Two weeks of copy & original cataloging

I put off blogging a bit longer than I ought to have perhaps. As a result, I'll be posting a few different posts today in an attempt to keep my thoughts organized.

I processed a lot of copy cataloging over the past two weeks, including some series and items that are part of a multiple item set. I feel like I've got a reasonably good grasp on descriptive elements after all this. I haven't needed to discuss those elements with my supervisor nearly as much; subject terms and class numbers are much more the focus of our conversations. Even in the copy cataloging, I've found a few incorrect class numbers (either non-existent or inappropriate numbers).

Class numbers have proved to be tricky for some items. Sometimes it's been a matter of choosing what's the primary focus of the work, since we can only place it in one place in the classification scheme. Other times, it's been a matter of deciding if any class term is actually appropriate.

I've now finished one pass through the truck of items I was given to catalog and had to set aside around a dozen items for upgrade cataloging and maybe half-a-dozen for original cataloging work.

The theses I'm doing original cataloging on have been going well. I have complete catalog records for 3 of the 6 that are just waiting for feedback from my supervisor. For the most part they've been straightforward, with the exception of subject headings. I've had to spend a fair amount of time exploring Classification Web - searching for terms, following relations, and browsing nearby terms. I've also looked for related works in the local catalog and LC catalog to find other possible terms that I hadn't stumbled across, or to see how the terms I've picked out as possibilities are being used.

I also ended up having a fairly extensive discussion with my supervisor about how chronological subdivisions are handled in the LCSH system. Mostly this focused on how to discover pre-enumerated periods and where such periods could be applied. There are centuries that are free-floating and could be applied under any other term, but century divisions are somewhat arbitrary compared to historical periods and aren't very specific. In the end, for my one history focused thesis I ended up with some subject headings that brought out the topic and others that brought out the location (Japan) and specific periods involved - such as Japan $x History $y Kamakura period.