Wednesday Feb 4, 2009

Today I met with Rose Bond for about 10 minutes. I told her how her project is progressing and asked her if there were certain "tags" or "keywords" that she'd like me to include in the records I'll be cataloging for her. I suggested a tag of "Student work" which would help her distinguish the items that she donated to the library--it's all student expositions from European film schools. She admitted that it would be helpful, but it wouldn't be vital. She's really excited about this project, but we're having difficulty speaking the same language. I'm trying to explain things like copy cataloging and controlled vocabulary, but she isn't really getting it (and why would she?) However, I am starting to figure out that it might not be so much the library's problem in proper cataloging as it is Rose's defficiencies in searching methods. I watched her search the catalog and I can really see why she isn't getting the results she's looking for. Sarah and I went into the catalog and looked at a MARC record for an animation compilation DVD. We found that the authors are not being put in the "Author" field, but in the 700 field for "Added entry". This is how it's been done in the past and I'm not really looking to overhaul that system, since it's technically correct. I really should just sit down with Rose and show her some more effective ways of searching the catalog. This might alleviate some of her frustrations.