Author: Kristina

do other librarians talk about death as much as catalogers?

Intriguing question from AUTOCAT:

I’m writing to ask if anyone else out there has created short MARC records for obituaries or local newspaper articles of interest and included them in their main catalog. If you did, which MARC fields did you use, and what type of information do you include in each field. For ex., if you catalog obituaries, does the name of the deceased go in the 245 field, a 600 field, or both?

See also: Dedication.

Also, why have I run into so many goth catalogers? Because we don’t have to deal with the public as much as others? Because we nearly always work in a basement?

Also, why does it seem that a lot of library people with ADHD do cataloging and organization of information? On one hand it makes no sense. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense. Programming is a logical process that is also highly picky (a semicolon once stalled me for half a day—then again, I don’t really know what I’m doing…). and it’s a cliché that programming is full of people with ADHD…

Anyway, I’d say the deceased definitely would go in a 600, as the obit is about them. I’d put the header of the obit in the 245, and, if there isn’t a header, I’d supply a title proper which would probably contain the name of the deceased. But I’ve never cataloged obituaries in a library, so I’ll be curious what others say.

scroodle, or, how regexps are driving me batt(y|ier).

So cataloging is picky. The content recorded has to be right. The order of elements has to be right. The capitalization has to be right. The punctuation has to be right. The spacing has to be right. The handwriting has to be right. O WATE. Thank Gautama we are no longer at the latter…

Say the correct thing to put in a particular field (ISBN) is:

1234567890 (pbk.)

But students often want to do things like record:
ISBN 1234567890 Pbk.
1234567890 (pbk.).
1-2345-6789-0

or any combination of the above, but with a mistyped number OR another valid ISBN number appearing in the book, but not the right one for the field at hand.

Main varying elements:
whether the digits recorded are correct
whether “ISBN” is put at the front or not
whether hypens are recorded or not
whether the qualifier (pbk.) is included
whether the qualifier (pbk.) is included in parentheses
whether the p in pbk. is capitalized
whether the period at the end of pbk. is included
whether a period is placed at the end of the field

But someone always comes up with something creative… And the possible combinations of errors… an explosion…

I have been using a module (lesson) in Moodle (the course/assignment development app I’m using) which allows me to construct a series of regexps and regexp-like snippets to analyze student answers step by step based on these varying elements:

First, does the typed in answer match the correct answer? Yes? Good. Have some points. Go on…

Then, are the numbers right?
^.*1-?2345-?6789-?0.*$
If that doesn’t match the answer, say “Did you record the ISBN for the manifestation you are cataloging? If you are sure you did, check to make sure you transcribed all the proper digits in order.”
If that does match, check for the next thing…

Did they include “ISBN”?
^ISBN.*$
If that matches, say “Check MARC input conventions and ignore what AACR2 says about the format for recording ISBNs.”
If it doesn’t match, go to the next thing…

and so on.

But in this module, it is very cumbersome to create exercises. It is very cumbersome to *do* the exercises, as you can only fill in one field per page.

So there is another module (quiz)that is much better for developing exercises, providing as-you-go feedback on exercises, and taking the exercises. There is a plugin to allow regexp questions. The catch?

Because the Generation routine is meant to generate all possible sentences from a regExp, the set of special/meta-characters in such a regExp is restricted to: parentheses (), the pipe | and the ? characters, the square brackets [] and the escape sign .

So I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out how to check for all these different possible errors without the handy .*

The obvious answer seemed to be to construct a regexp like:

^(ISBNs)?1-?2345-?6789-?0(s([Pp]bk.?))?s?.?$
No match? Check the numbers you put in…

And then tweak various segments to check for the common errors, like so:

^ISBNs1-?2345-?6789-?0(s([Pp]bk.?))?s?.?$
If that matches, say “Check MARC input conventions and ignore what AACR2 says about the format for recording ISBNs.”
If it doesn’t match, go to the next thing…

^(ISBNs)?1-2345-6789-0(s([Pp]bk.?))?s?.?$
If match, hint not to put in hyphens.

^(ISBNs)?1-?2345-?6789-?0s?.?$
If match, you seem to be missing the qualifying phrase.

^(ISBNs)?1-?2345-?6789-?0(s(Pbk.?))?s?.?$
If match, check the capitalization of the qualifier.

etc.

But of course this doesn’t work.

I’m afraid I’m being stupid and missing something about matching an optional phrase which is in literal parentheses. I can’t get any regexp-checker/expander/matcher thingie to accept anything I can think of to deal with this. They all choke on confusing the literal ( and ) I’m checking for, and the ( and )s I’m using to group optional strings.

So I can’t figure out how to set up this exercise to systematically check for errors, give helpful feedback and hints, and NOT require me to manually express the minor combinatorial explosion happening here.

Any ideas? Moodle is all in PHP, so I’m assuming that’s the regexp flavor in play.

Is there something about parentheses that has gone completely over my head here?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Alternately, how hard would it be to just make my own app/widget/dealio for these assignments?

I know how to do html forms.
I’m fairly familiar with basic regexps. (I think. Unless I’m doing something dumb above.)
I know the basic pieces of how I’d provide X feedback for Y response and tally scores.
I have various ideas about how collecting scores could work.
But I don’t know how to tie these pieces together and I really don’t have any extra time.

In fact, I’m kind of feeling physically ill about all the time I just spent figuring out what I couldn’t do with the tools at hand. And nothing to show for it.

Hence random yelling of wordless yells for catharsis… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHRRRG!

making distinctions.

Ah, Melvil Dui, bless you and your crazy spelling ideas. Crazy compared to what? Oh I don’t know… I admire your ardor for efficiency and consistency.

And this made me laugh and laugh:

–From pages 6 and 7 of Dewey’s Simplified Library School Rules: Card Catalog, Accession, Book Numbers, Shelf List, Capitals, Punctuation, Abbreviations, Library Handwriting, Boston: Library Bureau, 1904, as found on Google Books.

gems from the collection, or, things i found in the catalog recently

  • Tickle me emo : Lesbian balladeering, straight-boy emo and the politics of affect / Karen Tongson
  • Goth’s Medical pharmacology.
  • A record containing the following songs:
    • 740 02 Reet, petite and gone.
    • 740 02 Rusty, dusty blues.
    • 740 02 Is you is or is you ain’t (my baby)
    • 740 02 My baby.
    • 740 02 Salt pork, West Virginia.
    • 740 02 Boogie woogie blue plate.
    • 740 02 Buzz me.
    • 740 02 Open the door, Richard.
    • 740 02 Texas and Pacific.
    • 740 02 What’s the use of gettin’ sober (When you’re gonna get drunk again)
    • 740 02 What’s the use of getting sober (When you’re going to get drunk again)
    • 740 02 I like ’em fat like that.
    • 740 02 I like them fat like that.
    • 740 02 Somebody done changed the lock on my door.
    • 740 02 Early in the morning.
    • 740 02 Five guys named Moe.
    • 740 02 Jack, you’re dead.

The gettin’/getting and ’em/them uncontrolled title access points are truly jewels of access. Yay for the Southern Folklife Collection.

snippets.

Exhaustion explained. Also snackiness.

“Although the brain represents only 2% of the body weight, it receives 15% of the cardiac output, 20% of total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of total body glucose utilization. The energy consumption for the brain to simply survive is 0.1 Calories per minute, while this value can be as high as 1.5 Calories per minute (100W) during crossword puzzle-solving”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption

(found in comment at: Academic Productivity)

Intuition strikes again…

Another bit from Academic Productivity:

Studies of the spacing effect have shown that when you space learning over separate learning intervals, long term retention is normally much higher compared with the equivalent amount of training from a single or “massed” session. This effect is robust across different time scales, different kinds of learning, and is even true across different species.

Without ever reading about the spacing effect, I changed my cataloging course design this semester to take advantage of it. Call it intuition or common sense… but it is always nice to have your practice supported by Science. More on spaced learning and cognitive psychology relevant to pedagogy here.

In defense of hermiting

Choose your own place for concentration, but remember that solitude has always been, in all the history of mental achievement, a requisite for great work.

Solitude calls forth the mood of receptivity. Only then do we get the best. Great things are worked out in silence. Then come the flashes of inspiration—the new visions. Emerson tells us that ” Solitude is to genius the stern friend—the cold, obscure shelter, where mould the wings which will bear it farther than suns or stars,” and we have this thought from Carlyle: ” Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together—that at length they may emerge full-formed and mamestic into the delight of life—which they are henceforth to rule.”

From: How To Concentrate (Originally Published 1930) Author… unknown? Definitely uncited.

Solitude is part of the Proper Environment. Apparently you also need Periodical Relaxation, Mental Freedom, and A Definite Schedule.

Lack of the latter is really, really bugging me since classes have started. Having those two days a week that have a completely different rhythm throws me off. I haven’t exercised in over a week and I’m starting to feel cruddy for lack of it. And my wrists are starting to hurt again. Apparently exercise keeps that at bay. Who knew!?

i knew there was a way my interests and expertise could get me back to Paris.

France! The best place in the world to study PIM?

You quickly learn to never, ever, ever, throw away even the tiniest, most insignificant piece of paper or receipt in France because invariably, six years later, someone will ask you to produce it. So it’s imperative to save each and every scrap of paper and because of that, soon you’ll find you’ve accumulated your very own stack or dossiers.

…

So all those little bits of paper need to be sorted and classified. … Imagine a country of 64,000,00 people who have lived here ten times longer than I have—and that’s adds up to a heckuva lot of classeurs, folks.

–from David Lebovitz’ yummy blog

Add to to-do list: start studying your French again.