1. As a former cataloger, I am very comfortable navigating WorldCat and think it is a wonderful resource. I am currently reading Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson, so I used that title in my phrase search. There were 17 hits on this title, including 8 under "sound", 7 under "books" and 2 under "internet". When clicking on the first entry, which was a book, I found there were 870 libraries that owned the item, the first of which was Brookings Public Library.
The LC call number for this book is TX656 and the Dewey classification is 643.3. I love the possibilities that unfold when clicking on call number, author and subject headings. So many books to explore!! For instance, when clicking on TX656, there were 601 hits for items that relate closely to this title, from material types that include books, visual, internet, serials, sound, computer and articles.
Clicking on Bee Wilson as author revealed three other previous titles by this author, all of which seem quite interesting to me. Swindled: the Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee, The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us and Sandwich: A Global History.
As I have been away from cataloging for seven years, there was something new in the subject area that caught my eye. Additonal subject entries appeared in a different format from the traditional ones, which yielded a vastly different number of hits. For instance, one of the subject heading for this book was Cooking -- History, but later in the record COOKING / History also appeared. There were a number of traditional subject headings and a few of these "new" headings. Clicking on Cooking -- History brought up 3,946 hits, while COOKING/History brought up only 25. I am curious about these new headings and their purpose.
2. The list of other databases seems rather extensive and the explanatory information is quite helpful.
My first use of the OAIster database resulted in a broken link. My search on South Dakota brought up a number of interesting hits, but when I followed the instructions for The Gorge of the Missouri : An Archaeological Survey of Lewis and Clark Lake, Nebraska and South Dakota, v.1 and entered the provided link into the web browser, it was broken. My next choice from the list: Sweet Clover in Great Plains Farming was successful though and I was able to click on the link and get to the full text resource. Once I changed the view to 100% it was easily legible. OAIster is a great resource!
Hi, pizzuto! We're glad we could guide to to new discoveries in your old friend, WorldCat. Not a cataloger myself, I have forwarded your question about subject headings to the head of Access Services and will let you know what I find out. Thanks for a good question and good comments!
ReplyDeleteJane Heitman HealyMarch 11, 2013 at 6:45 AM
ReplyDeleteHi, Pizzuto, I've got an answer to your cataloging question. From SDSL Head of Access Services, Colleen Kirby: Cooking/History is a BISAC subject heading. BISAC is a standard used to categorize books based on topical content. Unless a library has a very specific collection I encourage them to use Library of Congress subject headings which are identified by the 0 in the second indicator field. And from E-Resources Coordinator Julie Erickson: The BISAC is used primarily by book sellers to help them categorize their stores.