1/12/12 Examined 18th century duplicates with Melissa as she talked me through her selection decisions. It is essential to first determine the match between the library copy, as well as the catalog record, and the item in question. The primary selection criterion is the condition of the item. Melissa rejects duplicates that are deteriorated beyond reasonable repair; in one case however she swapped and withdrew the library copy because it was more worn than the donated copy. I worked to modify and update the following records accordingly: Currie, W. (1798). Memoirs of the yellow fever: which prevailed in Philadelphia, and other parts of the United States of America, in the summer and autumn of the present year, 1798 ... To which is added, a collection of facts respecting the origin of the fever. Philadelphia: Printed by J. Bioren, for T. Dobson. The following are two different editions of the same work, three decades apart, from London and Philadelphia: Underwood, M. (1811). A treatise on the diseases of children: with directions for the management of infants from the birth. 6th ed., rev. and enl. London: Printed for J. Callow. This is a three-volume set. Underwood, M., Bell, J. (1842). A treatise on the diseases of children: with directions for the management of infants. From the 9th English ed. Philadelphia: Barrington & Haswell in a single volume. The library had an incomplete set of this next two-volume work, but the J. R. Paul copy had both parts. We decided that instead of filling in our missing vol. 2, we would add the full set because of the matching Pennsylvania Hospital Library bookplates: Webster, N. (1800). A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases: with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, ... By Noah Webster, ... London: printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, by G. Woodfall.
12/13 Troubleshooting and problem-solving continued: I got reasonably well situated on the PC, and got the Voyager Cat preferences set correctly with the guidance of Melissa VT. Tag tables and record formats specified, my bibs are now save-able, but the macros are still off and I was still saving to pdf and printing off the laptop which was networked to the office printer, unlike my workstation. Flo is sending emails about the issue to IT people. Tom was passing through when I was trying to remember how to do authority checking so he helped me out there. (Everyone here has been such a pleasure to work with!) It also turns out I am doing full level cataloging... the records I looked at were ‘materials not examined’ so hopefully my neophite efforts are actually contributing to the quality of these bibliographic records. Big-picture take-away: MARC records are nice, but ultimately what matters is how it looks in the OPAC. I learned this after I added second copies of selected duplicates from the J. R. Paul boxes, with item records and 590 (local notes) with descriptions such as provenance, ex libris, stamps, inscriptions (in fancy 19th Cent. cursive handwriting with dip pens... a challenge to read!) At the end of the day, I still had to look up all my records in Orbis, see how they read, marvel at the inconsistencies and typos that slipped in despite my best efforts; go back to Voyager and re-edit, re-save, re-print (on the laptop nextdoor) the actual Orbis view. I got to work with the 'Dead docs book' searching for physicians whose names where inscribed in, or printed on Ex Libris plates, in the books. I find I do not have the vocabulary for this seemingly simple task. 'Book trader's tag' does sound much better than my 'dealer's sticker'. Now is the time to learn more about rare books, and Melissa G. equipped me with just the resource I need available as free pdf here: ABC for Book Collectors / John Carter, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1995I also saw Melissa G. help a student researcher from Barnard with her honors project on the history of the hospitalization of childbirth. They met by appointment in the reference study room, where Melissa had gathered materials for the student. She provided ID and filled out a form, then proceeded to photograph the selected obstetrical instruments, plus my favorite, a small ivory anatomical mannequin of a woman and her fetus. You could lift the abdominal wall and remove the child, which was attached by a thin twine to -of all places- a nail inserted somewhere in her chest. Obviously not intended as an umbilical cord, rather to keep the bean-sized ivory fetus from getting lost... there was something sad but precious about the babe on a string, its mother serenely lying there nailed to the wooden base, with eyes closed... P.S. I still like Melissa and she still says things like “and that’s a cranioclast, another instrument of destruction” and lucky for me, I do appreciate the humor!
I started by looking through Orbis records w/ Melissa G. She pointed out that more consistency was needed across 590 notes, and suggested that I create a text document for wording of notes that are likely to be repeated. Other chores would be to clean up punctuation in 260 fields, add $c in the 300. More notes to add about book traders catalogs.My text document turned into a field-by-field checklist that I used to comb through all the records. Here it is:
100 -- check auth file
260 -- fix punctuation
300 -- provide $c
590 -- standard wording:
590 ‡a Provenance - Copy [n] from the library of John Rodman Paul.
590 ‡a Publisher's advertising and catalog [2], 8p. at end of text.
650 -- Cut fields with MESH (indicator 2) if it is identical to LCSH
650 -- If no subject headings, check OCLC; cut and paste appropriate SHs
ITEM RECORDS, ITEMS IN HAND
type noncirc
C. 1, C. 2 etc. on call no/barcode card
Time does fly when you're having fun with figuring out which fevers Elisha Bartlett described in his famous treatise, so as to check which OCLC record has the most accurate set of narrower subject terms; or better yet trying to do the same for Spinale Kinderlahmung in German: was it primarily on poliomyelitis or is paralysis the sufficiently general term? No one told me I would end up enthusiastically poring through 19th century german medical texts, but that's what I found myself doing, and enjoying it thoroughly!
12/08
Continuing with the J. R. Paul boxes, I filled out old fashioned carbon copy call slips for the med hist duplicates, and Flo let me into the locked stacks to pull them (I do not and probably will not have ID access). 18th century and earlier have no call numbers and are shelved in a separate, locked aread than19th, to which I also have no access. Today I searched all the 19th Cent. dupes and found all but four on the shelves. The four NOS were most likely being digitized for Internet Archive: roughly 3000 items (according to Flo) are currently away for that project, and most of them were not pulled with the placeholder method (says Tom who was shelving and shifting in 19th Cent.)
Next, I paired up our copies with the J.R. Paul duplicates and Melissa inspected them to decide which ones to add, and which ones to swap out with our copy. They would also get a 590 field for provenance and other descriptive notes; I looked up field 590 in OCLC, but wording the notes will still be a challenge.
I offered to add item records to every book, including the ones already in our collection since almost none of those had barcodes either. George was kind enough to supply me with barcodes which are not to be stuck into rare books, I was told, instead they go on a card bearing the call number which then gets inserted into the book.
I set up (despite a less than cooperative computer) in Voyager Cat. After much wrangling (setting preferences, trying to connect a printer, linking item records of copies 1 and 2, googling for some old hospital in illegible town in Rhode Island I finally had my record; and Voyager returned it with a nonsensical error list (e.g. $a missing in fields where it was clearly NOT missing?) saved it to pdf to show Melissa next time...P.S. I like Melissa because she says things like “...and it’s on the 1872 Cholera Epidemic... that was a fun epidemic.”
Find of the week? month? 1662 copy of John Graunt’s Bills of Mortality. Melissa VT showed me how to transfer EPH items to MED. Item records change perm location to med or medhs; type: circ. Then set MFHD $b and add $x Transferred from eph; med/jb767 12/2011. Last, erase and correct pencilled-in call number and insert note ‘relabel’. To be given to students to prep. Met briefly with Melissa Grafe about plans. Will have a finding aid project for the next month or so, then early spring help with the Shakespeare exhibit - I'll be setting up the digital version of the exhibit using Omeka! She also encouraged me to apply to jobs I see opening up this spring. From the locked collection, we picked a pamphlet box labelled ‘insanity’ and also stumbled upon two unaccessioned EPH boxes donated from former Yale Medical School professor Dr. J.R. Paul’s private collection. The contents were mostly 18th-20th cent. books, except for one vinyl record and two reels of magnetic tape containing lecture recordings, plus a 17th century find of the day (Week? Month?). I started with searching the J.R. Paul donations in Orbis to identify duplicates. Items receive a note for either ‘Not in Orbis’ or ‘Duplicate (with Orbis call number)’ Having found items not in Yale collections, this project quickly evolved into my also searching OCLC for records ; Melissa G walked me through picking the best available record and Melissa VT showed me how to copycat from OCLC Connexion to Orbis db.: Launch OCLC Connexion, F2 to log in; pull up record - F5 to Export-C. Switch to Voyager Cat; record>import>from new file>find OCLCimport folder. Save to db (click NO on pop-up). Another one Yale needed was Report on the influenza epidemic of 1889-90 I was introduced to George (LSA) and Tom (rare cataloger) and Flo told me which Thai food cart is the best.
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