Good afternoon everybody,
A late introduction: I'm Andrew Watson, Head of Retrospective Cataloguing at UCL. I'm responsible for the cataloguing of "older" material which includes rare material, but also non-rare material housed in our offsite store. I find this challenging as sometimes the line between what is and isn't rare is rather wavy.
At UCL, we are particularly keen to record provenance information for rare material. Our previous Rare Books Librarian compiled a file of photocopied bookplates (armorial and crested) which can be useful for identification where no name is included. The author index on our library management system is also extremely useful in listing former owners and helping establish who may have owned an item if details do not appear to entirely match.
One drawback with recording provenance information is the occasional lack of records as to who made a gift, the terms of a bequest, etc. This is the sort of information that is so often in librarians' heads but can be lost when they move elsewhere or retire. My advice it to try to pin this sort of information down if you can. We have a collections assessment database where details of each collection are recorded and there is provision for including the source of acquisition and provenance history.
One of the frustrations of attempting to record provenance information is being faced with inscriptions of the type J. Bloggs, or Mrs. X, where you are fairly certain who the person (i.e. their full name) is but not entirely. Recording 700 1 $a Bloggs, J., $e former owner seems a bit of a come-down, but it is always possible to give more information in a note, e.g.: J. [Joe?] Bloggs. Your readers and researchers may be able to help fill in the gaps.
I would be particularly interested to hear how others record provenance.
All the best,
Andrew
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Andrew Watson
Head of Retrospective Cataloguing
UCL Library Services
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel: 01268 561559 (Mon, Tue, Wed)
020 7679 4405 - Internal Ext: 34405 (Thurs, Fri)
Fax: 020 7679 7373
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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From: CIG E-Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katie Flanagan
Sent: 15 April 2015 14:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CIG-E-FORUM] Standards and provenance
Good afternoon, and welcome to the second session of the 'rare books cataloguing' e-forum.
This afternoon we'll be focussing on standards and provenance, but please do continue threads from this morning's session if you would like to.
Provenance is one of the areas where rare books cataloguing differs hugely from other cataloguing. And, whilst normal cataloguing standards are obviously also applicable to rare books, there are other standards to use on top of this.
I've come up with some questions to start things off or please do ask your own on these themes.
- What is provenance and why would you record it?
- How should you record it?
- Have you encountered any problems with recording it in catalogue records, perhaps using a particular library system?
- Can you recommend any books and/or training material about provenance and how to record it ?
- What standards do you use when cataloguing rare books? How do they differ from other standards?
- Has anyone used RDA when cataloguing rare books?
- What do you do about subject headings?
Katie
Please note: I work Mon - Wed each week.
Katie Flanagan BA(Hons), MA, MCLIP
Special Collections Librarian
T +44 (0)1895 266139
Connect with me on LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/katie-flanagan/1b/471/bba>, Twitter<https://twitter.com/KatieDFlanagan>
Brunel University London
Library
Bannerman Centre, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, United Kingdom
T +44 (0)1895 266141
www.brunel.ac.uk<http://www.brunel.ac.uk>/library
Connect with the Library on Twitter<https://twitter.com/Brunel_Library>, Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/#!/BrunelUniversityLibrary>, WordPress<http://bookmarkdaily.wordpress.com/>
