Sheet Music Cataloging Project- Emily Perkins, 12/19/13

Today I inputted data from 53 cards (202-255). I also broke down and added a third subject column! I kept having to make decisions about which subjects to include or place elsewhere because there were 3 or more subjects...but to heck with that! Jeanette said I could just make a third subject field so that is what I did. One thing that threw me today was the Publisher field. While I have often seen publishers spelled or abbreviated different ways, I have never seen a catalog card with 2 publishers and/or 2 locations on the same card. In three neighboring cards, the publisher "Peso Music" was coupled with three different cities: Hollywood, New York, and Hialeah Florida. For the card that had "Peso Music, New York," "Warner Bros." was in parentheses. And for the card that had "Peso Music, Hialeah, Fl.," "Columbia Pictures Publications" was in parentheses...which one is it?? All of these cards were one after another, in the same time period, and composed by the same writing teams. Either they are typos, some other mistake was made, or the music industry (and by extension, music cataloging) is far more complicated than I thought! I will revisit these another day, as it may require some research into the history of that publishing company. I shall leave you with the silliest song title I came into contact with today: "(Boop-boop dit-tem dat-tem what-tem chu!) Three little fishies. (Itty bitty poo.)"

Herrera Metadata Project - Michelle Godfrey, Dec. 18, 2013

Today, I continued working on MSS160-b4-f01. Fortunately, there were no problems encountered.  It's still a little hard to tell how much of this large folder is left to do but it looks like at least the half-way mark has been passed. Many of the documents are just duplicates so that makes some of the process go by faster.

Sheet Music Collection Project - Emily Perkins - 12/12/13

Today I inputted data from 20 cards (181-201). I got a lot of my questions answered by Jeanette today. But the fact remains that music cataloging is hard! This is the first time in my volunteer/intern career that I've really struggled with cataloging. Each place is different, but this one has been the most challenging, and I think will be most helpful to my growth as a librarian! One thing that really relieved me today is I realized both the title and "words by" sections are both MARC21 245 fields. Now I can stop worrying so much about where to stop the title and start the "words by," as a lot of these cards are not so clear on where the title stops and the description/attribution begins. Now that I know that they go together in the MARC record, I feel as if I can stop worrying about that. Jeanette also informed me that I can just add a new subjects column if I continue to encounter cards with more than two subjects! She assured me that I've been doing the right thing by making sure all of the information is recorded into the spreadsheet somewhere, and by continuing to place data in fields where that data was previously recorded. Keep doin' what I'm doin' basically. I can also ignore/drop the "t," "T," and "title:" nonsense that appears in the subjects. The good news is I got to The Doors and Bob Dylan is coming up soon!

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 12/12/13

Today I worked on MSS160-b3-f13. Lots of letters = very straightforward. (The downside is that when I do come across the rare newspaper article, it's several records later before I realize that I didn't switch the "Primary Source" descriptor over to "no"!) A few of the records had already been completed, it seemed, as well.

Still a few records left (though only a handful, I think). :)

Sheet Music Collection Project - Emily Perkins- 11/21/13

This is a belated post. The 21st was my second day working on the Sheet Music Collection Project, and I inputted data from 74 cards from drawer 4 (106-180). I struggled with publishers, as most cards had incomplete citations. I finally decided "Berlin" was a publisher, perhaps a shortening of Irving Berlin, after thinking it was the place of publication for several of these songs. The songs were classical, which contributed to the confusion. I was able to use the Library of Congress authority records to establish Waterson, Berlin & Snyder as a music publishing company. Another thing I found odd that week was that I found several cards where two songs were listed one after the other, but with different composers. I ended up putting the other song in the "other title" field, and the other composer as a co-composer. I continued to be unsure about the 240 and 246 fields, and which rules govern what goes where. I resisted making my own subjects, and was mystified by the "t" subject placeholder. Adventures in Cataloging!

Herrera Metadata, Michelle Godfrey - Dec. 11, 2013

Still making progress on MSS160-b4-f01. There was a problem with the computer shutting down to that awful blue screen for no reason and that slowed things down a little. I was able to resume and complete more items and now this folder is probably close to being half way finished.

Here's a look at the official letterhead from the City of Houston in 1948.
 

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 12/5/2013

Today I completed: MSS160-b3-f14, -f15, -f19, & -f20.

In folder 14, there is a Viva Johnson poster that apparently was not digitized.

The finding aid description for folder 20 has a misspelling, I noticed: Allan Shivors: Telegrams to and Speech on Behalf of, by John J. Herrera. The governor's name should be Shivers. I included it in the Notes as it's written in TARO, but wanted to point that out.

One letter in f19 was hard to follow since it seemed to be partially in some shorthand:

Continuing in the vein of how little politics really change...

MSS160-b3-f14-05

Shab, sheet music collection project

Today I managed to input the data from 64 cards of drawer 3 of the sheet music collection project (therefore, I have finished the C's and am now in the D's section of the drawer).  As usual, most of the cards were routine.  However, I did encounter some more foreign languages pieces of music which I used Google Translate to help me catalog (Cecilia, I have highlighted these cards in blue on the spreadsheet to have you review them and make sure I didn't make any errors).  I also had a lengthy note field one of the cards due the table of contents being included.  Aside from these, I had no particular concerns, except I'm uncertain whether short descriptions of songs included next to the title on the card are to be cataloged in the title field or should be in some other field like the note field - for now, I've included them in the title field (Cecilia, please let me know in two weeks if that is incorrect and needs to be changed).  Thanks!

Herrera Metadata Project, Michelle Godfrey - Dec. 4, 2013

Still working in MSS160-b4-f01.

For the most part, everything seems to be working well except for a small inconvenience when accessing the document scans. After clicking on the image thumbnail, the new window would open as it should but nothing would appear on the screen even after waiting several minutes for it to load. Fortunately, clicking on the Refresh/Reload button once or twice worked to bring up the document scan.