Re: Elitism - and Aristotle again! - in libraries (was "Elitism in libraries")

Ted,

Thanks again.  I hope we aren't just talking to ourselves, but that
others find this interesting as well.  :)

I agree with everything you wrote here, and would like to think most
catalogers would as well.  I don't stick to the "three headings" idea.
I'd say I average four or five these days.

Also, I identify with a lot that philosophical realists say, and think
it's a great exercise to read and consider their arguments.  I am not
sure I would want to totally claim that label too however, as again,
there is much to be gained - bits of truth here and there - from
listening carefully to various points of view.

Regards,
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC)
11200 93rd Ave. North
Maple Grove, MN. 55369
Work phone: 763-391-7183


-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 9:34 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Elitism - and Aristotle again! - in libraries
(was "Elitism in libraries")

Nathan,
I think you put the issues real well. Here's a couple of examples of
where I think inconsistency is okay. Or generally assigning headings
that are not entirely according to rules.

I work in a medical library, and a couple of days ago I cataloged a book
on a physician in the 17th century, "Serjeant [sic] Surgeon John
Knight." Naturally, the basic headings for the book are for John Knight
(600) and the MeSH headings (650's) "Military
Medicine--history--England" and "Surgery--England--Biography." However,
there's also a chapter on something that I found quite historically
interesting, King's Evil. It was a kind of tuberculosis that
traditionally was thought to be healed by the touch of a king. Knight
was close to the king, so he was involved in setting up the "touch"
appointments.

Now, when I first started out as a cataloger, I remember being told that
you shouldn't put a heading on unless at least a third of the book is
about that topic. And in this case, it's only one chapter. So that is
probably contrary to that rule. But this subject was interesting to me,
and I noticed it's a heading ("King's Evil") that was established by the
National Library of Medicine pretty recently. Also, this is the first
time it's been used in our database.

Here's where the inconsistency comes in. There are most likely other
books in our collection that touch on King's Evil to as great an extent
as this book. We have an extensive history of medicine collection. So a
user or reference person will not be able to say that the use of this
heading coincides with the actual presence of the subject in our
collection. But my point is that if someone comes to the library looking
for materials on King's Evil, the heading on that one book will help
her. She'll find the book, and it will most likely have bibliographical
references pointing her to others on the topic.

Another cataloging rule that I've sometimes violated is one that says
you shouldn't put more than 3 subjects on a bib. Actually, I don't think
this is strictly a rule today, but I think it may have been at one
point. Another aspect of it was that if you had more than 3, you were
supposed to find a more general one that covered them or some of them,
to bring them to three or fewer. I'm pretty sure this was at least
partly a labor-saving rule. Management didn't want people to spend much
time assigning subject headings. I'm assuming it's also partly about
respecting the role of broader terms. You shouldn't have a series of
narrower terms together that all add up to one broader term. I think I
agree with that, but there are also times when you need both broader and
narrower terms, as when a book is mostly about a narrower term, but some
parts of it are about that term's BT. Also, I think we have to realize
that subject headings need to support keyword searching, and the more
subject vocabulary there is on a record, the more likely it will be
retrieved that way.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be practical limits on the number of
subject headings we use. But I just don't think I can live with the
3-subject rule all the time.

Nathan, I appreciate your discussion of philosophy. It sounds like
you're a philosophical "realist," as I am. Not "realist" in the sense of
being a "hard-headed realist," but in the sense of believing there is a
real natural order in the universe, and part of our task in the world is
to find that order, not just imagine it. Of course that doesn't mean
it's easy to find, or that people who think they've found it (or bits of
it) have a right to be arrogant to those who don't see it their way. We
need to be both "realist" and humble, and I think you exemplify that.

Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461