(Untitled)

[mysteena]

One of the aspects of librarianship that I love is the stumble-upon factor. The capacity to stumble upon something new and interesting everyday is always there and I'm such a nerd. I really do love constantly learning new things. Unfortunately, my personal interests don't coincide very often with law and legal issues, so its not often that I

Comments

[mikanis_hatter]

I love that aspect of the library too. It's why I enjoy just wandering the book shelves.

Thank you for the heads up on this one.

Serendipity in the Stacks

[bibliotechie]

I love that aspect too. In Database Maintenance I make up for the lack of serendipity by picking a subject and cleaning up the records with that heading then moving on to related headings.

I started with the 517 records with Galileo as author or subject then moved on to the planets, astronomy, the Vatican, and am moving on to the various orders....
And get paid to do it as well

Re: Serendipity in the Stacks

[mysteena]

Cleaning up the headings would be an excellent project. My only hesitation is that I'm working in a law library, which is not a field that I'm all that familiar with. After I've been here for a while, I'll feel more comfortable tackling a project like that.

Do you use your own judgement when cleaning up headings, or do you look to see what other libraries, like the LC, have done?

Re: Serendipity in the Stacks

[bibliotechie]

I usually start with a heading I am interested in and then just follow related themes.
I am primarily looking for errors, typos, bad coding, merging duplicate records and obsolete headings. I follow LC rules and use LCSH except for certain cases (Genre I use GSAFD, etc.)

The rule of thumb is to create consistency and use headings that reflect the needs of the collection. In NYPL (where I work) for example, we use local headings for many of the New York neighborhoods (with local authority records to have the see also references to the standard LCSH headings)