I'm going through the books in the the stacks right now and checking the physical volumes against the catalog record. This project is tedious and dull, and not terribly efficient, but, I've come to realize, is also quite neccessary for a number of reasons.
The most obvious being that I've discovered a number of missing books this way. I have yet to find any of the missing books, but the fact that I know they're missing, and am able to put together a proper report, is very useful.
I've also come across a number of books that are on the shelf, and seem to be processed, but don't show up in the catalog. I can now go through and add them to the catalog, or in some cases, find the record and fix the mistake that's keeping it from showing up when someone searches for the book.
This search has also turned up innumerable records that need tweaking: an author is listed as an editor in the catalog, or vice versa ; a word in the title is spelled wrong ; a date is listed incorrectly. In general, I'm finding a lot of little nit-picky details that need to be updated. Which is good, if annoying.
But the big reason that this project, boring and ridiculously huge as it is, may turn out to be useful, is the subsequent discovery of all the upside-down book covers. Seriouly, it seems like nearly a third of all the books I look at have their covers on upside down. On some, this isn't obvious until I open the book. On others, it's immediately obvious that the call number label was placed on the wrong end of the spine. I guess it's not a huge deal that the covers are upside-down, but it's one of those little things that drives me crazy, and keeps the library from looking professional and well run. Not to mention, there's a certain creep-factor in rows of books with upside-down covers.
For the most part this problem is easily fixed. I roll my eyes, gently lift the tape that holds the cover down, flip things around, and we're all set. But on some, I have to pull out the exacto knife.
Should I worry about the amount of fun I have wielding this tool?
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Hmm, I think I'm glad I work in a library where I don't have to do every single thing. Then again, you're learning about all sorts of fun things, like exacto knives. ;)
ReplyDeleteI have been doing a similar project in the conservation lab at Spertus. There are books that are not in the catalog, books that are not checked out to mending but should be, books that are checked out to the bindery but are in mending. Lots of little things to fix, doesn't help that half the titles are in Hebrew.
ReplyDeleteLuckily the only non-English books I've come across are in French and German, and those are even pretty rare. I'm not sure what I would do if I couldn't even read the alphabet I was trying to catalog!
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