This weeks’ lesson was another eye-opener for me (oh so much
to learn!) I had never really given too much thought about how a book is described so that it can be found. Usually Title and
Author are all I use to find a book, but the suggestion that a book could be
catalogued with a description of its colour surprised me. Although it makes
sense, as Keith commented, that sometimes students may inquire about a book and may only remember its colour! Throughout this lesson, I was introduced to
the many ways that books could be catalogued, and how they are catalogued for
the most efficient ACCESS. I learn well
by analogies, so I liked the analogy that Keith mentioned of organizing a
kitchen, and how if someone else did it for me, I wouldn’t be able to easily
find things. So it is with the library. There needs to be some standards in
place to provide quick, easy, accurate access to the information.
I was interested to read that there are now some new
standards for bibliographic description: “Resource Description and Access (RDA)
is a new standard for bibliographic description for libraries, archives,
museums and other information organizations. In 2011, RDA is being tested by
libraries.” (McPherson, Lesson 4) I wonder how this works? I imagine this will be covered in later lessons.
There were many new terms introduced this week, and some
terms expanded on my previous knowledge. A new term for me was: 'collocating' which
is “often attributed to catalogue functions. To ‘collocate’ provides for
linkages between items. Subjects relating to other subjects, books by the same
author, etc. (McPerson, Lesson 4). I appreciated the analogy from Keith where
he describes Amazon.com’s: "customers who bought this, also
bought..." as a good example of the technique of collocating.
With all these new terms, standards, and definitions, I look
forward to our further exploration of Cataloguing!
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