Check Fixed Field Lang 008/35-37 – Mandatory

Check Field 041 – Language Code(s) – Required

Don’t forget a 242 Translation of Title by Cataloging Agency – Required

Your greatest resources are your fellow librarians, and catalogers.  I cannot emphasize this point enough, communication with your colleagues is key, my boss calls this type of collaboration collective cataloging.  Sooner or later we all have to catalog something in a foreign language we are not familiar with, ask, people are more than willing to help.  It is not unusual for a fluent subject specialist to offer their help.  Be prepared; have scanned title pages and title page versos ready.

If you need help with German or French language cataloging you can try twitter using the term- #cataloging several catalogers using twitter have mentioned cataloging items in those languages.

For other language help I suggest sending a message to the AutoCat mailing list, if you don’t want to be flooded by e-mails set you personal message setting to read online only and you can just check the website for replies under the date and title of your e-mail.  This list is followed by thousands of catalogers all over the world.  All of the information presented here was either gleaned from AutoCat posts, or from my interactions with experienced catalogers.  Don’t feel bad about asking a question, one thing that is clear to me is that no one can be an expert on all areas of cataloging, especially when it comes to foreign languages.

Foreign Language Resources:

Start with the ALA-LC Romanization Tables:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

Books on Foreign Languages For Librarians:

A Manual of European Languages for Librarians by C. G. Allen
Bowker, 1^st ed. c1975, 2nd c1977
0859350282
73-6062

Manual of Foreign Languages for the Use of Librarians, Bibliographers, Research Workers, Editors, Translators, and Printers by Georg F. von Ostermann

African Languages:

General Note:
There are many, many dialects, until you find an expert who can accurately translate a work don’t assume when the language is unknown.  Keep looking till you find one.

Arabic Language Resources:

A dictionary of modern written Arabic by Hans Wehr
Note, I was informed that short vowels are not written in Arabic script but must be supplied by the translator, if you don’t speak the language find an expert, it would be very difficult to accurately transcribe this language with no working knowledge. Fortunately, I was aided by a librarian who was an expert in this language.

German Langauge Resources:

Online Dictionary: http://www.pons.de/

Crash Course in reformed German: http://www.duden.de/deutsche_sprache/sprachwissen/rechtschreibung/crashkurs/beispiele

English Language Course in reformed German:
http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/german/dnk/spelling.htm

Portuguese Language Subject Headings:

Vocabulário Controlado USP (USP controlled vocabulary) –
http://143.107.73.99/Vocab/Sibix652.dll/Assuntos

Office for Literacy and Outreach Services Toolkits (ALA)

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/olos/toolkits.cfm

10 Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers by Liz B. Davis

http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/2009/09/10-tips-for-teaching-technology-to.html

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large Vol. 9 No. 12

http://citesandinsights.info/v9i12a.htm

Developing Research & Communication Skills Guidelines for Information Literacy in the Curriculum – Middle States Commission on Higher Education

http://www.msche.org/publications/Developing-Skills080111151714.pdf

ILI-L, the Information Literacy Instruction Discussion List (hosted by ALA)

http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/ili-l

IL Resources & Tools by Lisa Metzer

http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=b93aa8ef223445ff8919191fbc3ed23c

Information literacy in the disciplines (ACRL wiki)

http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php?title=Information_literacy_in_the_disciplines

LION: Library Information Literacy Online Network – Downloadable & Embeddable Guides

http://liontv.blip.tv/

Project Information Literacy

http://projectinfolit.org/

Turning Topics Into Searches by Iris

http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2009/11/turning-topics-into-searches.html

UCLA Library Research Guides – Teach Information Literacy & Critical Thinking!

http://guides.library.ucla.edu/teachingtips


Advice:

The Top Ten Things a new Sci/Tech Librarian Should Know: Developing Core Competencies (STS Issues in Sci/Tech Library Management Discussion Group ALA Annual Meeting, Toronto June 22, 2003) Victoria S. Mitchell


Looking Toward the Future:

Citizen Scientists Reconnecting Science with Civil Society (pdf)by Jack Stilgoe ~ If you only look at one link I have listed I highly encourage you to read the first part of this pamphlet, starting on page 13 of the pdf file.

Libraries and e-science by Lorcan Dempsey

Training to Climb an Everest of Digital Data by Ashlee Vance

What Should Social Software for Science Look Like? By Cameron Neylon

Science Readings and Resources:

Annual Reviews – Subscription Based Resource

http://www.annualreviews.org

Bibliography of Scientific and Industrial Reports Prepared for the web by Robert L. Bolin

http://www.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/bsir-xml/

BioMed Central The Open Access Publisher – Free Access, registration required.  This site hosts journals on a variety of topics, mainly medical, including journals on ecology, plant biology and zoology.

BIRN Biomedical Informatics Research Network

http://www.birncommunity.org/

BookBoon.com – Online Ad Financed Textbooks in Business, Math, and Science

Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives

http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/index.html

Deep Dyve Online Rental Service Announcement

http://www.deepdyve.com/corp/about/press/20091027

Directory of Open Access Journals

http://www.doaj.org

Government Information Sources for Science and Technology – ACRL wiki

http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php/Government_Information_Sources_for_Science_and_Technology

Gray literature: Resources for locating unpublished research by Brian S. Mathews C&RL News, March 2004 Vol 65., No. 3

Green Foostep – An assessment tool for reducing carbon emissions from building construction projects by the Rocky Mountain Institute ~ I’ve seen several reference questions about carbon emissions recently; it’s also been suggested as a planning resource for creating new library buildings.

INFOMINE Scholarly Internet Resource Collections

http://infomine.ucr.edu

LibGuides by Springshare – Paid Service

http://www.springshare.com/libguides/

LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)

http://www.lockss.org/lockss/Home

Mendeley Research Networks

http://www.mendeley.com/

NLM Gateway – Search multiple NLM resources in one search.

Orphan Data

http://orphandata.org/

Rethinking Science & Technology for the 21^st Century by Alan Maynard

http://2020science.org/rethinking-science-technology-for-the-21st-century/

RSABG Library: Research Sources in Botany by Harvey R. Brenneise and Gary D. Wallace ~ This was created to support an annual graduate level research class in the field of Botany.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

“The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB) presents selected English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.”

Science: So what? – So what? By Alan Maynard

http://2020science.org/2009/11/27/science-so-what-so-what/

SPARC Guide: Income Models for Supporting Open Access

http://www.arl.org/sparc/publisher/incomemodels/

Top 10 Sci-Tech Books 2009 by Donna Seaman for Booklist Online

http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=3885134

Trailblazing Three and a half centuries of Royal Society publishing ~ 60 articles selected from over 60,000 published by the Royal Society (UK) between 1665 and 2010.

Translation resources on the Web: A guide to accurate, free sites by Rebecca A Martin and Sarah Mc-Hone-Chase C& RL News, June 2009 Vol 70, No. 6 ~ Due to the Internet access to scholarly information from foreign countries is increasing the need for translation, while I would not recommend using these resources to try and translate an entire article they may be use in translating abstracts, or enough of an article to determine whether or not it is worth having fully translated.

The UCverse

http://ucverse.universityofcalifornia.edu/

WolframAlpha ~ “Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything”


Blogs:

2020Science by Alan Maynard ~ Anything Alan writes is worth reading and, while he is involved with policy, he accurately represents a large portion of the scientific community’s thoughts.  He is also very good about citing sources and explaining in detail why he disagrees with alternate points of view, enabling the reader to make a more informed decision on whether or not they agree with him.

RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/2020science

Confessions of a Science Librarian by John Dupuis

RSS Feed – http://scienceblogs.com/channel/rss.php

CS Librarian News by Missy Harvey ~ Missy is the Computer Science Librarian at Carnegie Mellon University.  The focus of her blog is to distribute information in the areas of computer science, electrical & computer engineering, and robotics.

RSS Feed – http://cslibrarian.net/feed

Discussion for best practices and links to Escience Portal, Supporting biomedical librarians everywhere…

RSS Feed – http://escienceportal.wordpress.com/feed/

Science Blogs – Scroll down the page and you can choose your news feed topic.  The definition of Science being used encompasses politics, and the arts, as well as the hard sciences and education.  Be warned it is easy to be overwhelmed by their subject specific news feeds, it may be better to choose a few frequent posters to follow than all people posting on a given subject.

Science in the open, An openwetware blog on the challenges of open and connected Science by Cameron Neylon

RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceintheopen


Just For Fun:

Drive for geothermal power heats up on US campuses by Dinesh Ramde

For an overview check out OCLC’s RDA presentation slides here-

http://www5.oclc.org/downloads/webinars/RDA_09Oct30_slides.ppt

To listen to the audio presentation that went along with the slides-

https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=36106547&rKey=0f2d91de97506801

Crisis or Opportunity?

Cataloging, Catalogers, RDA, and Change

By Diane Hillman

http://www.slideshare.net/smartbroad/crisis-or-opportunity-cataloging-catalogers-rda-and-change

…Help! The New Cataloging Code is Coming!

A Presentation to the California Library Association Annual Conference Pasadena, CA November 2, 2009

By

Chamya P. Kincy ALCTS CCS RDA Programming Task Force

Luiz H. Mendes ALCTS CCS RDA Planning & Training Task Force

http://alcts.ala.org/crgwiki/images/1/10/RDA_CLA_Presentation.pdf

Also check out J. McRee Elrod’s AutoCat post on June 1, 2009 title Major RDA changes.  Please note that you must subscribe to view the archives but you can choose a no e-mail option.

http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/autocat.html


Even More Information:

Best Links for RDA by Chad

http://ac.bslw.com/community/blog/2009/09/best-links-for-rda/

More RDA Resources by Chad

http://ac.bslw.com/community/blog/2009/09/more-rda-resources/

The Battle of RDA: Victors of Victims by Rick J. Block

http://www.columbia.edu/~rjb57/NYTSL.html

RDA in Canada: Presentation from LAC

http://laureltarulli.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/rda-in-canada-presentation-from-lac/

Resource Description and Access Happy Fun Time Companion by Codlin And Short

http://sites.google.com/site/codlinandshort/home

(Do not view this site in a minimized window, it looks better and makes more sense in a full size browser window.)

Now that you’ve read all about RDA you may or may not be in favor of it.  For those looking for an alternative, or those curious to check out an alternate point of view, check James Weinheimer’s brain child:

Cooperative Cataloging Rules

http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/

A recent article in the New York Times featured information about putting a bar code on places.  I think this would be an easy fun way to reach out to the more technologically inclined patrons in your community.  All you have to do is decide what information you want to put in your barcode (a URL,Text(250 char.), Phone Number, or SMS) and enter the information at a site like Kaywa which will then generate your free bar code which can be placed near the entrance to your library.  You can use this to promote events, link people to your events webpage, or make announcements. All it costs is a few minutes of your time, a piece of paper, ink, and some tape.

There was also an interesting article on WIRED: How the iPhone Could Reboot Education by Brian X. Chen.  While I do not think that paper books will go away, I do think it is important to engage students in a way that shows we are paying attention to their interests, and how they learn.  Another interesting article, from Library Journal, covers the new EBSCOhost Mobile, and Summon mobile, smartphone interfaces to their electronic resources.

There is a large focus, and rightly so, on how technology changes interactions with our patrons, but what about how it changes the interactions between librarians?  Without the advances in technology we would not have listserves, Twitter topics (#librarians, #cataloging), or Facebook pages. Check out Library Web Chic’s recent post: Tools for Remote Collaboration and Interaction, and remember that your fellow librarians are an invaluable resource.

I encourage anyone interested in technology to check out Alan Maynard’s 2020Science.org.  Starting today, Monday December 14, 2009 he will have 10 guest bloggers, with differing points of view, answering the question “How should technology innovation contribute to life in the 21st century?”.


Tips & Tutorials:

7 Tips to Make Your Web Site Mobile-friendly by Igor Faletski

10 LOL Cat Laws of Web Services for Smaller and Underfunded Libraries from the Librarian in Black Sarah Houghton-Jan

50 Free Open Courseware Classes for Web Designers by Best Web Design Schools

Full Web Building Tutorials by W3Schools.com

How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic by Marshall Kirkpatrick

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website from digital inspiration

Modern CSS Layouts: The Essential Characteristics by Zoe Mickley Gillenwater

Web Accessibility from the American Library Association

W-E-B-S-I-T-E, Find Out What It Means To Me by Brett Bonfield

Five Essential Apps for Your Nonprofit Facebook Page provides guidance on how to market your nonprofit(library) on Facebook more effectively.

Six Things Libraries Should Tweet by Andy

100 Ways to Use Twitter in Your Library by Mobile Libraries

Twitter for Organizations by the Lowrider Librarian.


Leaders of Academic Libraries:

Bookless Libraries? by Steve Kolowich

Libraries of the Future from Inside Higher Ed

View from the Trenches:

Reviving the Academic Library by Johann Neem

The Hyperlinked Library in Times of Change and Challenge by Michael Stephens


Sources of News & Information

ACRL Tech Connect
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/proftools/techconnect/index.cfm

Campus Technology
http://campustechnology.com – Website
http://campustechnology.com/RSS-Feeds/All-Articles.aspx – RSS Feed

David Lee King
http://www.davidleeking.com/ – Website
http://www.davidleeking.com/feed – RSS Feed

Journal of Information Architecture
http://journalofia.org/

The Librarian in Black Sarah Houghton-Jan
http://librarianinblack.net/ – Website
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Librarianinblack – Choose Your RSS Feed Here

Library Web Chic
http://www.librarywebchic.net/

Libraryman
http://www.libraryman.com – Website
http://www.libraryman.com/blog/feed/ – RSS Feed

Library Tech Talk
http://libtechtalk.wordpress.com/ – Website
http://libtechtalk.wordpress.com/feed/ – RSS Feed

LibWorm: Librarianship RSS Search and Current Awareness
http://www.libworm.com

The Loose Canon Librarian
http://loosecannonlibrarian.net/

Tame the Web
http://tametheweb.com/

TechKNOW a quarterly publication by the Technical Services Division of the Ohio Library Council
http://www.library.kent.edu/page/11226

Web Science Trust
http://webscience.org


Need more ideas of how to combine new technology with library service?  Check out:
Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data
Edited by Nicole C. Engard
ISBN 978-1-57387-372-7
http://books.infotoday.com/books/LibraryMashups.shtml

Who do you look to for technological innovation?  What issues do you find interesting?