Is Dewey Dead?
Half the battle of any search in a library is locating the item in question. In a perfect library, every item would be shelved and stored exactly where the catalog says it should be down to the shelf...
View ArticleTen Essential Qualities for Success: A New Cataloging Librarian’s Guide from...
A cataloging librarian’s job description is different from institution to institution, depending on specific needs. These descriptions range from managing a department to supervising copy catalogers or...
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Color In the Library – Organizing Materials By Color
Something had to change. Whether it was “helpful” patrons, tired volunteers, or hurried staff, materials were getting on the shelf in the wrong places. Leaving detailed notes for the volunteers wasn’t...
View ArticleGenre-fying Your Library’s Fiction Collection
We are in the final stretch of our “genre-fying fiction” marathon, and want to share our observations. In hindsight, we would have done some things a bit differently, but we also remind ourselves that...
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Building Small, Cheap, Dedicated Catalog Stations: Do-It-Yourself Raspberry...
One fact that I have witnessed in almost every public library is that space is a limited resource and a little more of it is always useful. This is especially true in our library, the Ames Free Library...
View ArticleSeparate or Keep Together?
This is the kind of question librarians like to fight over. Should you separate fiction into genres, or should all fiction be left together? Or do you split the difference and mark different genres in...
View ArticleTo Series or Not to Series…Does it Matter?
If you’ve been following our past few entries, you know we have been talking about putting fiction into genres, but in the “genre-fication process” we are going through, we are also labeling our books...
View ArticlePutting Your ENTIRE Fiction Collection into Genres
As our library has moved through the process of putting all of our books from picture books to adult novels into genres, we had questions arise. Did it make sense to use the same genres across multiple...
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New LibraryThing OPAC, TinyCat, Announced
There’s big news for tiny libraries. LibraryThing, the social book cataloging site, announced the launch of a new OPAC called TinyCat. Designed for small collections of less than 10,000 items, TinyCat...
View ArticleClosing the Drawer on Library Catalog Cards
It happened on October 1st in Dublin, Ohio. You may not know, unless you read the news release on the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) website or saw the short article on cnn.com. Maybe you...
View ArticleGroup Catalog and OCLC’s Navigator: Burden or Blessing?
A group catalog can be a wonderful thing for library users. Your local library may not have the book you need, but—guess what—a library somewhere in the state or country has the book, and they may send...
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