Ted Gemberling wrote about the difficulty of finding the 2001 movie The
shaft in IMDb.
I had a similar problem when I went to IMDb looking for the entry on the
tv show The office. If you type in "the office" the US version is
listed as the first choice and the UK version the second. However, if
you simply type in "office" (as library folk tend to do), nothing comes
up except a keyword match and a movie match for something in 2005.
Their catalog, for whatever reason, does not ignore "the" in a title (at
least, not if it appears at the beginning of the title, I don't know
about an embedded "the").
BTW, I went to IMDb and typed in "the shaft" and was directed to the
"down" title, although it does have a brief message after the title
"Down" which reads: aka "The Shaft" - USA (video title).
(and just for fun, I went to netflix and typed in just "shaft" and The
shaft (2001) comes up fourth after three Shaft crime drama films. They
seem to have a better system, although I couldn't tell you why that's
so)
Sandy Orr
Non-Print Cataloger
Paul Meek Library
University of Tennessee at Martin
(731) 881-7072
sorr_at_utm.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 1:26 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Next Gen Catalog and FRBR
I love IMDb and use it all the time. But as a catalog, it's not perfect
by a long shot. For example, if you look for the 2001 film The shaft (a
horror movie about elevators), it's very difficult to find. There is of
course the 1971 crime film Shaft and a remake of it in 2000. They have
distinguished those two versions by putting dates after Shaft in
parentheses, but evidently, they couldn't figure out what to do with the
2001 film, other than give it its "alternative title," Down. I don't
remember ever seeing Down anywhere on the DVD case for that film. So as
sophisticated and helpful a tool as IMDb is, its controlled vocabulary
is rather rudimentary.
I'll admit I'm not a media cataloger, so I'm not sure what a librarian
would do with the 2001 Shaft, either. But I assume there is AACR2 rule
or Rule Interpretation that would distinguish it from those others
without having to resort to such a mysterious title.
--Ted Gemberling
Received on Mon May 14 2007 - 15:00:26 EDT