from the Nebraska State
Historical Society, World War One Collection
Newsletter Editor: Jean Dickinson
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
N209 Love Library 68588-4100
Email: jmdickin@unlnotes.unl.edu
TSRT homepage: http://www.nol.org/home/NLA/TSRT/TSRThome.htm
This publication is free to current and prospective members of the Round
Table. It is not available by subscription
Welcome
Cataloger's Desktop & Classification Plus
UNL Contributes to CORC
Subject Analysis of Photographs
Financial Report
TSRT Bindery Visit
UNK Events
Publishing Opportunities
The Technical Services Roundtable's purpose, as stated in our bylaws, is to "promote communication of ideas, interests and research in all areas of technical services in all types and sizes of Nebraska libraries and information centers". The following (and future) workshops and conference sessions of the past two years were planned to meet that purpose:
Spring meeting 1999 - Houchen Bindery
tour, Utica NE
Fall conference 1999 - Janet Swan
Hill presentation, Reports of Our Death Have Been Greatly
Exaggerated,
Lincoln NE
Spring meeting 2000 - joint workshop
with ITART, E-Journals: Who, What, Where, and Don't
Cancel That
Paper Copy Yet, Aurora NE
Fall conference 2000 - joint tour
with MPLA Preservation, Archives, and Special
Collections Section of the
Ford Preservation Center, Omaha NE
Spring meeting 2001 - joint workshop
with NMRT, Houchen Bindery tour, Utica NE
Fall conference: October 17-19, 2001 -
If you are not a member of TSRT and wish to become one, please check
the TSRT box in the Roundtable section of the NLA membership form.
Current Roundtable dues are $5.00 per year. We welcome and learn
from members from all types and sizes of libraries.
Thank you.
Mary Marchio
Manager, Catalog Department
Omaha Public Library
The collection of databases on CD that make up the Library of Congress' Cataloger's Desktop (hereafter known as Cat. Desktop) and Classification Plus (hereafter known as Class. Plus) make this cataloging tool an indispensable part of an original cataloger's everyday work. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, catalogers began trying them out in the spring of 1999. The cataloging world at large had had access to Cat. Desktop and Class. Plus since 1994, but it was not widely used at first. Despite some frustrating computer glitches, UNL librarians have been continuing to find their way around in Cat. Desktop, and to discover new, easier, and faster ways to get the detailed information they need.
Some of the resources in Cataloger's Desktop include: Library of Congress Rule Interpretations (LCRIs); Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2); MARC Bibliographic Formats and Standards; the Map Cataloging Manual; Music Cataloging Decisions; Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books; and many more. Its companion, the Classification Plus file, obviates the need for paper classification schedules, except for PL-PM (Languages of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania; Hyperborean, Indian, and Artificial Languages), which was not yet ready at the CD's production time. It will be included in the 2001, Issue 3 edition.
Two especially useful functions included in Cat. Desktop, are the "shadow files" and "bookmarks," which allow customization of repeatedly accessed areas. Shadow files are files that each cataloger can create on his/her own computer that allow them to access and manipulate Cat. Desktop in accordance with their own particular preferences, while keeping the true Cat. Desktop intact. The cataloger can highlight and make notes for parts of any of the tools that are areas of constant use or constant questions. Bookmarks allow the cataloger to return to the same spot in the database at a later time.
An increase in each cataloger's efficiency and the desire to assure that everyone is using current data, documentation and schedules were the goals for the use of these tools. Another great, but perhaps less important, aspect of Cat. Desktop and Class. Plus is that by using them, UNL Libraries is making an attempt to cut down on its reliance on paper products. Best of all, most all documentation and references that a cataloger needs to do his/her work can now be found in these two products.
(To give an idea of their cost: the price UNL paid for this year's subscription was $1,140 for one user.)
Cat. Desktop and Class. Plus are updated quarterly.
The CORC Program
In 1999, OCLC began its Cooperative Online Resource Cataloging (CORC) program to facilitate the cataloging of remote access electronic resources such as Web sites and E-books. All bibliographic records that are created through CORC appear in OCLC's WorldCat database, so they are searchable in OCLC just like records for books, serials and items in all other formats.
The CORC system has a Web-based interface, so it looks different than the text-based OCLC interface. CORC can "harvest" some data from Web sites, such as the title and summary note, and will automatically input those elements into the catalog record. Another feature of CORC is that it allows you to request that your library be notified when a Web site address in a record that you cataloged has changed.
Bibliographic records in CORC can be input in MARC format or in the Dublin Core format. Pathfinders can also be created using CORC.
CORC at UNL
A CORC training class covering cataloging and creation of pathfinders was offered at the Nebraska Library Commission in August 2000. To prepare for joining the CORC program, UNL catalogers attended this day-long session and then began contributing bibliographic records through CORC shortly thereafter.
Since then dozens of Nebraska Web sites have been cataloged including those for the Center for Great Plains Studies, the Nebraska Humanities Council and the Industrial Agricultural Products Center. The focus for the program at UNL will continue to be scholarly Nebraska resources in a wide variety of subject areas.
Catalogers at UNL have found the CORC interface easy to use and, after getting used to it, actually similar to OCLC's standard cataloging interface in many ways. For instance, after inputting a record, it can be exported to your local catalog, just as in OCLC. As all cataloging interfaces will undoubtedly be upgraded to Web-based systems soon, this is good news.
For more information on CORC, go to http://www.oclc.org/corc/ . To view CORC records that have been created at UNL, go to http://iris.unl.edu/search/l, select "Web sites" from the drop-down menu and then click on the Search button.
Introduction
"The visual image has occupied a central role in human communication since the dawn of civilization" (Enser 1995). Today, one of the most prolific forms of the visual image is the photograph. While many people cannot paint or draw, everyone has easy and inexpensive access to a camera. Of course snapshots taken at family gatherings differ from the artistic and journalistic works of professional photographers. However, the familiarity that comes with easy access to photography as a medium, and the role visual communication plays in our society, combine to create a tremendous public interest in using photographic resources for everyday purposes. This paper covers some of the general issues of cataloging visual materials, specifically photographs, and focuses on subject analyses. The topic of descriptive cataloging will appear in the next issue of TSRT.
The majority of library and archive holdings include photograph collections
in one form or another. Public libraries often house local historic collections,
such as the Omaha Public Library's Trans Mississippi International Exposition
of 1898. Archives such as the Nebraska Historical Society (NHS), will often
contain personal papers with family photographs, and corporate archives
contain press releases that include photographs of the major events of
its institution. The past fifteen years have given rise to technology that
has allowed greater access across a wider user base to those collections.
The Library of Congress's "American Memory Collections," ( limit search
to Photos and prints) <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mdbquery.html>, is
one example of a major collection that is partially available through Internet
access. The NHS provides Internet access to a list of its photographic
holdings,
<http://www.nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/research/photos/access/collect.htm>.
These examples demonstrate some of the choices available to librarians
and archivists who wish to provide users with access to the photographic
materials within their institutions.
General Issues
The main issue in cataloging photographs revolves around the differences between textual works and visual images. When cataloging a written document, use is made of the text that is inherent in the work itself. "The meaning of the work is encoded in the same scheme as the catalog ; both use words" (Pearce-Moses 2001). For example, most published works include the title, author, publisher, table of contents; further, actual content is composed of words that can be relied upon to provide description and subject access points.
Visual materials are made of a variety of non-textual elements; photographs are composed of color. Occasionally, information such as title, creator, or date may be printed on a photograph or on an accompanying caption sheet; the images themselves though, contain no text. Human interaction is required to translate visual language into the catalog's textual language. This process of human analysis leads to a number of problems. "The same image may mean different things to different people and may be used to project a different meaning at different times depending on the way it is used or the aspect that is the focus of attention or the context it is chosen to illustrate." (Chen 1999)
Levels of Meaning
Sara Shatford has done in-depth writing on the problem of analyzing images, relying upon art historian Erwin Panofsky's 1939 theory of the levels of meaning contained in a work of art (Panofsky 1962). Shatford compares finding meaning in an image with that of analyzing the subject of a text "where one is concerned with the meaning conveyed by the words of the text, not with the bibliographic description, nor with the median or genre exemplified by the particular work or item" (Shatford 1986). In other words, the layers of meaning are not concerned with descriptive cataloging, but are to be used as a guide in subject analysis.
from the Nebraska State
Historical Society, World War One Collection
The fist level of meaning, "pre-iconography" contains "generic descriptions of the objects and actions represented in the picture"(Shatford 1986). One need only have an understanding of everyday practical activities to be able to assign meaning at this level. Panofsky discusses both factual and expressive meanings at this level: what the picture is Of - the thing depicted - and what it is About - its general mood. In looking at the picture above, one can see that this is a photograph of a man kissing a woman and is about love.
The second level of meaning, "iconography", requires an understanding and analysis of cultural elements; the viewer moves from the generic to the specific. Again, one can distinguish between what the picture is of and what it is About. Applying anunderstanding of cultural elements, one can add to the meaning of the picture on page 5, assigning more specific information. Research done by the NHS indicates this is a picture of World War I soldiers, taken at the Burlington Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska on July 5, 1917; it is about the emotions felt by men and women living during the time of war.
The final level of meaning, "iconology" requires interpretation based on the meanings arrived at in the first two steps (Shatford 1986). Once it is known what the photograph is of and about in generic and specific ways, a synthesis of those meanings can be made to arrive at an overall meaning. It is at this final level that most problems in indexing and access occur. The act of interpretation assumes the viewer has a particular slant that s/he will use in assigning meaning. History is no longer a presentation of straight forward facts. An image of soldiers in uniform laughing at a train depot might be considered by some as a work of propaganda perpetrated by the government to gain support for its war efforts, while others might view it as a photo that captures the spirit of patriotism. Shatford suggests that we do not attempt to index at this level because of the lack of consensus that exists (Shatford 1986).
Subject Headings
Once the cataloger has determined the meaning of the image, he or she faces the difficulty of the lack of appropriate subject headings provided in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Providing subject headings to the first two levels of meaning as described by Panofsky and Shatford is not possible using the limited controlled vocabulary of LCSH. In order to assist the library community in providing more specific access to visual materials, two thesauri were developed for use as subject headings: the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Material (LCTGM).
Jane Greenberg compared the two thesauri in a 1993 article. She states: "The critical difference between these two sources is that AAT is a very specialized source with terminology specifically for the built environment, furnishings and equipment, and visual and verbal communication. Its current audience appears to be a more specialized art and architecture community than the broader multi-disciplinary users of LCTGM." (Greenberg 1993)
There were several concepts that were considered important to the art and library community that were incorporated into the AAT thesaurus. It "would provide for consistent representation of information by determining the preferred ways of referring to concepts, bringing together synonyms, and noting other relationships such as broader and narrower terms." (Peterson, 1990) The resulting thesaurus is a "discipline-specific faceted subject thesaurus". (Greenberg 1993) These facets allow for more specific use than the LCTGM, which is pre-coordinated.
LCTGM was developed to assist in subject indexing in the Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs Division. Its goal is to "provide terms for the subject indexing of historical image collections housed in libraries, historical societies, archives and museums". (Greenberg 1993) In fact, the very nature of its goal of assisting in subject indexing keeps its status as a thesaurus "open to debate". (Greenberg 1993) As can be seen, the two thesauri have different audiences in mind, and each serves its purpose in expanding the limited terms in LCSH.
Conclusion
The process of determining the subject of a photograph is a time consuming one, and is only the first step toward providing an institution's user group with access to its photographic collection. It is also an enjoyable activity; photographs tell us so much more about a time and place than words on a paper ever can.
Beginning Cash Balance 1,496.16
INCOME
1st Quarter dues
120.00
TSRT/NMRT Spring Meeting registration
1st Deposit
240.00
2nd Deposit
105.00
3rd Deposit
40.00
EXPENDITURES
April fee
3.00
May fee
3.00
June fee
3.00
Mary Marchio (Stamps)
#1035
7.82
Sally Gibson (Stamps)
#1036
5.10
Chances "R" #1037
167.97
(Refund) #1038
20.00
NMRT Share of Spring
Meeting #1039
92.06
ENDING CASH BALANCE 1,699.21
submitted by Charity K. Martin
Cataloger, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Houchen Bindery Ltd. is a well known binding and preservation resource
for Nebraska libraries. Many librarians have toured the bindery,
and in recent years it has expanded its building and added not only more
high tech equipment for stamping and binding, but also a large graphics
capability. This spring several librarians from the TSRT took advantage
of the opportunity to learn a little about the new equipment by going on
a group tour. The state is fortunate to have Houchen as a local business
since, as the binding industry consolidates and contracts, many states
do not have a nearby bindery. Houchen welcomes visitors at any time and
encourages TSRT members to invest in their knowledge by touring their
facility. Make arrangements ahead by phone.
UNK Inventory Project
The UNK-Calvin T. Ryan Library carried out an inventory of its book collection (over 200,000 volumes) this spring. We believe it is the first inventory of the general book collection since 1965. The project was supervised by Carol Reed and several student assistants. Innovative Interfaces software was instrumental in assisting with shelf reading, identifying books that were missing, checked-out, misshelved, etc. From March 1-June 30, 2001 students worked in teams reading and comparing call numbers, titles, and barcodes with the shelf list print-outs. Problems were noted on forms and passed on to the Head of Cataloging for resolution. Books needing repairs were also identified. Since the project was carried out over several months, it was easy to absorb the problems into the daily workflow of the department Some of the resolutions were: reinstating "missing" and withdrawn volumes that had been found, correcting call number labels, correcting barcode information, and downloading records for a handful of titles that had not been converted.
UNK Uses OCLC TechPro
This past year the Cataloging Dept. at UNK took advantage of OCLC's TechPro service. TechPro is a branch of OCLC that does cataloging outsourcing. All types of materials were sent for cataloging including over 150 vocal music scores, videorecordings, tape cassettes, computer disks, curriculum material, and local history titles. This was the library's first experience with TechPro, and the results were very pleasing. Another plus was that OCLC's contact person was very helpful and responsive.
Remember to send in your news on any aspect of technical services
that might be of interest. What's new in your department? What have you
read lately in the technical services area? What would you like to bring
to our readers' attention?
Thanks to Margaret Mering and Mary Marchio, who helped with advice, and especially to Michael Hare who worked on the layout of this newsletter - from the Editor.