There are some libraries that keep artist monographs classed together
in a single sequence. Famous examples: National Gallery at N44,
Smithsonian at N40.1, Yale at NJ18. Some other libraries try to keep
artist monographs in a single number, but divided by nationality or
medium. The Whitney does this, except for artists books.
At NYU, we do verify belles-lettres numbers but artists don't get the
same treatment. We have some nasty tangles, such as Gellee/Lorrain and
Gericault in ND553.G3 with other books on Gericault and Gerome drifting
up through G36, G37 and G4. This is partly the result of our shelflist
being an amalgam of several formerly-independent cataloging operations.
At Cornell (after I left and no longer), the central tech services
operation left the classification of artist monographs to the fine arts
librarian. The books went over unclassified. Some of the Cornell
anomalies: put Picasso in Spanish rather than French as LC does; used
Cutter-Sanborn table rather than LC cutter table.
Any library that depends on LC and other copy will face the decision of
accepting numbers or a heavy load of checking. One must remember of
course that shelf browsing is not reliable in that books may be in
circulation, on oversize shelves, in different collections, etc. Also,
the artist name is an "easy" access point in the catalog.
If your library's books have already been cataloged and are classified
in an acceptable scheme, you could ask that the call number be retained
during the conversion to the new system.
There was a discussion on this topic on ARLIS-L in 2000; a compilation
of that discussion is available at
http://artcataloging.net/artcat/arrange.html
Hope some of this is helpful in your discussions and thoughts.
Sherman Clarke
NYU Libraries
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Cooper, Kate" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, November 27, 2006 11:00 pm
Subject: [ARLIS-L] CATALOGING ISSUE
> Our school recently merged with a large college. The art library
> will remain a separate library located in the art building.
> We are beginning the process of retrospective conversion and I am
> spending a lot of time explaining why it is important to retain
> our deviance from the usual LC practice of splitting up monographs
> on the same artist because the book wss produced for an
> exhibition,as in this example:
>
> Donald Judd ed. Nicholas Serota
>
> NB237.J83 A4 2004
>
> N6537.J83 A4 2004
>
>
> For many reasons, I prefer the first but as this discussion keeps
> coming up, I would like to hear reasons/justifications for either
> side from anyone who has confronted this problem.
> I am not a cataloger so I may be explaining myself in a way they
> don't get. But they haven't offered any good explanation for why
> their way is better, just that my way is more work. Right now, we
> are only dealing with new books and it does not affect many titles
> but when we get to converting records, it will create lots more
> work to do it their way.
>
> Also, does anyone have any idea if many libraries follow this
> practice?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
>
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