Lesson 1: Introduction to Bibliographic Record

[Slide 1 - Welcome message]
Congratulations! You have got the job. We hope you enjoy your learning and working experiences here at our Cataloging Department.

[Slide 2]
These movies are designed to help you to learn how to perform your assigned cataloging tasks. You will get yourself familiar with some important concepts for cataloging, and you will be given instruction on how to do the actual job.

The first important concept for cataloging is the concept of Bibliographic Record. In fact, you will spend most of your time in preparing a bibliographic record when you do your actual cataloging jobs.

[Slide 3]
Let's now pretend to be a library user who is looking for a certain book in the library. The user knows the title of the book, and she is going to do a title search on the library's online catalog.

On the Library Catalog page, click on Title, type the title in the search box, then click on Seach.

[Slide 10]
Two matching titles are found. The 1st one is a Chinese translation of the English work. Let's examine what the library has for the English original.

[Slide 11]
Because there is more than one publication of the same title in the library's holding, a list of all available publications is displayed here.

[Slide 14]
Let's examine the first one, which is a publication of Houghton Mifflin in 2001.

[Slide 15]
Now displayed on screen is a typical library catalog record.

[Slide 18]
A library catalog record usually consists of Bibliographic Record and Item Record. As on the OSU Library's online catalog, the Item Records are grouped in a table and are inserted in the middle section of the bibliographic record.

[Slide 19]
A bibliographic record provides information and description about a work, usually a publication of which the library has acquired an item. Specifically speaking, a Bibliographic Record provides information such as title, author, publisher, publication date, etc., and description such as the extent and dimension of the item - as for books these are paging and size of the book.

[Slide 20]
The function of a Bibliographic Record is to allow a library user to find and identify a work by searchable terms such as title, author, etc. These terms of title and author, etc., appearing as entries in a bibliographic record, are called Access Points. They are Access Points in the sense of being searchable elements of a bibliographic record in the library's online catalog.

[Slide 21]
The Item Records, on the other hand, tell the user where the book is shelved in the library and if any copy of the book is available for checkout. For example, we can see on the record displayed here that copy 3 is available for checkout from the Main Stacks of the library.

[Slide 22]
We have said that a Bibliographic Record, together with Item Records, can assist a library user to find items she wants from the library. How does a bibliographic Record assists a library user to locate things she wants? It does so by making entries of important bibliographic information, such as title, author, imprint, etc.

[Slide 23]
... as well as other relevent descriptions about an item of a publication, such as paging of the book, what the book is about, and ISBN number etc., into searchable elements or Access Points in the library's online catalog.

[Slide 25]
The function of a library catalog is said to be like this:A library user should be able to find an item through the library catalog if

- the title is known
- the author is known
- the subject is knownA catalog should show what the library has
- by a given author
- on a given subject
- in a given kind of literature

[Slide 26]
The catalog should also assist in the choice of a book

- as to its edition
- as to its other characters, such as publisher, ISBN number, and format etc.

[Slide 27]
Therefore, it is very important when you are preparing a bibliographic record to make sure that the information you enter matches that on the piece in your hand, because a good bibliographic record ensures retrival, and a poor one does not.

[Slide 28]
In summary, entries of information in a bibliographic record which must match that on the piece include:

- title
- author
- publishing information
- physical description
- Subject of the book
- and other identifications such as an ISBN number if there is one