Thursday, January 2, 2014
Sheet Music Cataloging Project- Emily Perkins, 1/2/14
Today I inputted data from 86 cards. I came across something new today when I saw a Collection referenced where the Publisher is usually indicated. If no publisher is listed, can a collection go in the publisher field? This specific collection was the "Houston Saengerbund Collection." As I worked today I had more thoughts about the publisher field. Are there authorities for record companies (perhaps LOC) so as to provide some uniformity and improved searchibility? Every other time a company is listed it's shortened, or abbreviated, or lengthened. How important is uniformity in this case? I feel like if there's any area where uniformity is important, it's cataloging. Also, many times a single card will list multiple Publishers, sometimes appearing after a backslash, a comma, or within parentheses after the first publisher is listed. While this relation is unclear to me, I think that is less important than finding a single way to separate these elements so that a person who knows one of the two or three publishers associated with that piece of music can find the MARC record easily. Perhaps a semicolon with a space on either side? I guess it depends with how the spreadsheet gets uploaded. I am also starting to notice a correlation between the "Instrumentation"
field and "Subject 1 (600, 650, 700)," when that subject is not a
person. And I am beginning to believe that "Popular song sheet" should not be listed in the instrumentation field. But I am not sure where else I would like to see it.
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Hello, my name is Shab Vakil and I'm one of the other volunteers on the sheet music collection project. I wanted to comment on your observation that "popular song sheet" does not belong in the instrumentation field. I thought about it and I think you're right. The instrumentation field is more like a descriptive field for what type of instruments the sheet music is written for. I think "popular song sheet" would probably fit best in the content note field, which ideally describes the type of music or contents in the music. I don't think it would go in the general note field because this field is for more general notes, such as who recorded it, who sang it, etc. (does that make sense?) It's a fine line and I'm always struggling with it personally but if I had to choose, the contents note is where I would put it if it were up to me. Thanks for your observation! :)
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