Category Archives: Catalog

Cataloging Cheats with Chopac

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Creating an original bibliographic record can be a daunting and time-consuming task.  The reality for many libraries is that they simply cannot afford to pay for access to high-quality bib records and may not have a trained cataloger on staff.  Fortunately, there are free tools that can help libraries out.  One such program is the Chopac MARC tool (available at http://chopac.org/cgi-bin/tools/azorder.pl).

This tool can be thought of as an Amazon to MARC converter. You can query Amazon by title/author, keyword, ISBN, etc. When you locate the record you want, the converter will pull information from Amazon’s database and populate that data into a MARC bibliographic record that can be edited and exported to your ILS. Features of the tool include RDA conversion, quick linking to WorldCat records and call number and LCSH suggestions.

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The Chopac tool can handle multiple formats and will generate records for music, videos and videogames. A nice feature of how it handles music is that it automatically populates a formatted content notes fields for each track on the disc.

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The resulting MARC records are by no means perfect, but they are certainly serviceable and take care of what are commonly considered “essential” fields for bibliographic description. Catalogers or other library staff should enhance the records with more information when needed.

This blog post was written by Jocelyn Lewis, Catalogue Librarian, Indiana State Library. For more information, contact the Indiana State Library at (317)232-3678 or “Ask-A-Librarian” at http://www.in.gov/library/ask.htm.

Cataloging the John Shepard Wright Memorial Library

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Since 1899, the Indiana State Library has had a long-standing relationship with the Indiana Academy of Sciences (IAS) to house the John Shepard Wright Memorial Library. According to the IAS website, “The Indiana Academy of Science is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting scientific research and diffusing scientific information; to encouraging communication and cooperation among scientists and to improving education in the sciences.”

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The John S. Wright collection has more than 12,000 volumes located in the ISL’s closed stacks. The collection consists largely of non-subscription journals and continuations in science and natural history.One of the jobs of a catalogue librarian is to take care of collections donated from various individuals. The John S. Wright Memorial Library is one of these collections. We wanted to showcase this collection today because of the upcoming annual IAS meeting.

Saturday, March 21 marks the 130th Annual Meeting of the IAS at the JW Marriot in downtown Indianapolis. The event is open to members and non-member, but you must register on the IAS website prior to the event.

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*Photograph from the 1942 IAS Annual Meeting

This blog post was written by Jocelyn Lewis, Catalogue Librarian, Indiana State Library. For more information, contact the Indiana State Library at (317)232-3678 or “Ask-A-Librarian” at http://www.in.gov/library/ask.htm.