(d) Bibliographic Organisation

Cataloguing has been an important component of both my university studies and work experience. Constructing a reference database consisting of and describing print, audiovisual, digital and other items was part of the assessment requirements for ITN 275 – Information Organisation. Unfortunately, I no longer have the database that I built (as it was very heavy on the memory usage) but I do have this reflection that I wrote as part of the reporting stage:

The construction of the Medieval Mayhem Database has been a valuable learning experience regarding information organisation. It has been helpful to see how databases work from a perspective other than as a user of them. I am glad I completed the assignment on my own as I don’t think I would have learned as much if I had worked in a group. I believe I have gained a good, overall understanding of databases and their construction. If the project had been produced within a group context then, I believe, that the knowledge I have garnered from the task would be incomplete, or limited only to the sections I worked on. I learnt not by doing the DB/Textworks tutorial but from doing and experimenting with the program while the database was built. If I encountered a problem with or saw a deficiency in the database I solved it by experimenting with ideas or through trial and error. Thus my knowledge and understanding was constructed along with the database. I realise that if such a project was to be undertaken in the real world it would most likely be done with a team, but the realities of external study and time frames made group work an unattractive option. The database I have built may be simple in its functions and perhaps a group could have created a more sophisticated version, but it does the job it is designed to do and I learnt from the experience so I have to be happy with that.

I think the most interesting thing I learnt about databases is the power of the subject terms and thesaurus for assisting in information searches; if the subject terms have been poorly described or the thesaurus limited then this makes searching difficult for database users. I found when cataloguing texts that had multiple subjects (some over a dozen) I was faced with the dilemma of transcribing them in full or trying to limit them in someway. I chose to categorise all the subject terms into broad subject terms and employ the thesaurus to provide direction to users of the database as to what subject they should use when searching for a particular topic. After I had constructed the thesaurus I kept thinking of more and more subjects that could be included in the thesaurus and wondered if the categories I had used in the description were too broad. I made only minor adjustments to the thesaurus but realised that thesaurus maintenance is an ongoing task that is never really complete.
(Extract taken from ITN 275: Information Organisation, Assignment 2 – Bibliographic Database Project Report, written by E. Hornsby October, 2006)

It is interesting that even when I was relatively new to the world of cataloguing, subject headings stood out as an area of important consideration. This is still true for me now with more real-world experience with cataloguing under my belt. Part of my duties in the library has been using SCIS and ALICE to catalogue resources for the library and it is this combined with helping students locate resources has really made me see the importance of quality employment of subject headings. A particular resource may be the greatest thing in the world but if it can’t be found through the database then it is completely useless. I have, prepared and uploaded orders for SCIS, catalogued print and audiovisual resources using SCIS information and written descriptions and subject headings for particular items when no description is available. Even thought the library uses SCIS information for most of the listings we always check the subject headings carefully in order to add, remove or alter where appropriate. All biographical texts are re-classified as 920.

At Sherwood S.S. I often managed the book room where the class readers are stored using a context specific, unique cataloguing system (in which resources are organised by publisher and reading levels). The system demonstrated that libraries often design their own systems to suit their own specific needs. The system works, the resources are able to be located easily even though it doesn’t follow conventional cataloguing principles