Copy Cataloguing and Enhancement

This lesson was a real eye opener for me. It is interesting to know that the CIP is developed before the book is published! Now I know why I have come across some of the inconsistencies that I have seen between the MARC record and the book in hand. In this digital age, I am surprised that it is not easy to correct these differences once the book becomes published. Being able to enhance information in my MARC records is going to be very valuable. For example, I didn’t know that one of my books had received an award and I was able to add that to my record. I also found WorldCat to be quite an interesting resource and am glad that I have come across it. It is good to have learned about copy cataloguing and to know that there are resources we can use for copying cataloguing information. Knowing that all of this information exists is going to be very helpful!

The three books that I compared were City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems, The Frog Princess: A Tlinget Legend from Alaska by Eric Kimmel, and Growing Frogs by Vivian French. I used the online Library of Congress website to compare the MARC records that I created for these books. Most of the information that I had listed in my MARC records I was able to gather from the looking at the actual book. There were some important pieces of information, however that I didn’t get from looking at the book. One thing that stood out for me that I was able to add is extra subject headings (which is very beneficial in helping users search for information). As someone who has never worked in a library I think one of the most useful things for me that I will be adding is the subject terms as I am still not that familiar with them. Understanding the different search terms will help me when I am teaching students ways to search for information. Being able to add grade levels might be handy if I were working in a K-12 school or when indicating books that are for primary or intermediate use. One thing that I find I often refer to are book reviews and I would include this in the bibliographic record but can this be included anywhere in a MARC record is it way too much information? The Library of Congress Control number is another piece of information that can be added (it was not present in two out of the three books I looked at), but how important is that for my users, anyway? But to be complete it is nice to be able to access it.

One thing I wonder about is how does the TL find the time to add this information in? In my district the elementary school TL provides prep relief to all of the primary teachers in the school. A bit of time is allotted in the schedule for collaborative teaching and there is a small amount of time allotted for administrative tasks. We have no clerical time given to us as all of the cataloguing is done for us by our central system. I have noticed, however that our records appear somewhat lacking. I am assuming this is too much for a volunteer to take on, given how time consuming it was for the rest of us to learn! Perhaps just committing to enhancing the information for the newest resources coming in will be an achievable goal? I wonder how other, more experienced TLs will tackle this issue of time.  

For more details about the specifics of the books I examined see the attached information. I included a comparison of the MARC records for one of the books as well.