Reference Questions, 10/31/09

Halloween on the reference desk. Let's hope it doesn't get too scary. ;)

1. (Phone) A student was looking for peer reviewed research articles on sports injuries (sprains and strains) and research articles on motor development. SPORT Discus is the place.
2. A patron needed a guest username and password.
3. A student was having trouble finding a book in the basement.
4. A student wanted to know how to access the Oxford English Dictionary Online.
5. A patron was looking for one of the books that are noted in the display case across from the reference desk.
6. (Phone) A professor had a question about accessing an ebook. Then she realized that she has checked the actual book out and said she was going to go find it. Strange conversation. :)
7. A student needed help finding articles on autism, intervention and research. She was a grad student in the School of Ed., and very nice as well.
8. A student wanted to know where she could catch the GTA 1 bus on campus.
9. (Chat) Got a chat while helping the grad student (#7) and didn't get a chance to help them before they had already found the answer themselves.
10. A student was looking for sources on the Mariel Boatlift of 1980.
11. A student was looking for the bathroom.
12. The student from #10 had another question about databases.
13. The student from #10 was having trouble resetting his password.

Not scary at all, just a slow shift. Now off to the LIS Dept. Halloween party. :)

Independent Study, 10/28/09

Today is the last day of interviews on authority control with the cataloging staff at Jackson Library.

Cindy Zaruba

Cindy Zaruba is the Multiformats Cataloging Assistant for Jackson Library. She has also recently taken on some of the music cataloging as well. Cindy had some very interesting authority control stories. The first on she told me involved a UNCG faculty member. This faculty member had previously been married and since divorced. He and his wife had both hyphenated their names after that marriage. He had been published under that hyphenated name. The other day he contacted a reference librarian about the situation. I guess he had been searching the catalog and realized that his hyphenated name was still being used as the “official” form of his name. The reference librarian brought the situation to Cindy’s attention. She went to his authority record, and put the correct form in the 100 field and then moved the hyphenated form to the 400 field. She was able to change it in the UNCG catalog, however other libraries that have his books will have records that still use the hyphenated form of his name. It will have to be changed in OCLC. Paul Hessling will need to change it in OCLC.

In name authority records the 1XX fields contain the official form of the name, the 4XX fields contain the old form which is no longer authorized and the 5XX fields contain an older form of the name that is still a legitimate form for use. The best example of that is the UNCG authority file that was created by Paul Hessling.

Paul Hessling

Paul Hessling is the Special Collections/Chief Monographic Cataloger for Jackson Library. Paul repairs the authority records that already exist in UNCG’s catalog. He is also responsible for changing the authority records in OCLC. After changing the records in OCLC he then must wait for them to update the records. However, this whole process usually takes quite a while so Paul usually just changes the records in the catalog himself. His goal is to try to get the necessary authority records in at the same time as the items are cataloged, but that is not always a reality. In order to make a change in OCLC, it first must be reported to the Library of Congress with the proper documentation. If a library is a member of or takes part in a cooperative program such as NACO or BIBCO, then they are able to put records in or change records in OCLC.

Paul is also in charge of creating the library’s local authority records and the series authority records that UNCG uses, such as the Girls’ in Books Series authority records or the Women’s Detective Fiction Series. Many of the Women’s Detective Fiction Series was written by author’s who were writing under various pseudonyms. According to Paul, the Library of Congress is slow to realize that a pseudonym is a valid entry point. Therefore, he has created records for those pseudonyms himself.

Carolyn Bowen

Carolyn Bowen is the Multiformats Cataloger at Jackson Library. She is in charge of cataloging the library’s map collection. Maps offer an interesting authority problem. Geographic headings are either juristic or non-juristic. Juristic geographic headings are political, usually appear in the 1XX, 6XX or 7XX fields and a capable of authorship. Non-juristic geographic headings are used for geographic features such as mountain ranges or rivers, and are used in the 6XX field. Juristic headings can be difficult to pin down. For example, borders can change over time due to conquests, war, etc. Carolyn said Russia is a good example of this. Due to this problem, it can be challenging to figure out which geographic heading should be used. It is often a judgment call. Carolyn looks at similar records and consults the Subject Heading Manual and the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations to help her decide which headings are appropriate.

Reference Questions, 10/27/09

Lets hope chat is not as busy as it was Sunday. Oy vey, that was a chat nightmare.

1. A student had a question about APA citations.
2. A patron needed a guest username and password.
3. A student had another question about APA citations.
4. A student was looking for his course guide on the library website.
5. A student had a question about printing.
6. A student needed to use the print card. 10 cents please. :)
7. UPDATE: The library catalog just went down. Oh no! This is going to be a long night. :(
8. (Chat) A student needed a suicide assessment tool. I directed them toward the Mental Measurements database. Thank God she didn't need the catalog.
9. A student was looking for the reserves. Circ desk, next desk on the left. :) He had been trying to look the book up in the catalog, but I told him it was down. Then he said it's on reserve, so that one was easy.
10. A student was looking for the book Evening Thoughts. Thank God for Worldcat.
11. (Chat) The student from #8, still having trouble locating his assessment tool. I suggested he search a few full text databases and he may get lucky. I'm afraid the assessment he is looking for is copyrighted. and he may have to pay to get it. :(
12. A patron needed a guest username and password.
13. A patron was having trouble with a guest computer.
14. (Chat) A student was looking for books on modern dance.
15. A student was working on a paper on "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and depression and creativity. A very interesting topic for an ENG 105 class. I help her for a while and missed 2 chats in the process. Oh well.
16. A student had a question about how to email items he had found in a database to himself.
17. (Chat) A student was trying to search the catalog. It's still down. :( So I had to direct them to Worldcat, and explain to them how to use it.
18. Three students from Guilford College (including the one that insulted my accent a couple of months back, no I didn't forget) needed to use the guest computers for research.
19. One of the Guilford College students needed to print.
20. A student had a printing question.
21. (Chat) Lost another chat while helping #19 and #20.
22. Another printing question.
23. (Chat) A student was having trouble accessing the eHRAF World Culture database. They were because we discontinue its service.
24. (Chat) A student was looking for videos on Israeli culture.
25. (Chat) A student was looking for scholarly articles on why is prison rape prevalent.
26. A student was looking for music books and magazine articles in Billboard and Rolling Stone.

Busy night. :)

Reference Questions, 10/25/09

Sunday evening on the reference desk, take 43.

1. A student wanted to know if there was a color printer in at the reference computers. No there is not, but there is one in the SuperLab.
2. (Chat) A student wanted to point out that Edgar Allan Poe's name was misspelled in an ad on the library website.
3. (Chat) A student had a question about Chicago style citations for articles online.
4. (Chat) A student needed to find industry information on the magazine industry and the cosmetic/beauty product industry.
5. A student wanted to look at the new APA style guide.
6. A student was looking for primary sources and personal narratives of the Japanese during World War II.
7. (Chat) A student had a question about parenthetical citations in MLA style.
8. (Chat) A student had a question about accessing e-reserves.
9. The student from #6 returned and he decided to change his topic. He wasn't finding as many sources as he had hoped for. He is now looking for sources on the Normandy invasion.
10. A student needed to find issues of Poetry magazine from 1913-1923.
11. A NUR 210 student needed articles on Nurse practitioners and communication and Hispanics. CINAHL to the rescue.
12. (Chat) A student was looking for the EBSCO Newspaper Plus.
13. (Chat) A student looking for articles about the Crisis Assistance Ministry in Charlotte. And how to do an outline in APA.
14. (Chat) A student wanted to know how to get abstract w/o clicking on articles.
15. (Chat) A student looking for articles about the Crisis Assistance Ministry in Charlotte.

Most of these chats came at the same time and they all lasted for several minutes. Oh, what a night. :

Independent Study, 10/21/09

The authority control interviews continue. My observations a Jackson Library thus far are that some catalogers deal with authority control a lot more than others. For the most part though the concerns and issues are the same. The main concern is to make sure that every field is authorized and contains the correct forms of the titles, names, subject headings, etc.

Katherine Nunnally

Katherine Nunnally is the Serials Cataloging Team Assistant at Jackson Library. Her primary job is to handle serials, electronic journals and Journal Finder. She is also working on the government document project that several other catalogers are also working on. Every month Katherine gets the list of the journals that W.T. Cox has added to Journal Finder. The list is available in the administrators view of Journal Finder. After she has this list, she then checks the catalog to make sure that Jackson does not have these titles. For the titles that are not in the catalog, she creates records and links for them so that they can be searched for in the catalog. She uses copy cataloging for this. before adding the record she always checks it over to make sure that the subject headings used would benefit the students searching for it. Occasionally she has to translate the records from another language if she is dealing with a foreign journal. She simply uses Babelfish for this. Katherine deals more hands on with the only print journals. She is in charge of making sure their records are correct and that all the fields have been controlled. W.T. Cox handles all of the electronic journals. They are responsible for making sure that the links are active and that all of their fields are controlled.

When dealing with the government document cataloging project, Katherine has run into many of the same problems as the other catalogers have. The available records are very poorly cataloged. The government documents that they are cataloging are old, so there may have been department or name changes. Many of them have no subject headings whatsoever. These both present problems and make these records more difficult to catalog properly.

Edward Waters

Edward Waters is Serials Cataloging Assistant at Jackson Library. One of his responsibilities is to handle the transfer of serials from on department to another. For example from the reference department to the Stacks. He also takes care of the books being withdrawn from the collection. He also handles the serials that are cataloged as monographs. These titles have their own separate records for each book, instead of only one record for an entire set of books. These include titles such as the Dictionary of Literary Biography. The DLB titles are classed together meaning that the entire set is kept together. There are also serials that are classed separate, this means that for whatever reason, the library has chosen to separate this collection. An example of this is the Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications. These books will all appear in the Q's, but they will not be together. Authority control issues very rarely come up in the work that he typically does.

Edward, like many of the catalogers in Jackson library, is also working on the Government Document cataloging project. He says the same things that the other catalogers are saying about this project. The records are messy. There are very few DLC records available for these items, so the records have to be throughly checked to make sure that they are controlled. OCLC is used for confirmation. Oftentimes when working on the government documents he just has to work out what is right.

Reference Questions, 10/20/09

Get start to the shift, on the way over here I got cussed by a relative. Hopefully things will improve from here.

1. A student had a question about an online reference tutorial.
2. A student wanted to use the phone at the desk. When I told him that we are not allowed to let patrons use the phone, he grew irratated. I told him he could use the payphone in the lobby. He went to use the payphone, it took his money so he was then really upset. He demanded that we contact someone and get his 50 cents back. Lea then said he could use the phone. I took his contact information and Lea contacted the assistant dean of administrative services about the incident.
3. A student was having trouble opening a file he had on a flashdrive. He said he thought the file had been messed up some how so I sent him to the SuperLab.
4. A student wanted the library hours sheet.
5. A student needed books on the Greek symposium. A hard topic, I was able to find only two books and two articles, but he seemed satisfied with that.
6. An LIS student pointed out that one of our Express Machines was down. We restarted it, hope that fixes it.
7. A student needed to borrow a highlighter.
8. A nursing student needed help with searching databases and the catalog. Her topic was horizontal violence and nursing.
9. A student was looking for an NC doc. It was available online though, so I showed her how to access it.
10. A patron was looking for articles by Courtland Lee, who is a psychologist. He also needed a guest username and password.
11. A patron needed a guest username and password.
12. A student was looking for a Spanish/English dictionary she said was in the Reference Dept. However, after she took the book, she tried to check it out. Reference books cannot be checked out, so she needed to find one she could check out.
13. A student needed to borrow a pencil.
14. A student needed to borrow a pencil.

A slow shift. Things calmed down after that disgruntled student. I don't know why people feel they need to take their frustrations out on others. I'm just glad that kind of thing doesn't happen much.

Reference Questions, 10/18/09

A Sunday on the desk. Why am I so sleepy.

1. A student was looking for STD statistics by county. NC LINC is a great source for these type of questions.
2. (Chat) An LIS student wanted to kow which database they could use to find how many times an article had been cited by other articles. Social Science Citation Index of course.
3. (Chat) A student wante dot know how to look for popular novels in the collection.
4. (Chat) A student was having trouble with an EBSCO database.
5. (Chat) A student wanted to search magazine articles from the 1970s. This is a good source for that: https://library.uncg.edu/depts/ref/handouts/primary.asp#indexes
6. A student wanted to know how to cite a picture in MLA. I could not find anything on that.
7. A student wanted to know where the bathroom was located.
8. A student wanted to borrow a highlighter.
9. A student was looking for room 247B.
10. A student was looking for the elevators.
11. An LIS student was looking for an encyclopedia that dealt with multiculturalism. I suggested the Encylcopedia of Multicultural Education.
12. A student was looking for books on Ralph Ellison.
13. A student needed help with database searching. He was a grad student and his topic was obesity in African-American males in the Southern US. His class had a research guide so that made it easy.
14. A student was looking for the group study area. We have several. She was supposed to meet her group at the circulation desk, so I pointed her in that direction.
15. Two students were looking for the collaboratories.
16. A student wanted to know how late the library is open tonight. It's open all night.
17. A student had the call number for a book and wanted to know where she could find it. It is in the Basement. I believe that's where they put all the books they don't want checked out. :)
18. A student was looking for books on censorship and the theatre.
19. A student wanted to know where the TRC was located.
20. A fellow LIS 650 student had a few questions about becoming a GA.
21. A student had a question about using a business database. I'm afraid the information she wanted just wasn't available through the database she was trying to use. I suggested that she contact her professor.
22. A student needed books on neonatal nursing.

Lynda took chat after question 5, because she said she wanted me available to the people who would come by the desk. No complaints from me. I am no fan of chat reference. This shift felt extra long for some reason. I am so glad it's over.