February 20, 2009
7.5 hours
7.5 hours
8 hours of cataloging. Books upon books upon books upon books. I learned many wonderful, fantastic, useful things about cataloging.
Gahanna shares a catalog system amongst all the schools. Each item is searchable by all schools. This adds a layer of complexity. If you change a record, you change not only yours but all those within the district.
The first spot was the district’s catalog. If I couldn’t find the exact item there, I was to go to various shared databases. Luckily for me I never had to do one piece of original cataloging. That scared me to no end!
The key, I learned, is knowing the ISBN number. I never knew that one book could have so many variations of ISBN numbers. I finally gave up searching by title or author as it so rarely provided a useful result.
Cataloging has always held an appeal for me. To me, cataloging is the math of library sciences. Each item has a specific pathway, a specific formula used to ensure that any user can find the information. This formula has coding that must be followed. This puzzle solving is just one of the many reasons I love library sciences!
It was a long day, exhausting, looking over-and-over records. However, it was a fantastic day.
46.5 of 100 hours completed
No comments:
Post a Comment