Instructions for Berkeley Meeting library catalogers Raph Levien 10 Jan 2001 The master.txt file The library's catalog is kept in a file called master.txt. The master location of this file is currently the "Master" folder on the desktop of the computer in the library. This file is a simple text file, with a stylized format. Each book has its own record in the file. Records are separated by blank lines. A typical record follows: file: BFMLIB2/65 c: BX7652.B865 F9 1964 a: Brinton, Howard H., 1884-1973 t: Friends for 300 years: the history and beliefs of the Society of Friends since George Fox started the Quaker Movement p: Philadelphia: Pendle Hill Publications and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1964 r. by Howard H. Brinton s: Society of Friends -- History 3 copies Each record begins with a file number. For BFMLIB1-BFMLIB6, these correspond to disk numbers of the old QuickCard system. Starting at BFMLIB7, the numbers don't correspond to a particular disk, but we're keeping the same numbering scheme for consistency. Here is the complete list of field names: file: the file number, generally BFMLIB/. n2 should count up from one for each BFMLIB sequence. c: Library of Congress classification number. Try to find these in the Library of Congress online catalog first. Failing that, try the Melvyl (Berkeley) and Tripod (Swarthmore) catalogs. If it's not found in any of these, it probably needs original cataloging. a: Author. This should be in Lastname, Firstname bdate-ddate form. Only one author is listed here. If significant, additional authors can be listed as alternate entries. t: Title. When there is a subtitle, it is separated by a colon. r: Responsibility. This is usually in "by Firstname Lastname" form. This is also the usual place to add "tr. by Translator" or "ed. by Editor". Multiple authors may be listed, as in "by First and Second". p: Publisher. This is in "Place: Publishing Company, Year" format. US places are typically "City, ST", where ST is the 2-letter Postal state abbreviation. The state can be omitted for well known cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. If the year is present on the title page, it is written with no adornment. If it is not on the title page, but is present in a copyright notice, it is written as c1984. If it is guessed, it is in [square brackets]. s: Subject. These are according to the Library of Congress. Up to six subject lines may be provided. i: Series. This is given if the book is part of a series that people may want to search, such as "i: Swarthmore Lecture" e: Edition. Typically "e: 2nd ed" or "e: revised ed" l: Alternate entry. This is most often used for additional authors. n: Notes. Most commonly used to signal something of special interest about the book, for example "n: signed by author". d: Description. We generally don't use this field. Don't break a record across multiple lines. The maximum length for a: is 80 characters, and 120 for t:. Abbreviate if necessary to stay within these limits. Note that these were hard limits under QuickCard, but are still worth following to prevent fields from becoming unwieldy. We don't handle umlauts or any other characters from a non-English alphabet. Just leave the umlaut off, or, in the case of a German double-s, write "ss". In addition to the fields marked by colons, a special line " copies" signals more than one copy. Comments may be interspersed in the file. A comment line begins with "#". If the comment line contains the word "delete" or "deleted", that signals that the record has been deleted. This is significant because we do not reuse file numbers once assigned to a book. It used to be that we needed to keep the record in place so that the numbers would count up continuously. Our new software can handle jumps in file numbers, but it's still good practice. One of the most common reasons to delete a record is that there is a duplicate record for the same book. In this case, it's nice to indicate that it is a duplicate, and ideally the file number of the record which subsumes this one. Here's a good example: # delete this, it duplicates bfmlib3/47 file: BFMLIB2/189 c: HV881.M67 1983 a: Morrison, Grace t: To love and let go p: Alameda, Ca.: Pillar Press, 1983 r: by Grace Morrison s: Foster Home Care -- United States -- Case Studies s: Family -- United States -- Case Studies Books in process A newly cataloged book may be added directly to the end of master.txt. We've often done cataloging in two stages, however: first, entering the author, title, and publisher information, then cataloging all those records in a batch. We keep two files of books in process. Add information from new books into needscat.txt (in the Bfmlib folder). Then, when cataloging, move these records directly into master.txt along with the cataloging info (usually c: and s: fields). If the cataloging info can't be found, move the record into orig.txt, indicating that the book needs original cataloging. Status An optional field is "status:". Books that are on the shelf or in normal circulation should generally not have a status field. Books that are lost, missing, or otherwise exceptional _should_ have a status field, as follows. "status: missing" indicates that the book is unaccounted for. "status: lost" indicates that it was checked out to someone who cannot find it. "status: withdrawn" means that the book was purposefully withdrawn from circulation. Printing labels Cut and paste the labels needing printing into their own scratch file. Run "Prlabel.pl" (from the Bfmlib folder), then type the name of the scratch file. It then asks, "Print only last label if more than one [y/N]?". Type "y" if you only want the last label in a set, or "n" if you want all labels printed. Make sure the printer is set to "NLQ" first, by pressing the "NLQ" button. You should hear two short beeps.