting used to slowing down.

I'm also feeling less worried about the mistakes I keep making as I'm noticing these are mistakes that everyone makes from time to time - I've noticed this because I've actually got to a point where I can pick these up, when doing the trolley or updating someone else's record.

Most importantly, I have strategised to get myself through the afternoon drudge period with BBC radio online. Today it's Terry Wogan, who makes zero sense but is completely hilarious. I do with they would stop playing 'Mercy' by Duffy though. I mean, really, it's a good song but we can move on now!