The Nitty Gritty

After a half week of work for my other course (Instructional Resource Selection), it was back to the cataloging book. I plunged right into a very long chapter--six--that went into each tag in depth. Once again, it's telling how many pages of notes I took... 11 (*Lowers head in shame.* I learn that way! I swear!) Again, I got bogged down by the sheer amount of detail and the rules about the tags, including punctuation, spacing, and codes. (I got a lot of exercises wrong again...) I'm very glad to have this book to keep for future reference, though.

So much information gets cataloged for each item! And most of the information is useful. Editions, publications, series, award winners, etc. all seem like they could be helpful, especially if it helps trace a material. On the teaching side, summaries, reading level, and interest level are great, although it's important to realize they are just guidelines. Subtitles and alternate names are so useful. Can you imagine if we only had Theodore Geisel in the catalog for some kid who was searching for Dr. Seuss? Sometimes the information seems unnecessary, like the dimensions of certain materials. I guess that information could be necessary if you're checking to see if you have the correct item during inventory? It seems extraneous to me when there's so much else to do.

The topic of cataloging equipment was new to me. The school library where I subbed didn't catalog equipment. I'm picturing barcodes on the laminator and the iPads... but that's a discussion to have with your school/district's tech staff, too.