A common ground: Communication and alliance between cataloger and curator for improved access to rare books and special collections

College and Research Libraries

Volumn 61, Issue 6, 2000, Pages 525-534

  Bradshaw, Elaine Beckley ^a   Wagner, Stephen C ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0034338239     PISSN: 00100870     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5860/crl.61.6.525     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. For example, Cathy Henderson, "Curator or Conservator: Who Decides on What Treatment?" in Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 2 (fall 1987): 103-7 or Roberta Pilatte and Carolyn Harris, "It Takes Two to Tango: A Conservator's View of Curator/Conservator Relations," in Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 4 (fall 1989): 103-11.
2. For example, Cathy Henderson, "Curator or Conservator: Who Decides on What Treatment?" in Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 2 (fall 1987): 103-7 or Roberta Pilatte and Carolyn Harris, "It Takes Two to Tango: A Conservator's View of Curator/Conservator Relations," in Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 4 (fall 1989): 103-11.
3. That such a need exists is recognized by the addition of the course "Rare Book Cataloging for Curators" in the summer 1998 offerings at Rare Book School, University of Virginia.
4. For example, one recent project in the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, was to catalog a large (c. 20,000-item) slide collection onto a Microsoft Access database. The original database structure, developed by historians without collaboration with librarians, would at best have been a stand-alone, in-house system. The collaboration of a rare book librarian, a cataloger, and a library systems person resulted in a revamped database whose structure would readily map into a MARC format and whose entries into data fields would use the appropriate controlled vocabularies (e.g., LCSH). The database now can be converted into a MARC database compatible with the local OPAC, a feature that eventually will make the database much more accessible and more easily searched.
5. Suzy Taraba, "Administering the Cataloging of Special Collections Materials," in Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 7 (1992): 87-90.
6. For an alternate vision, see Peter S. Graham, "New Roles for Special Collections on the Network," in College & Research Libraries 59 (Mar. 1998): 232-39.
7. Nicholson Baker, "Discards," New Yorker, 4 Apr. 1994, 64-86. See also Henry L. Snyder, "Providing Access to Rare Book and Manuscripts Collections and Services in a Time of Change: The Electronic Revolution," in IFLA Journal 22 (May 1996): 115-20.
8. Nicholson Baker, "Discards," New Yorker, 4 Apr. 1994, 64-86. See also Henry L. Snyder, "Providing Access to Rare Book and Manuscripts Collections and Services in a Time of Change: The Electronic Revolution," in IFLA Journal 22 (May 1996): 115-20.
9. Jeff Rothenberg, "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents," in Scientific American 272 (Jan. 1995): 42-47.
10. Examples include the Tobacco Control Archives, University of California at San Francisco (http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/); the Human Radiation Experiments site, U.S. Department of Energy (http://tis-nt.eh.doe.gov/ ohre/); the Digital Scriptorium, Duke University (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/); and the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/).
11. Examples include the Tobacco Control Archives, University of California at San Francisco (http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/); the Human Radiation Experiments site, U.S. Department of Energy (http://tis-nt.eh.doe.gov/ ohre/); the Digital Scriptorium, Duke University (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/); and the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/).
12. Examples include the Tobacco Control Archives, University of California at San Francisco (http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/); the Human Radiation Experiments site, U.S. Department of Energy (http://tis-nt.eh.doe.gov/ ohre/); the Digital Scriptorium, Duke University (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/); and the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/).
13. Examples include the Tobacco Control Archives, University of California at San Francisco (http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/); the Human Radiation Experiments site, U.S. Department of Energy (http://tis-nt.eh.doe.gov/ ohre/); the Digital Scriptorium, Duke University (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/); and the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/).
14. Some libraries have indeed shifted most of the resources for their electronic libraries from their cataloging departments.
15. The authors currently are examining ways that digitized images can enhance work done in rare book cataloging and descriptive bibliography. A parallel project of a professor of the history of science is to scan and convert text from historical sources.
16. John B. Thomas III, "The Necessity of Standards on an Automated Environment," in Library Trends 36 (summer 1987): 125-39.
17. Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991).
18. It is useful for some machine-press books to include signatures, which can help identify different printings. For multivolume sets, notes can describe pagination of individual volumes, plates, dates of publications, and variant publishers. This is especially important for made-up sets.
19. Laura Stalker and Jackie M. Dooley, "Descriptive Cataloging and Rare Books," in Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 7 (1992): 7-23.
20. An example of this is the Core Standard for Rare Books (DCRB Core) (http:// lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pec/dcrbcore.html).
21. DCRB, 54-65, note 12.
22. The authors have in mind topics covered by the RBMS thesauri for binding, genre, paper, printing and publishing, provenance, and type.
23. For a fuller and more technical discussion of these points, see Henry Raine and Laura Striker, "Rare Book Records in Online Systems," in Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 11 (1996): 103-18. See also the Guide to Rare Book Records in Online Systems (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~catalog/people/ rlm/bsc/guide.htm).
24. For a fuller and more technical discussion of these points, see Henry Raine and Laura Striker, "Rare Book Records in Online Systems," in Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship 11 (1996): 103-18. See also the Guide to Rare Book Records in Online Systems (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~catalog/people/ rlm/bsc/guide.htm).