No quarto

In the early days of Dewey decimalising our CDs, we briefly wondered how to treat compilations within our music collections (of the various artist, soundtrack, and artist 'best of' types) - there was some consensus in keeping them separate from the studio albums (and live albums, and singles, and EPs...), but still giving them call numbers. We decided to treat compilations as periodicals, so designated with a P before the call number; for example, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack has the call number of P 796.14 P1 [Recreation -- Outdoor games -- Hide and seek].

However, around the time we got to classifying the Traveling Wilburys Collection, we realised we needed an additional designation - for box sets and reissues and the like, where the content is not necessarily a compilation - in the Traveling Wilburys' case, the collection is the two studio albums (with one or two bonus tracks) and a DVD - so would not be a periodical, but is not a simple album... Given the size of the Traveling Wilburys' packaging, the decision to give the collection a quarto call number - Q 920.301443 2007 - was a relatively easy one, and we continued on with the Dewey decimalising, mostly forgetting about the quartos.

Eventually, though, the growth in the number of 'Deluxe Edition' double-disc reissues in the collection meant that the quarto-periodical issue had to be revisited. And then came the DVDs... With several television shows being represented with multiple-disc-sets for each season (e.g. seven seasons of The West Wing and Buffy, each season a collection of six discs rather one big box encompassing the entire run), and others by select episodes or highlights (such as The Late Show) but still sometimes with multiple discs, the distinction between quarto and periodical becomes fuzzier...

So, here is the beginning of a list that will hopefully be our guide for the quarto-periodical distinction. Details may need to be worked out further, so for the moment this is a first draft:

CDs

• Standard album: Standard call number
  
• Standard album - with bonus material (e.g. special edition of new release with bonus disc of b-sides/live material) - Quarto
  
• Album remaster/reissue - Standard call number if no bonus tracks, Quarto if bonus tracks or bonus disc of rarities, videos, etc.
  
• Reissue - two albums/releases on one disc (e.g. Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim) - Quarto
  
• Compilation (any number of discs/artists) - Periodical
  

DVDs [to be completed]

• Standard film/concert film (incl. bonus features on same disc)
  
• Television series - single disc, entire season
  
• Television series - single disc, highlights
  
• Television series - multiple discs, entire season
  
• Box set of films (e.g. Jurassic Park collection)
  
• Two or more films/releases on one disc
  

Wrapped up in cataloguing books

We started in on the books today, testing out how to proceed with the book section of the Mighty Liberry. We're taking a very different approach to books, as we're using the "actual" Dewey numbers rather than ones we're making up cuz we think they're funny.

The way that proper libraries catalogue media items is, to us, pretty boring and far too restrictive. We thought it'd be way kool to approach cds as if they were about certain things. This quickly turned into making puns about their titles, because it's much easier than trying to work out what the overall themes of an album are. Otherwise we were doomed to buying concept albums for the rest of our lives. Music cds are generally put into the 780s, where the rest of music (as a subject) resides. Within the 780 division, the sections are pretty broad, making distinctions like 781 (General principles and musical forms), and 782 (Vocal music). Getting down into different genres of music, you can get into sub-divisions like 781.64 (Western popular music), as opposed to 781.66 (Rock (rock and roll)). So, while "correct", not the most exciting of classification systems.

There is also some variation/inconsistency (depending on your view) in classification, even between items by the same artist. For example, works by Brian Eno are classified in the QUT Library under a few call numbers.

With books, we want to actually be able to find things. And while it was fun making up Dewey numbers for albums, the thought of making up call numbers from scratch for all our books is daunting. And besides, books actually have subjects, so our amateurish fumbling would probably embarass the books.

We've entered 6 books so far. Tellico allows us to search Amazon by ISBN and download the data from there, then we input the extra stuff we want. We're using two methods to pin down call numbers for our books.

1. The call number suggestion on the edition notice. Who are we to argue with what the book wants?
   
2. Scavenging through different library catalogues to see what they're using. Sometimes we find slight disparity between the entries in different libraries' catalogues. I don't think we've quite come up with a way of working out which library's word we're gonna rely on yet.
   

We're also keeping a record of which library catalogue we've cribbed the call number from, what the Dewey taxonomy for that number is, and what the library's subject headings are for that entry.

Of course, we are using schedules from 1989. The recent revision maybe is a bit more hip?

Personal library software

Finding the perfect software to organise our libraries has been a bit of a hassle. I was first looking for something Windows-y and free and flexible enough to handle books, cds, dvds, comics, and anything else we got the urge to categorise and label. These days, I'm running Kubuntu 8.somethingorother, and finding a collection manager was a lot easier. I'm using Tellico at the moment, which seems pretty sturdy for our purposes.

A couple of the major requirements I've been considering so far:

Easy to input data

Putting in the odd one or two books when you acquire them is one thing, starting up a system with four shelves of books is another. You've got to be a certain sort of person to want to fiddle around with this much personal data entry anyway, but no one wants to have to add all of the fields manually. The Library Grail will have to have some major automation going for it, and be able to download data from multiple sources. Just cribbing stuff off Amazon US is not working so well for us.

Flexible

When we started, we envisaged it as a way of organising cds. So we either had the problem that book cataloguers couldn't handle storing artists, or that media cataloguers couldn't handle call numbers. Custom fields are only useful if you can search and sort using them, and you don't have to flick to another tab to input the data.

Movable

No one wants a black hole of a database. If we're inputing heaps of data, we want to be able to get it out of whatever program we're using and shove it into another one.

Free (and open source)

Free is good. Guilt free is better. Let's all try to use non-propriety open source software whenever possible.


I figure for most people's purposes, the excellent web-based services like LibraryThing and Gurulib would be more than sufficient. Or if you prefer to use offline resources, OS-specific programs like Delicious for Macs and a whole bunch of Windows options might be useful. But I haven't found anything really customisable and user-friendly other than this Tellico thing.