Hidden collections: uncatalogued and partially cataloged collections in the Sibley Library

Storage unclassified: This is a large group of uncatalogued scores that entered the collection circa 1970-2000? This is considered to be a partially cataloged collection because many items have either a paper slip entry in a card file at the rear of the Catalog department, or a record in Alma. Alma records may be either OCLC records or brief records input by staff. A significant number of scores have no record in either place. The collection was housed in the cage until the late 2000s, when it was transferred to an offsite storage facility. Oversized scores, called Inprocess Folio are still located in the cage. Items are brought from the offsite storage facility by request, usually by Acquisitions staff. A project was begun to bring over scores from the collection, and to evaluate which should be kept. If selected, they are sent to cataloging.

Octavo collection: For much of the library’s history, choral octavos were not cataloged into the circulating collection. They were assigned an accession number, as were all materials at the time, and placed in file boxes in numerical order, but with no call number. There is a card catalog that indexes the collection by composer and medium. There is also an Access database of later additions to the collection. The collection and its card catalog are located on the 4th floor. On the rare occasion when these have circulated, they have usually been cataloged into the regular collection upon their return.

7/1/21: 30 of these (Octavo 1-30) have minimal records in catalog-- no 300 field, no  650 field, no authority control. No holdings records-- accession nos. are in 090 fields.

Uncatalogued and unconverted LPs: This group of LPs is not hidden, but is not fully cataloged. In general, uncatalogued acquisitions will be kept in the Catalog Department until they are cataloged. However in the 2000s, due to space concerns, a large number of uncatalogued LPs in the LP and J sequences were transferred to the Recording Stacks without being seen by a cataloger. These carry an item note “Catalog after first circulation”. Recently a report was run to identify these recordings so they may be cataloged in OCLC.  They fall into several large sequences, although there are some recordings that are completely cataloged within each of these sequences.

The sequences are LP 1-7900, and LP 37,000 to end; also J-5675 and higher.

Music Education Resources: This consists of music education series, instrumental and classroom vocal, that were originally housed in the Music Education Department, which were transferred to Sibley in 1995 in order to increase access to the materials. Originally they were set up as a browsing collection only, organized in file boxes by series title, but with no formal cataloging in the online catalog or in OCLC. The collection was noncirculating, intended for building use only. Over time, at the request of Music Education Faculty, parts of the collection were cataloged to circulate, and at present the entire collection is cataloged and available for circulation. The separate pieces have barcodes, but no call number, and the collection is currently separated into an instrumental sequence and a vocal sequence. The catalog records are at the series level only, e.g., Silver Burdett Music, or Belwin First Division Band Course, and each record has the many separate items attached.

Card catalogs and files

Catalog Department files

Manufacturers file:  For much of the history of the sound recordings collection a catalog was kept that included a card for each recording filed according to label name and number. The earliest LP recordings are not represented in the file and additions to the file were when shelf-list card production was discontinued, this file was also closed. The file was used by both the Acquisitions and Catalog departments to keep track of the recordings collection. Number prefixes are ignored in filing, so that if a label used the same numbers with different prefixes these will be filed next to one another in the catalog. The file is still annotated when recordings that have cards on file are lost or discarded.

Shelf-list file: This is an inventory file, with one card for each cataloged item in idealized call number order. In reality the items may be in a number of separate location, such as miniature scores or rare books. The cards showed all inventory, including number of copies or volumes. While the practice was maintained, they also included accession numbers. For items cataloged before retrospective conversion, barcodes for each piece were placed on the back of the cards, labelled with copy and volume number. For items cataloged after barcoding was instituted, barcodes were placed on cards if the original barcode was replaced. If an item was declared lost, or was discarded, the card was annotated to show the action taken. Cards continued to be produced for this file after the public card catalogs were closed, but by the early 2000s, this card catalog was closed as well.

Paper authority file: Sibley maintained a paper authority file to keep name and name-title headings uniform.  The card file was consulted for every heading in a catalog record. If a name or name-title was not present, typing cards, including cross-reference cards was part of the cataloging process. Two copies of each cross reference were typed, with the extra card filed in the public card catalog.  When the card catalogs were removed from the Reference area, the green cards were pulled and placed in a file under the Sibley staff photographs (under the bust of Richard Wagner). It was thought they might be beneficial to patrons because the online cross-reference structure was far from perfect. The file is now considerably outdated and of limited value.

Storage unclassified paper file (previously known as the Inprocess Collection): This file contains a single slip or card for scores in the Storage Unclassified Collection. If a title is cataloged, the slip is removed. The time period is roughly the mid-to-late 1960s to the mid-1990s.  At this point the collection was still being added to, but brief catalog records were input by a student worker. It was believed that all scores in the collection had either a paper slip or an online record, but during a major weeding project to identify duplicate scores to send to the Tulane Music Library, it was discovered that as much as 1/3 of the collection has no entries in either place.

In public areas:

Phonorecord catalog: The earliest date recorded in the LP accession books is LP 868 logged in June 1953. The public catalog for sound recordings probably began sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and ended in 1979 or 1980 when the older card catalogs were frozen and new catalogs started with the advent of AACR2 and OCLC online card production. The Phonorecord Catalog is a dictionary catalog, meaning that names, title and subjects are interfiled. Virtually all LP records are now represented in the online catalog, either with an OCLC record or a brief record.

Octavo collection file: see Octavo collection above

Cross-reference file: see Paper authority file above.

Pre 1948 Periodical Index and Song Collection Index: Before the Music Index began publication, there was little access to periodical articles in music. Sibley maintained an in-house periodical index that ceased when the Music Index began.  Content should all be covered by RIPM at this point. The Song Collection Index provided access to individual titles in song collections. Although this may be of some use, the editions are all quite old at this point, and many may no longer be in the collection.