Demonstrate understanding of basic principles and standards involved in organizing information such as classification and controlled vocabulary systems, cataloging systems, metadata schemas or other systems for making information accessible to a particular clientele.
We organize information in various ways in our daily lives. For instance, at our offices and homes, we have filing cabinets with labels on the files contained internally, so we can find documents at a faster rate than if we left the documents around haphazardly, and so we can figure out which bills to pay at what time. The same principle is followed at libraries, so that information can be located quickly and efficiently. As Lazarinis (2015) states in 1.1, a chapter describing information organization, bibliographic control is the concept of “organizing the objects in a library . . . and the knowledge about them” so as to ensure that information is retrieved in a “coherent and consistent way . . . to effectively support the requests of patrons” (n.p). Information about items in a library is contained within records called bibliographic records. Chapter 1.1 also states that a “bibliographic record is . . . one of the basic tasks of bibliographic control,” and the record, or metadata “is a uniform description of the item’s characteristics” (Lazarinis, 2015, n.p.). These records are contained within a catalogue, the characteristics contained in which is divided into either subject cataloging or descriptive cataloging. In chapter 1.4.1, Lazarinis describes descriptive cataloging as “the description of resources and the determination of access points,” while in chapter 1.4.2, Lazarinis describes subject cataloging as identifying the “intellectual properties of the item, i.e. what the item is about.” The concept of identifying what a given item is about was taught to me as aboutness, which is an LIS concept used in subject cataloging. (n.p.). Items in catalogs are often identified using controlled vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, abbreviated as LCSH. Ganendran and Farkas (2007) defined subject cataloging as “the process of determining subject headings for an item, and identified several major users of subject headings, such as “the cataloger or indexer,” who uses the subject headings to “allocate headings,” “the searcher” (or ordinary library patron) who uses the subject headings to “identify appropriate headings for use in searching for a particular topic,” and “the originator of the document” who uses the headings “in order to use standard terminology” (pp. 7-8). In chapter 1.3.1, Lazarinis (2015) argues that when a patron requests an item, they could request the item in a number of “different ways,” such as identifying the author, or the title, or know generally what subject the title is contained in. The “different items of information . . . used for locating specific bibliographic records are called access points” (Lazarinis, 2015, n.p.). The final topic I wish to discuss is the one which most libraries are fairly well-known, for and that is how items are classified, and this determines where an item is located in a library. The most commonly used classification systems in the United States are the Dewey Decimal System (DDC), and the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system. DDC is in more common use at public libraries, while academic libraries more often use the LCC classification. According to Kaplan, Giffard, Still-Schiff, and Doloff (2013), one of the advantages of DDC is that it was better than the static system that came before it, where an item stayed in one place, and that with the adoption of DDC, the item could have a given place in the collection at the library, but still be moved to accommodate the growth of the collection (p. 31). However, the subject-based nature of DDC makes it difficult to accommodate the growth of information in a subject area and the addition of new subjects. In contrast, the Library of Congress classification system “divides all knowledge into twenty-one basic classes, each identified by a single letter of the alphabet,” which are the sub-divided into two-letter subclasses (Library of Congress, 2014, n.p.). For my first piece of evidence of mastery of this competency, I am incorporating an assignment specifically dedicated having me add Library of Congress Subject Headings to 15 records I completed earlier, and pasting information into records using MARC standards, and a brief reflective statement of a few sentences is included at the end. For the second piece of evidence, I am incorporating a LCC - DCC assignment where I had to locate LCC and DCC numbers for 20 books I located and created MARC records for. For the third piece of evidence, I am incorporating an authority control assignment in which I had to locate MARC authority records for 10 books I had created bibliographic records for.
I learned about controlled vocabularies in LIBR 202 (where it was touched upon briefly), but more extensive experience was gleaned from several assignments I completed in LIBR 244, where I used controlled vocabularies to locate items within online databases as part of distinct searching exercises. I have a variety of formal and informal experience using classification systems. My informal experience comes from the time I spent volunteering at [Institution name removed] in northwest Montana, where I volunteered for about 5 hours a day about 3 times per week. One of my major responsibilities was picking books off of the shelves when they were out of place and relocating them to their correct place within the Dewey Decimal System scheme. Also, during my time volunteering with the same library and the [Institution name removed] in southwest Idaho, I have learned about the subject-based nature of the DDC. I have far less practical experience with the LCC classification, but have reshelved books at the [Institution name removed] Library of [Institution name removed] as part of a two-week stint as a student assistant. My theoretical experience with the LCC classification scheme is more a result of taking INFO 248, in which I used the Classification tool and my knowledge of aboutness to identify specific subjects that defined the specific items I evaluated for an exercise in LCC classification. I also completed an exercise and an assignment for the same class which acquainted me with the LCSH subject headings through the OCLC Connexion website. The main point of INFO 248 was to locate 20 items in an ordinary library collection and then to descriptively catalog the items, locate authority control item (or access points that could positively identify an item for a user), adding subject headings and identifying the aboutness of the specific items, and finally, assigning LCC and DDC classifications based on the definitions of aboutness identified in the earlier LCSH assignment. I completed all assignments and, in doing so, acquainted myself with the theoretical underpinnings of cataloging and have internalized my knowledge of how to use current standards, such as MARC to create records for items and place them in catalogs.
References
Ganendran, J., & Farkas, L. (2007). Learn Library of Congress Subject Access (2nd North American Edition ). Friendswood, TX, USA: TotalRecall Publications. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Kaplan, T. B., Giffard, S., Still-Schiff, J., & Dolloff, A. K. (2013). One size does not fit all. Knowledge Quest, 42(2), 30-37.
Lazarinis, F. (2015). Cataloging and classfication: an introduction to AACR2, RDA, DDC, LCC, LCSH and MARC 21 standards (1st edition). Waltham, MA : Chandos Publishing.
Library of Congress . (2014, October 1). Library of Congress Classification. Retrieved September 10, 2015, from http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcc.html