Hello,
This week I want to discuss an option in cataloguing. Sometimes we buy a set or series of books and when we begin to catalog them, we notice that there are multiple authors. Some of the sets that immediately come to mind are the Dear America diary books, the American Girl sets, and the Adventist Girl sets. Each of the American Girl and the Adventist Girl sets have one author, but if we catalogued them by author, they would not be near each other on the shelf. In the Adventist Girl books, the ones by Sandy Zaugg would be at the end of the 813s while the ones by Jean Boonstra would be near the beginning of the 813s.
Most of the students that look for these books may not find the other sets quickly or easily. It really makes more sense to shelve them all together. Since they all have different authors, we decided to put them all together and instead of using the author’s name, we used ‘American Girl’ as the author. For the Adventist Girl books, you can use ‘Adventist Girl’ as the author.
Sometimes we have bought books that started out with one author or editor such as the Guide’s Greatest stories. Each story in the book has a different author, so we used the editor’s name as the author. At the beginning, Lori Peckham was the editor, so they started out with using ‘Lori Peckham’ as the author. However, as they progressed, the editor changed a couple of times. Since we wanted them all to stay together on the shelf, we continued using ‘Peckham’ instead of the new editor.
I have bought science books that have been printed and bound so they are sets, but the subjects may not be similar. A recent set that I bought was titled Great Achievements in Engineering. Individual titles included Mechanical Engineering by Christ Eboch, Biological Engineering by Melissa Abramaovitz, Environmental Engineering by Carol Hand, Aerospace Engineering by Angie Smibert, Civil Engineering by L. E. Carmichael, and Electrical Engineering by Jennifer Swanson. Each of these books has a particular area of engineering and according to Dewey, they would be individually located throughout the 600s. My options were to either put them in the proper place along with other books that had a similar subject. I could put the Aerospace book with the other aerospace books and so forth. Or I could keep them all together on the shelf together and use a generic engineering Dewey number for them all.
I decided to put the engineering books in the proper places with different Dewey numbers. They are all in the 600s so they aren’t too far from each other even though they aren’t shelved together on the shelf as a set. Someone else might want to keep them together and that is fine, also.
How do I decide which option to do for this? I think of how the books might be used by our students. Will they want to read these as a set? Can each book stand individually? How thick or thin are the books? Thin books can get lost between thicker books, so a thin set might be better shelved together in order to be noticed. I have a set of about 18 thin books on spies and spying, that work nicely all shelved together. Students find them easily and they are used often.
With the engineering books, I decided that the students would more likely choose them because of the subject matter and would find them individually because they are looking for the particular subject rather than a set of engineering books.
My main point is to help you make your library useful to your patrons. Make it easy for them to find the books they need.
I hope you have a great week.
Audrey
Currently Reading
Secret Lives of the First Ladies (audio book) by Cormac O’Brien
The Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse (I’m 30 % through on my Kindle)
Mary Arden by Grace Livingston Hill
The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart (previewing for the library)
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