Category Archives: Cataloging

Announcement, Cataloging, East Campus Libraries, Events, Film, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Uncategorized

Inconceivable! 30,000 and Counting…

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Counting what, you may ask?
30,000 DVDs in the Lilly Library!

Lilly Library celebrates the acquisition of our 30,000th DVD

Lilly DVD 30000

Lilly Library has a deep and rich collection of films, and as the films are continually ordered and catalogued, we became aware that we were nearing a milestone of 30,000 DVDs on our shelves. The very first DVD cataloged for Lilly Library was the French film, The Last Metro, and it marked the beginning of a highly regarded collection brimming with classic films, international and global films, serious documentaries and ever popular animated films.

Why The Princess Bride?

The inspiration on what to select as our 30,000th film came from our First-Year Library Advisory Board Group which suggested a “fun” film from 30 years ago.  Films from 1987 such as Predator, Rain Man, Full Metal Jacket and Fatal Attraction didn’t quite “fit the bill”, but The Princess Bride emerged as a favorite, and most importantly – F U N!

To mark the acquisition of the 30,000th DVD in our collection, Lilly Library is sponsoring the following events:

Cake! Enjoy a special Twue Wuv Cake
Meet the people behind the scenes, the catalogers & staff involved in bringing this film, and other films to our library users.

Wednesday, March 29th at 10 a.m.
Where: Lilly Library Lobby
For Duke Students:
If your slice has the “Miracle Max Pill”, you win a prize!

Movie! The Princess Bride

When: Friday, March 31st at 8 p.m.
Where: Trinity Café, East Campus Union
Refreshments provided – while they last

Sponsored by the East Campus Libraries – Lilly and Music –
and Devils After Dark

Cataloging, Just for Fun, Technology

Why Catalogers Seldom Blog

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The stereotype of catalogers is that we sit quietly behind the scenes, not interacting with users. A walk by our cubicles supports this view. However, we know that the records we work on are a kind of direct communication with users, who can use the library without speaking to a person, but have a hard time avoiding the catalog. Even someone who picks up a book from the New and Noteworthy shelves in Perkins Library and uses a self-check-out machine has used classification and the circulation module of the catalog. Other users access electronic resources through the catalog without even setting foot in the building.

Card Catalog in the Rubenstein Library.
Card Catalog in the Rubenstein Library.

Catalogers embrace other forms of electronic communication as well. We know the proverb about all work and no play, and what looks like work may actually be an exchange of a joke with the coworker in the next cubicle via email or Facebook. Our policies and procedures are documented online, and we participate in electronic forums with catalogers in other libraries. So why has a suggestion by our department head that we blog gone largely unheeded? I wrote one post, and it was fun. I got some compliments on it. However, it was not nearly as rewarding as the creation of a cataloging record. A record for an obscure pamphlet may never be directly used, but it will stand for decades, maybe centuries, as the signpost to that pamphlet. A blog post is a bit of flotsam thrown into a sea of unstructured data.

Post contributed by Amy Turner, Original Cataloger in the Cataloging and Metadata Services Dept.