Most of the people in our TS department also have desk duty, so we understand that accessability doesn’t always mesh with cataloging standards. In the past, I have found that catalogers who are behind the scenes all the time can be more concerned with properly following cataloging rules than considering how easy (or difficult) it will be for someone to find what he or she is looking for.

I’m skimming off some of the ideas mentioned here to figure out what would work best for our students (high school).

After skimming through the comments, though, it seems like it might be helpful to point out some catalogers who are totally on board with simple, patron-oriented records. Christine Schwartz blogged about this two days ago (http://www.catalogingfutures.com/catalogingfutures/2011/05/cataloging-at-its-core-the-minimum-viable-record.html), and Saskia at All Things Cataloged wrote about it a month ago (http://allthingscataloged.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/simplification-as-an-opportunity/), and each of them refer to other catalogers who are talking about the same issue.

I’m a front-of-the-library sort of person at heart, but I was just hired to a tech services position, so I’ve been trying to find ways to see how catalogers and public services folks can work together to make the library a better place for patrons.

Second, as someone else pointed out, some of this is up to the vendor. Clearly, Amazon has their data (and software) organized to be able to do this, but I seriously doubt they are using AACR2 / MARC. So, even if a library has the data organized in a manner that can help you with this issue (a *huge* if, IMO), the vendor must then be able to offer a software solution.

Clearly this was a patron initiated hold. What we do in similar situations when a staff initiates the hold, is to put holds on several of the items. Then when the patron receives the item, they can have us cancel the remaining holds. Now that the patron is aware of the issue, they could do the same thing in the future or they could ask. Not ideal, but you try to do the best that you can with what you have while striving for those future improvements.

But why not have it that it doesn’t matter to the customer, unless they want it to matter?

My question: A user was looking for the film “Society of the Spectacle.” [This is a French movie that does have a uniform translated title.] We do have this book in two different forms in English, thus with an English title to access it. However, our version of that item as a movie (the French movie) does not have the English title attached to it.

Can you fix it so a search for “Society of the Spectacle” brings up the movie as well as the books?

This was the response:

“The reason for which you did not find the movie when searching by “Society of the spectacle” is because the movie is in French and produced in France, respectively its original language and country–per cataloging rules, it does not require an added title entry in English in the bibliographic record.”

Ok, so it doesn’t require it, but I’m asking if we can add it.

“If you searched by the uniform title “Société du spectacle” you could have displayed everything we have, regardless of format and language, i.e., three books and one video.”

But that’s not how the user searched for it. We cannot define what the user searches for, right? The goal is to bring things out of the catalog that are appropriate for the search. What if the user didn’t even know that it was a French movie?

“The movie in question is part of the larger DVD set “Oeuvres cinématographiques completes” and goes on disc no. 2 along with another 22 min. material titled “Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles…,” which means that if I add the title “Society of the spectacle” in this record I need to add the English versions (if any) of all the other French titles included on the DVD set. Fortunately, there is a 2003 book “Complete cinematic works,” an English version of “Oeuvres cinématographiques completes” by Guy Debord published in California and that helps. Per your request, I locally enhanced the record to allow better discovery of these materials by our patrons. You may now search by either English or French versions of the title and get the same results.”

Ok. So the answer was yes, I can add the English version of the title. The cataloguing rules really are so particular and don’t seem to actually relate to accessibility for the user, but are more about uniqueness of the item!