"Cookery" Gets a Makeover

Great news on the LCSH front All of the "Cookery" headings have been changed to the much less baffling, "Cooking". So exciting!

Now, this affects roughly a squillion headings in our catalog, so it's taking me a little longer than I'd anticipated to change them all. You'll see these changes kind of rolling out over the next couple of hours. I'm plugging away though and hope to be finished by mid-day. If you see any "Cookery" headings in the catalog after today, let me know. I probably missed them.

LCSH "Literature, Comparative" Becomes "Comparative Literature"

The title says is all, really.

The Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH)

Literature, Comparative

has been changed to

Comparative literature

I've updated our catalog accordingly.

Not an earth-shattering change, but it affected an awful lot of bib records, so I thought I'd better give you all a heads-up.

New LCSH of Interest

Lots of interesting subject heading changes coming down the pipe, but I wanted to call your attention to this one as I figured it might be heavily used.

War on Terrorism, 2001- is now War on Terrorism, 2001-2009. The scope note for the authority record gives a pretty good explanation.

Here are entered works on the events, metaphorically referred to as a "war," consisting of military operations, diplomatic activities, and other counterterrorist measures undertaken by the United States during the period from September 11, 2001 to the end of the administration of George W. Bush.

If you're looking for governmental antiterrorist measures before or after the Bush administration, see Terrorism--Prevention.

Library of Congress Subject Heading Change

Thought that you all might be interested in a recent LCSH change that I came across while doing authority control. Alien labor has become the far nicer-sounding Foreign workers. You could subdivide the earlier heading geographically, and that hasn't changed, so you'll see headings like, Foreign workers, Guatemalan -- Nebraska, and so on.

Just let me know if you have any questions.

LCSH Changes: War and the Environment, How Cheery

Though it's pretty depressing to work on these heading changes, I am still pleased to announce that the LCSH "Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975" has been changed to "Vietnam War, 1961-1975". I imagine that heading stumped many of our younger patrons. It was still going on when I was born and I don't even call it the "Vietnamese Conflict."

I've completed all of the associated changes in GGC's database. GPC has a lot more instances of this heading, many of which I have to change by hand, so you may still see the old heading here and there for a couple of days. I'm plugging away at it though. If I haven't caught everything by the end of next week, you can assume I've missed it and drop me a note.

Another sensible change that I thought you might like to hear about, "Biological diversity" has become the more recognizable "Biodiversity." I have managed to change all of these in both catalogs, GPC and GGC.

The End of the Library World As We Know It

Well, no, hopefully not. But, the report "The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools," has put many in the cataloging community all a flutter. Commissioned by LC and written by Associate University Librarian Karen Calhoun of Cornell University, the report (which, I shamefully haven't had time to read yet) advocates cost-cutting and Googlization of library catalogs. Apparently, ditching LCSH is one of those cost-cutting suggestions. Thomas Mann, current LC reference librarian, former private detective, and all-around nerd heartthrob, argues in his critical review of the Calhoun report that ditching LCSH would seriously impact scholarly research. As writing about research is one of the things Mann does best, I tend to perk up my ears when he speaks.

According to the Calhoun report, library operations that are not digital, that do not result in resources that are remotely accessible, that involve professional human judgment or expertise, or that require conceptual categorization and standardization rather than relevance ranking of keywords, do not fit into its proposed "leadership" strategy. This strategy itself, however, is based on an inappropriate business model – and a misrepresentation of that business model to begin with. The Calhoun report draws unjustified conclusions about the digital age, inflates wishful thinking, fails to make critical distinctions, and disregards (as well as mischaracterizes) an alternative "niche" strategy for research libraries, to promote scholarship (rather than increase "market position"). Its recommendations to eliminate Library of Congress Subject Headings, and to use "fast turnaround" time as the "gold standard" in cataloging, are particularly unjustified, and would have serious negative consequences for the capacity of research libraries to promote scholarly research.

Ba-pow!! What did I tell you? Thomas Mann, nerd heartthrob. I want to put a picture of him in my locker.

Now, I realize that I could be accused of a certain amount of self-interest here, but I assure you that isn't the case when I say that I'm standing by my Mann (har har). I can only imagine how cash-strapped LC is finding itself these days, so I certainly understand the temptation to cut corners, but LCSH is just not where to do it. Throw as many Google features as you like into the catalog, I'll be the first one to welcome it, but keyword searching just doesn't replace a standardized vocabulary developed over more than a century.

I know, I know. We’ve all heard the mantra at every conference for the last couple of years. "These wacky kids today don't care about good information. They'll settle for good enough information." But the bigger picture is that there are plenty of people using the catalog who don't want to settle, and they shouldn't have to. The catalog should be able to accommodate all of these searching styles, and, most importantly, it should nurture truly scholarly research, without which we, as a nation, are in really really big trouble.

Will all this bibliographic gloom and doom come to pass? Who knows. I’m hearing quite a few rumors about scary things going down at LC. Some of the rumors are just silly, some are shaping up to be true. I am reminded of a professor in library school, who was fond of pointing out that societies crumble and fall when their ability to produce information far outstrips their ability to access it. In these days of "dumbing down the catalog", drastic funding cuts to education and scholarship, and secrecy trumping open access in our archives and libraries, that little teaching point takes on a disturbing immediacy, doesn't it?

But, don’t worry. I’ll keep enriching subject access until they pry the red books out of my cold dead fingers. (Well, ironically enough, I mostly use the online version now, but that’s not the point.)

LCSH Changes: A Quickie, but a Goodie

I'm guessing that this is probably an oft-consulted subject heading, so you all will be pleased to know that the slightly awkward LCSH "Student loan funds" had become the tidy and trim "Student loans."

Let the dancing in the street begin.

LCSH Changes: Lighting Strikes Twice

I'm giddy with happiness. Somebody pinch me.

At the request of an AUTOCAT subscriber (go AUTOCAT!), the authority record for the PATRIOT Act (i.e. the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001) now has an eminently sensible cross-reference from " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Everyone squeal with me. “Yipeee!”

I just overlaid the new authority record in GPC and GGC and you've got to see it in action. Go to the OPAC and do an exact subject search for "patriot act". Now click on the grey "See Also" oval next to " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Now click on that crazy long PATRIOT Act heading and voila, our books on the PATRIOT Act!

Of course, none of the cross-references were capitalized (“PATRIOT” is an acronym), but that’s a pretty common mistake with this act, and we can’t have everything. I couldn’t find a rule expressly forbidding capitalization in this instance, so I just went ahead and did it myself. Future updates through MARCIVE may overlay my changes and revert to the lack of capitalization, but the lovely lovely cross-reference will remain.

I also skimmed the database to make sure that this subject heading is applied to everything that it could be. I’m not usually a big advocate of the keyword search, but this is actually a very good candidate for it. A keyword search for “PATRIOT Act” as a phrase will pull up a several titles that have an essay or two on the act, but not enough information to merit the subject heading itself.

Ahhh, I love it when an authority record comes together.

LCSH Changes: Ooo! These Are Good!

I'm very excited about this change from LCSH Weekly List #29 and mortified that I didn't catch it sooner.

The rather un-user-friendly headings of Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test have been cancelled in favor of the much more logical SAT (Educational test).

It appears that the PSAT has followed suite, with PSAT (Educational test) replacing Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test and Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test.

I hope that you are all as thrilled as I am about a heading change that is much more useful than making Treasure-trove plural. I've just finished correcting all of the headings in our catalog, but a lot of it had to be done by hand, so let me know if you see something wonky.