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Cataloging

Registration is Open for NYTSL’s Spring Program

April 23, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

And this one is going to be fascinating, so if you’re interested, go to the NYTSL website and register now!

 

Disaster Recovery for the Digital Library

Presented by the New York Technical Services LibrariansOur presenters will present two real-world library disaster recoveries in New York City and how to better prepare for the future.

Date:
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
5:00 – 7:30 PM
Refreshments: 5 – 6 PM
Program 6 – 7:30 PM

Location:
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium
476 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street)
New York, NY 10018$15 for current members
$30 for event + new or renewed membership
$20 for event + new or renewed student membership
$40 for non-members

Register online at http://nytsl.org/nytsl/disaster-recovery-for-the-digital-library-spring-program/

Speakers:

Frank Monaco

Frank J. Monaco and Associates LLC
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, nearby Pace University faced emergency conditions in implementing a less than perfect IT Disaster Recovery plan.  This presentation will first review, from the point of view of the then current Chief Information Officer, what his organization (and the entire University) faced and how he and his team dealt with the situation.  After this brief review, a discussion of what digital disaster recovery technologies have emerged since that fateful day, and how Universities, to include their libraries, can take better advantage of these DR developments.
Neil H. Rambo
Director, NYU Health Sciences Libraries and Knowledge Informatics
When Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, it produced an unprecedented storm surge along portions of the East River. The facilities and infrastructure of the NYU Langone Medical Center were overwhelmed by the violent flood. The NYU Health Sciences Library facility was destroyed. But library services and support across the Medical Center were only briefly disrupted. This review will focus on the recovery efforts made in the aftermath of the destruction, from immediate-term to the present. The focus of those efforts were and are on strengthening the digital library, increasing the presence of librarians with user groups, and redefining the nature and role of the library across the Medical Center. In parallel with these efforts and informed by them, the library facility has been reconceived and is now under construction, to be opened in late 2015.

Filed Under: Books, Cataloging, Library Resources, Meetings, Nerd Alert Tagged With: cataloging, disaster recovery, NYTSL

Sexual Abstinence and MeSH

December 6, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

There does not appear to be a MeSH heading for "Abstinence Education."  I’m not sure how I feel about this, seeing as how I seriously disagree with the need to catalog anything with that subject heading. But on the other hand, I do have to catalog something like that, so I’m conflicted.

This is a GAO booklet, with the main entry of 245 0 0 $a Abstinence education: $b efforts to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of federally funded programs.  It’s a government sanctioned document–and it’s public knowledge that this administration is all for abstinence education in public schools–so why not add a MeSH term for it?  Hmmm.  Maybe the NLM didn’t get the memo.

At any rate, the search term "abstinence" gave me things like "Natural Family Planning Methods–>Periodic Abstinence" and "Sexual Abstinence–>Postpartum Abstinence", but that’s about it.  Not a lot to work with there.  At the other end of the spectrum, the search term "sex" produced about a million responses, roughly half of which are biomedical terms for genes and proteins.  So I guess I’m combining "Natural Family Planning Methods" with "Sex Education" and hoping for the best.  The things we catalogers go through for the geeral public . . . my stars.

Filed Under: Cataloging

Cataloging 9/11

September 25, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

It’s been a busy week (last week, I mean). Article Linker works for the databases we’ve linked to it (so far, Ebsco, Ovid, Gale), and we’re jumping through all kinds of hoops working on linking it to PubMed. You have a choice–use a script to build a prepopulated ILL form on your server and access it as an Outside Tool, or use LinkOut–which would work (if we went that route), but would require us jumping through a rather different set of hoops. In either case, it’s time-consuming, and energy sapping. And we’re putting the next edition of the Grey Lit Report together next week, so we’ve a stack of pamphlets that nee to be cataloged as quickly as we can arrange–and when you’re busy catalogging, there’s a lot of energy that you don’t have to spend on other projects. Such as linking Article Linker to PubMed.

A cataloging note from this morning caught my attention: not only did NLM need four years (years!) to add "September 11 Terrorist Attacks" as a MeSH entry term, but "Adverse Effects" is not included among the qualifiers they list for use. You can choose "Classification", "Economics", "Ethnology", "Ethics", "History", "Legislation & Jurisprudence", "Prevention & Control", "Psychology", "Statistics & Numerical Data" or "Trends", but there’s no qualifier that deals specifically with the health problems that the attack generated. And I’ll tell you right now, we’ve cataloged several hundred items on that subject alone in the past four years. It makes no sense to me that "Adverse Effects" doesn’t fall under the same rubric as "Psychology" or any of the other choices. Was it an oversight? Did they  consider it and deliberately discard it? If so, then why?

Filed Under: Cataloging

Cataloging Katrina 1 Year Later

August 30, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

As you know if you’ve been listening to the radio or watching the tube or glancing at the newspapers this morning, it’s been one year (as of yesterday) since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed life, limb, and property on the Gulf Coast. Mayne people are doing many things to remember this tragedy–I for one, can think of no better way to remember it than to take a look at what the government has learned from it (or not), and then catalog it.

So here we go (the full MARC record is behind the edit.)

What did the government learn? That they need a better system of evacuating nursing homes and planning for such emergencies in the future. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll notice that I avoided a 505 field on this one–the tables of contents was there but was so brief I didn’t see the point. You’ll also notice I limited myself to only two 650 fields here, mostly because there wasn’t much to add in the way of MeSH tracings.

I could say more on this but I think the point has been made. BTW, if anyone wants me to link to similar (hopefully better) resources on the subject, send them along.

[Read more…] about Cataloging Katrina 1 Year Later

Filed Under: Cataloging

Russ Feingold in MARC

February 16, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

This might not be perfect, since it’s been some time since I did any original cataloging for web pages, but here it is (apologies in advance for the MESH).  Suggestions are welcome. One hopes you click on the link below to read the actual statement, too.

100 1     Feingold, Russell D.
245 10  $a I strongly oppose Patriot Act deal : $b statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold as prepared for delivery from the Senate floor, February 15, 2006 : [$h electronic file]/ $c  Russ Feingold.
260 00 $a [Encinitas , CA]: $b Truthout.org, $c [2006]
300        $a World Wide Web Page [1].
500        $a Wednesday, February 15, 2006.

530        $a Available via the World Wide Web.
538        $a System requirements: Internet Explorer or other web browser.
650 12  $a Federal Government $z United States.
650 12  $a Terrorism $x prevention & control $z United States.
650 12  $a Terrorism $x legislation & jurisprudence $z United States.
856 41  $u http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021506R.shtml

[Read more…] about Russ Feingold in MARC

Filed Under: Cataloging

Cataloging Manga & Anime

January 12, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

The December 2005 issue of TechKNOW (care of Kent State U.’s TSLibrarians listserv)  is out. (It’s actually been out for a while, but the hyperlink I had only started working a short while ago–it’s fixed.)  This quarter Jeanne Poole covers cataloging cleverly selected bits and pieces of the wacky (and not entirely consistent) world of Japanese anime and manga. We get a brief history of the art form and a bunch of well-formed MARC records to boot.  Good stuff, folks.

(Why can’t I write articles like this?  I own manga and anime; I’m friends with the Editor in Chief of Media Blasters, for corn’s sake.  Grrr…)

Filed Under: Cataloging

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