Dear (ex) colleagues,
I've been retired from the
Met Library for ten years. Although I'm advised that retrospective
conversion at the Watson Library is nearly done, I would not be surprised if
some of their older catalog records that would have presented problems in recon
are still "unconverted", and thus are available only in the book catalog of the
library. The catalog records for older publications in
Asian languages were translated and transliterated (some by
curators from the Asian art departments), but no Chinese or Japanese characters
[kanji?] were recorded.
In the case of Greek and
Cyrillic language records, I believe some of the old titles were
cataloged using special font typewriters. That may slow down recon a
bit.
Another significant part of
the printed catalog that may be slow in getting converted is the groups of
records scattered throughout the catalog for smaller exhibition
catalogs. They were deemed too slim to catalog separately and
shelve with the books. These were cataloged with museum/gallery as the
main entry, and a made-up title such as "Exhibition catalogs".
The titles of each of the catalogs, leaflets, and checklists appear in an
extended series of contents notesattached to the main entry; they are usually
listed in chronological order of publication, with a short title only.
There are thousands of items, typically unbound and filed in enclosed green
pamphlet boxes. I assume that recon will require bringing these
boxes to the recon cataloger, and I assume that (given LC's reluctance to
catalog slim exhibition catalogs in the old days) there will probably be few LC
records. Maybe other RLIN libraries will have created records that can be
adapted. In any case, unless the Met catalogers have found a magic
procedure in the past decade, this will probably be a slow and tedious
process. Nevertheless these are important records in the Met's book
catalog that may be for some time the only record for outside
researchers.
Be advised, if yours is an
academic or research library.
Bill
Walker (former Chief Librarian of the Watson Library)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 10:54
PM
Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] library
catalogs
We are interested in the answer
also. I e-mailed the Metropolitan Museum a few months ago, to ask
them if all of the contents of their catalog are now on line, but never heard
from them.
Heather Brodhead,
Librarian
Fearing Library
Santa Barbara Museum of
Art
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 2:04
PM
Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] library
catalogs
Before de-accessioning any, you should probably check with
each
institution rather than just doing a random sample of each
institution's
OPAC. For example, there are significant subsets of
the Folger's
collection that are still only available off-site through
the old G.K.
Hall catalogues (much 18th-c. English material, most
pre-1801
Continental material, most manuscripts, and virtually all the
works of
art on paper).
EB.
-----------------------------------------------------
Erin C.
Blake, Ph.D.
Curator of Art & Special Collections
Folger
Shakespeare Library
201 E. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003-1094
office tel. (202) 675-0323
fax (202) 675-0328
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
www.folger.edu
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__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
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Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
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Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]
