Friday, September 30, 2011

Day 10

Day 10
09/30/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 80


Today I started off with an easy one that I worked on a little bit on Tuesday.  It's a psychology thesis titled Purging Disorder:  An Exploratory Investigation of Phenomenoloy, Psychological Correlates, and Distinctiveness as a Diagnostic Category by Kathryn Elizabeth Smith.  As the title suggests, it's a study on Purging Disorder, but Purging Disorder is not in LCSH.  So went with "Eating disorders" since Purging Disorder is an Eating Disorder.  Since the testing in the study is performed solely on undergraduate students, I decided to use the heading "College students--Psychological testing" which I used once before on another ETD.  Here's what my final headings were:

650 0Eating disorders.
650 0College students ǂz Psychological testing.

The only change that Sevim thought would be better is changing "College students--Psychological testing" to "College students--Health and hygiene."  Everything else was fine.

The second ETD I cataloged today was an art exhibition thesis titled Silhouette by Dane E. Nighswander.  Cataloging this thesis has made me realize that I really don't care for cataloging art theses.  This thesis was a collection of sculptures that looked to be stone sculptures, but I wasn't 100% sure.  The theme for his scultpures was memory which seemed pretty interesting.  The subject headings aren't so hard to pin down, but the call numbers can be pretty difficult.  I used the author's name with the subdivision "Exhibitions."  I also used the subject heading "Sculpture--21st century--United States--Exhibitions" and "Memory--Exhibitions."  I wasn't sure if I should used the heading "Stone carving" instead of "Sculpture."  I don't feel really confident about the memory heading, but I thought it would be good to add a heading that had to do with the theme of the art.  We'll see if that works.  The call number was by far the most difficult part of cataloging this ETD.  I ended up eventually choosing the call number "NB16.K46 ǂb N54 2011" which is a call number for "Sculpture—Exhibitions (by place held)—United States. By city and museum or other place of exhibition, A-Z."  I am not totally confident if this is the call number that I should have used.  I guess we'll see.  Here's my subject headings:

60010Nighswander, Dane ǂv Exhibitions.
650 0Sculpture ǂy 21st century ǂz United States ǂv Exhibitions.
650 0Memory ǂv Exhibitions.

I ended up taking about "Memory--Exhibitions" before Sevim came to check my work because I wasn't really confident in it.  I'm glad that I did because she said that it wasn't something that she would have put in.  Sevim didn't have a problem with my headings (although I did have the order mixed up in the "Sculpture--..." heading), but she wasn't satisfied with my call number.  After trying and failing to find the perfect call number where we could show that it was an exhibition, we settled for the call number "NB212" which is for "Sculpture—History—Special regions or countries—America—North America—United States—20th century—General works."  Sevim wasn't happy with this call number, but it was the best one we could find.  Here's both my full call number and subject headings:

090  NB212 ǂb .N54 2011
60010Nighswander, Dane ǂv Exhibitions.
650 0Sculpture ǂz United States ǂy 21st century ǂv Exhibitions.
The third ETD I cataloged today was a history thesis titled Torn Identity: Workingwomen and Their Struggle Between Gender and Class, 1932-1950 by Michele M. Curran.  This thesis is about the challenges and struggles of working women to "balance their identity as women and workers."  It covers the time periods of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Post-War years.  It shows how struggle that working women have gone through over these time periods as their roles have changed depending on the situation in America at the time.  I immediately did a search for workingwomen in LCSH and that lead me to the heading "Women employees" which doesn't really sound right to me, but that's the heading they want me to use.  I subdivided that by "United States," "History," and "20th century" since that is what the thesis specifically covers.  I also searched for feminine identity which lead me to the heading "Women--Identity" which I used.   I wanted to add another subject heading, but I couldn't think of anything else to add.  These two headings seem to cover what the book is about.  Determining the call number for this one was a little tricky.  I found general call number that I wanted to use fairly easily, but it required me to look at two different tables that were pretty confusing.  LCC needs to find a way to make their tables less confusing.  Here's the headings that I used.

650 0Women employees ǂz United States ǂx History ǂy 20th century.
650 0Women ǂx Identity.

Sevim wasn't quite satisfied with subject headings that I had assigned.  None of my headings survived her checking over it.  She didn't really think that the heading "Women--Identity" was appropriate because it seemed more abstract than reality based (or whatever).  So after some diliberation, we decided to use the heading "Women--United States--Social conditions--20th century."  After looking at some records on WorldCat, Sevim decided that it would be better to change "Women employees--..." to "Women--Employment--..."  We also added the subject heading "Sexual division of labor--United States--History--20th century."  After much work, this is what we ended up with:

650 0 Women ǂx Employment ǂz United States ǂx History ǂy 20th century.
650 0 Sexual division of labor ǂz United States ǂx History ǂy 20th century.
650 0 Women ǂz United States ǂx Social conditions ǂy 20th century.

The fourth ETD I worked on today was an English thesis titled William Faulkner's The Town, Psychoanalysis and the Reassessment of Lack by Daae Jung.  It's hard to describe what this thesis is about in sentences, but it primarily deals with trauma in the works of William Faulkner (specifically The Town, but other works are discussed in the first chapter) and psychoanalytic interpretations of that trauma.  Because this work was about Faulkner's work, I made a name-title heading of "Faulkner, William" and The Town.  I also used the headings "Psychic trauma in literature" and "Psychoanalysis and literature."  The call number was a little difficult because literary call numbers require a little bit more work, but it wasn't too bad.  When Sevim checked my work, she agreed with both the Faulkner heading and the psychic trauma one,  but she was less sure about the psychoanalysis one.  We performed a WorldCat search for works with that heading which helped convince her that it was appropriate.  Here are my subject headings:

600 10 Faulkner, William, ǂd 1897-1962. ǂt The town.
650 0 Psychic trauma in literature.
650 0 Psychoanalysis and literature.

The records I worked on today were the last records from the second batch.  So after I finished them, I started working on the descriptive cataloging of the new batch.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Day 9, Not Day[9]

Day 9
09/27/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 72
 

 Today I start out by just getting into the thick of it with the ETDs.  The first ETD that I tacked today was a computer science thesis titled Performance Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Network Simulation at Scale by Ameet Mohan Naik.  This thesis was pretty hard for me.  I wrote down several ideas for subject headings and none of them found results in LCSH.  I eventually used Wikipedia and searched for wireless sensors which lead me to a page on wireless sensor networks.  "Wireless sensor networks" is a heading in LCSH.  I could not find any other headings that were appropriate in LCSH.  I decided to send a Facebook message to my friend Josh West to see if he had any ideas for subject headings since he just received his bachelor's in Business Information Systems which involves networking.  Hopefully this will be fruitful.  The call number for this was kind of weird as well.  It was under the "Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering."  This seemed a little strange, but I soon found out after some research that there isn't really a dedicated call number for computer science stuff.  This might be something that LC might want to rectify in the future.  For my subject headings, this is what I ended up with:

650 0 Wireless sensor networks.

Sevim checked my work on this one and said it was all good.

For my second ETD, I had an English thesis that titled The Points Where They Meet and Other Stories by Brittany Nicole Stone.  This thesis was a collection of short stories about working class people.  So I simply used the subject heading "Working class--Fiction" to show this.  The call number for this thesis was the main part of the work.  I found the base number that you use which is PS3619.  This number is for works by an American author whose last name starts with the letter "S" and wrote sometime since 2001.  Then you have to cutter for the author and then title.  I decided to expand the author's cutter to three numbers after doing a search on KentLINK for the base call number.  The call number I ended up with was:

090  PS3619.T664 ǂb P65 2011

And the subject heading that I ended up with was:

650 0Working class ǂv Fiction.

Sevim said that I did good work on this one as well.  No changes were necessary.

The third ETD that I cataloged today was a chemistry dissertation titled Protein Profiling Analysis of Multiple Sclerosis and Experiental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis Brain Tissue by Sausan Azzam.  This dissertation is about mitochondrial dysfunction and its relationship to MS.  I don't know much else about it than that.  Multiple Sclerosis was a subject heading in LCSH.  I couldn't find anything to do with mitochondrial proteins originally, but I eventually found the heading "Myelin basic protein" by looking at the author-assigned keywords and searching LCSH for it.  I couldn't find the term mitochondrial dysfunction, but I did find the heading "Mitochondrial DNA--Abnormalities" which really seemed to fit what the article was talking about.  Wikipedia was pretty helpful in helping me make the decision to use "Mitochondrial DNA--Abnormalities."  That Wikipedia article made it clear that mitochondrial DNA was referring to the same thing that the dissertation was referring to.  When Sevim checked my work, she said that everything looked good.  Here are the subject headings that I used:

650 0Multiple sclerosis.
650 0Mitochondrial DNA ǂx Abnormalities.
650 0Myelin basic protein.

Sevim checked the thesis I did yesterday about flooding in Ohio titled Individual Risk Perceptions of Flooding: Evaluating the Associations between Experience, Perceptions, and Preparedness.  She liked the work I had done for that most part after I explained why I had used certain headings and she looked at some parts of the thesis.  The only one I had to take out was "650 0 Flood conrol ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion" and that was because it's a broader term of one of the headings I already had.  So I ended up with:

650 0Floods ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion.
650 0Risk perception ǂz Ohio.
650 0Floods ǂx Risk assessment ǂz Ohio.
650 0Flood damage prevention ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Day 8

Day 8
09/23/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 64


I decided to start with a new ETD this morning rather than continue working on the one that I had been doing on Tuesday.  So the ETD that I start with is a anthropology thesis titled The Vaeakau-Taumako Wind Compass:  A Cognitive Construct for Navigation in the Pacific by Cathleen Conboy Pyrek.  This thesis is about the non-instrument forms of navigation that the Vaeakau-Taumoko people of the Pacific Islands use, specifcally the wind compass which hasn't really been documented as much as other forms.

I had a bunch of ideas for headings such as wind compass, navigation techniques, non-instrument navigation, cognitive construct or mental model, way-finding, and Taumako.  Most of these ideas didn't lead to anything.  The only headings I found were "Navigation" and "Duff Islands (Solomon Islands)."  The latter heading is the one that is used for the Taumako Islands.  I searched through the navigation headings, but I couldn't find anything more specific.  Wikipedia gave me the idea to search for "Polynesian Navigation" which also wasn't a heading, but I realized that I was able to subdivide "Navigation" by "Polynesia."  I also added the heading "Navigation--Duff Islands (Solomon Islands) to make it more specific.  Although I'm not sure if I should make two headings or subdivide "Navigation" twice.  Here's what I ended up with:

650 0 Navigation ǂz Duff Islands (Solomon Islands)
650 0 Navigation ǂz Polynesia.

When Sevim checked this, she told me that I needed to make a change to the first heading.  That was the only think I needed to change and it ended up looking like this:

650 0Navigation ǂz Solomon Islands ǂz Duff Islands.
650 0Navigation ǂz Polynesia.

The next ETD I worked on was pretty easy.  It was a geography thesis titled Climatology of Freeze-Thaw Days in the Conterminous United States:  1982-2009 by Jason S. Haley.  The title of this thesis pretty much explains what it's about.  Freeze-thaw cycles are when things freeze and then they thaw later on.  There was no subject heading for freeze-thaw cycles, but a search on Wikipedia lead me to the term weathering which is a subject heading.  I did a Google search to corroborate that weathering is related to freeze-thaw cycles and it turned up some positive results.  So I decided to use the subject heading "Weathering--United States" since the paper is geographically limited to the United States.  The paper also discusses climate change and it is a subject heading listed by the author, so I decided to use the heading "Climatic change" which is the LCSH equivalent.  The headings I finished with were:

650 0 Weathering ǂz United States
650 0 Climatic changes ǂz United States

Sevim agreed with me on both of these headings.

The third ETD I did today was finally a philosophy thesis.  It was titled Deliberation and the Role of the Practical Syllogism by Timothy Alan Elsey.  It was about aspects of Aristotelian virtue ethics focusing on deliberation.  He did his own analysis of Aristotle's writings in Nicomachean Ethics and then an analysis of some other writers who covered the same topic that he covers.  It's a pretty interesting thesis.

I had the problem that almost every term I wrote down for a potential subject heading was not in LCSH.  I tried deliberation, virtue ethics, Aristotelian ethics, and ethical evaluation.  None of those were present.  After scanning through the "Ethics" entry in LCSH, I decided on "Decision making--Moral and ethical aspects," and "Ethics."  I also used "Aristotle" as a subject heading because his line of thought was the subject of the book, and I eventually made it a name-title entry using "Nicomachean Ethics" as the title because it was the work that was most discusses in the thesis.  I also ended up dropping the "Ethics" subject heading because "Decision making--Moral and ethical aspects" is a narrower term of "Ethics."  I really wish the had a subject heading for virtue ethics.  This is what I ended up with: 

600 00 Aristotle. ǂt Nicomachean ethics.
650 0 Decision making ǂx Moral and ethical aspects.

NOTE:  I didn't really need Wikipedia for this given my knowledge of philosophy.

Sevim also checked the last ETD that I did on Friday which was Traversing the 24-Hour News Cycle:  A Busy Day in the Rhetorical Life of a Polite Speech by John Oddo.  For this ETD, I came up with the following heading on Tuesday:

650 0 Intertextuality.
650 0 Criticical discourse analysis.
650 0 Rhetoric.
650 0 Journalists.
600 10 Powell, Colin L.

Sevim thought the first heading was good and accept the second one after I explained to her how I came by it.  She was skeptical of "Rhetoric" (and I wasn't entirely sure about it either), and thought I needed to change "Journalists" and add a subdivision to "Powell, Colin L."  She thought that we should change "Journalists" to "Journalism" and subdivide it by "United States" and "21st century."  She also wanted to add a subdivision to "Powell, Colin L." that would indicate that it was about a speech given by him, but that wasn't an option in LCSH.  So we decided to add an additional heading that indicated that the paper was dealt with a speech.  This is what we ended up with: 

650 0 Intertextuality.
650 0 Critical discourse analysis.
650 0 Journalism ǂz United States ǂy 21st century.
600 10 Powell, Colin L.
650 0 Speeches, addresses, etc., American ǂz United States ǂy 21st century.

The fourth ETD I did was a geography thesis about the risk perceptions of people who living in Painesville, Ohio of flooding.  The thesis is titled Individual Risk Perceptions of Flooding: Evaluating the Associations between Experience, Perceptions, and Preparedness by Christina Longo.  I thought this one was going to be easy, but it turned out to be pretty difficult.  After reading through the thesis, I realized that it was primarily about risk perception in relation to flooding in that Ohio town, but there was know way to combine "Risk perception" with "Floods" in LCSH.  I had a lot of other aspects that could be covered, but the primary aspect could not be done by simply using one heading.  I did a search on WorldCat to get some help and found a solution that decent but definitely not optimal.  I found that I could create the heading "Floods--Ohio--Public opinion" to try to cover the two most important aspects.  It was alright but by no means what I wanted.  I also used other flood-related subject headings in combinantion with the "--Ohio--Public opinion" subdivision, and floods with the "Risk assessment" subdivision.  This is what I ended up with:

650 0Floods ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion.
650 0Floods ǂz Ohio ǂx Risk assessment.
650 0Flood conrol ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion.
650 0Flood damage prevention ǂz Ohio ǂx Public opinion.
650 0Risk perception ǂz Ohio.

The call number for this one was a little difficult as well because I couldn't find a call number that really satisfied what the thesis was about.  I finally decided on GB1399.4.O3 as a call number which means "Physical geography—Hydrology. Water—Ground and surface waters—Rivers. Stream measurements—Floods—By region or country—Other regions or countries, A-Z."  I'm not happy with this call number because it doesn't convey the risk perceptions aspect of the thesis.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Day 7

Day 7
09/20/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 56


The first thing I did today was start on a new ETD titled "Fathomless, Symbolic, and Threatening" : Capital Identity in Motion in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Styron's Set This House on Fire by Aaron Solomon Finley.  This ETD was about the myths of Southern identity following the Civil War and during the Industrial Revolution.  The author uses these novels to show "an inherent contradiction makes up the foundation of a Southern identity; and that the globalization of industrial capitalism exposes that contradiction."  I found the introduction of this ETD very interesting and would recommend it.

When it came to assigning subject headings for this ETD, I had problems finding the headings that I wanted to use.  I wanted to use The South and Identity in some combination, but I couldn't find the combination or even The South.  The correct heading for The South is "Southern States"  I also used "Identity (Psychology)."  I also wanted to be able to have a heading to capture the industrial capitalism aspect of it, but the only thing I could find was either "Industrialization" or "Industrial revolution."  I decided to use "Industrial revolution" because it means that a work deals with "radical socioeconomic changes" which seems to capture the point of the thesis better.

I couldn't think of a call number and had some questions about the subject headings I chose, so I asked Sevim to come over and help me with it.  The first thing she notices was that I didn't have any subject headings for the authors and their works.  So I created name-title subject headings using their entries in the Name Authority File.  After that, she thought that my headings were a little too broad, so we decided to change the heading "Industrial revolution" to "Industrial revolution in literature and add the subdivision "In literature" to the "Southern States" heading.  Finally she suggested that we do a search in WorldCat for "Southern States" and "Identity."  We found some works that had the heading "Group identity--Southern States" which seemed really appropriate for this ETD.  So we added that.

Determining the call number for this work was a little difficult.  Sevim thought it best to have a literature call number for this one instead of a history call number which makes sense.  But creating the literature call number is a little more intense.  We decided to find the call number for William Faulkner because he was the first author mentioned in the title.  Once we found his number we decided to use the call number for "Biography and Criticism" and then had to create a very specific cutter number that involved going to OhioLINK and finding cutters other catalogers had created for works about Cutter.  It was pretty intense.  This is both the call number and subject headings I ended up with:

090  PS3511.A86 ǂb Z783224  2011
600 10 Faulkner, William, ǂd 1897-1962. ǂt Sound and the fury.
600 10 Styron, William, ǂd 1925-2006. ǂt Set this house on fire.
651 0 Southern States ǂx In literature.
650 0 Group identity ǂz Southern States.
650 0 Industrial revolution in literature.

After finally checking that record, Sevim checked the records I did on Friday and found them both to be good except for the fact that I didn't make a call number for the Liquid Crystal ETD.  So we added one (the Physics call number) and were done.

The second ETD I was an art thesis titled Skeptical Perceptions by Jonathon Schwarz.  The artists project was a ceramic sculpture of himself (I think) sounded by a cage.  He explained that this work symbolized something about perception and people.  It will really strange.  This was the first art thesis I've done, and I figured it had a special format that I didn't know.  So I asked Bonita and Sevim about it.  At first, I thought that I should use "Ceramics" as the subject heading for the work, but the scope not for it didn't really seem to match.  I said to use "Pottery" for ceramic art, but the work didn't really seem like pottery.  When Sevim came over to help me, we found the heading "Ceramic sculpture" after she recommended searching for "Sculpture."  Bonita and Sevim told me that you have to add the heading for the artists and subdivide that heading by "Exhibitions."  We subdivided the "Ceramic sculpture" heading by "21st century," "United States," and "Exhibitions."  This was the final product:

600 10 Schwarz, Jonathan ǂv Exhibitions
650 0 Ceramic sculpture ǂy 21st century ǂz United States ǂv Exhibitions

The third ETD that I cataloged today was a chemistry dissertation titled Studies on the Coordination Chemistry of Vanadium, Barium, and Cobalamins by Riya Mukherjee.  This ETD was very complicated and hard for me to understand because of my lack of knowledge.  I also didn't have access the full dissertation, so I only had the abstract to work from.  I ended up looking up important words from the title and abstract as well as the author-supplied keywords in LCSH to see if they were there  There were a few that weren't but several of them were.  I ended up using all the terms I found in LCSH.  The main problem I had was deciding what call number to use.  I eventually decided to the call number QD189 ǂb .M85 because it was the one that came up the most when for all the terms I had.  This call number was for Inorganic Chemistry--Salts which matched the author-supplied subject heading "Inorganic Chemistry."  This one was pretty tough.  Wikipedia wasn't really helpful for this one either.  Here's the subject headings I ended up with:

650 0 Barium.
650 0 Vitamin B12.
650 0 Vanadium.
650 0 Captopril.
650 0 Bioconjugates.

The fourth ETD that I worked on today was a psychology thesis titled Meaning Self-Efficacy Scale (MSE): Development and Validation of a Measure of the Perceived Ability to Generate Meaning After Traumatic Life Events by Edward E. Waldrep Jr.  This thesis was testing the Meaning Self-Efficacy Scale (MSE).  Finding meaning "following traumatic experiences is associated with less subsequent distress."  So the study tests the MSE which is "designed to examine the perceived ability to generate meaning following traumatic experiences."  The first potential subject headings I thought of were for meaning and trauma.  These were also in the author-supplied keywords.  The other keyword was psychometrics which was also used in the abstract.  There are several subject headings for meaning, but I chose "Meaning (Psychology)" because it seemed the most appropriate for the purposes of this thesis.  The LCSH for psychological trauma (which is the type of trauma being studied here) was "Psychic trauma" which I personally think is a terrible heading.  It implies weird things.  The heading for psychometics is simply "Psychometrics."  I also found the heading "College students--Psychological testing" while doing WorldCat searches using various combinations of the other subject headings I chose.  After asking Sevim about that, she thought that I should use it.  So I did.  I didn't need Wikipedia to complete the subject cataloging for this ETD.  My final headings are:

650 0 Meaning (Psychology)
650 0 Psychic trauma.
650 0 Psychometrics.
650 0 College students ǂz Psychological testing.

The last ETD I cataloged today is an English dissertation named Traversing the 24-Hour News Cycle:  A Busy Day in the Rhetorical Life of a Polite Speech by John Oddo.  For this ETD, I did not have access to the full-text, so I had to rely on the abstract for my subject cataloging.  This ETD is an analysis of how journalists and the media transform rhetorical events like speeches by reporting on them.  The author uses a specific example of Colin Powell's 2003 presentation to the United Nations.  I got a lot of the potential subject headings from the abstract that I looked up in LCSH.  I found Wikipedia helpful in determining what some of these terms like critical discourse analysis was.  I've decided to use "Intertexuality" as my first subject heading because the author starts off the abstract talking about this and explains that this is the subject of the dissertation.  I choose "Critical discourse analysis" because it was one of the author-assigned keywords and after reading about what it was on Wikipedia, it really seems to fit the subject of the dissertation.  Then, I chose "Rhetoric" because it was supplied by the author and the abstract is talking about speeches and alluding to persuasion.  I also used the heading "Journalists" because the dissertation is about the intertexual transformation that journalists peform on things they report on.  It seems important, but I'm not sure about it.  I might remove it.  The final heading I choose is a name heading for Colin Powell his presentation is what is covered in the dissertation.  Here are my headings:

650 0 Intertextuality.
650 0 Criticical discourse analysis.
650 0 Rhetoric.
650 0 Journalists.
600 10 Powell, Colin L.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Day 6, Starting Subject Cataloging for 2nd Batch

The first ETD that I did subject cataloging for today was Depression, Anxiety, and Social Support Fail to Predict Heart Rate Recovery in Exercise Stress Test Patients by Colleen Marie Cole Mattson.  This ETD is basically whether depression, anxiety, and lack of social support have predict negative effects on the recovery of people who have suffered from cardiovascular disease.  As the title suggest, these things fail to predict this.  I had a hard time deciding whether to use the heading "Heart--Diseases" or "Coronary heart disease."  At first I decided on the former, but a search on WorldCat returned that more records with the latter convinced me to use the latter.  I also decided to use the heading "Cardiovascular system--Disease" as well because the ETD refers to it quite a bit.  These references also caused me to use this heading as the first subject heading.  Then, I decided to use the subdivision "Psychosomatic effects" for both "Coronary heart disease" and "Cardiovascular system--Disease" because it showed up often in the WorldCat searches I did and because the Wikipedia article on "Psychosomatic medicine" said that it was "the influence that mind has over physical processes."  Here's the headings that I decided to use:

650 0 Cardiovascular system ǂx Diseases ǂx Psychosomatic effects.

The second ETD I worked on today was Development and Characterization of Blue Phases Made From Bent-Core Liquid Crystals by Stephanie Tausanoff.  I've heard horror stories about Liquid Crystal  ETDs from the other people in the office since I started working on my practicum, and this was my first Liquid Crystal ETD.  And it did not disappoint.  This ETD used a lot of terminology that I didn't understand and wasn't in LCSH.  I tried several different terms and all of the searches came up empty.  I eventually just decided to use this as my only heading:

650 0 Liquid crystals.

I didn't get as much work done today because of a really interesting lecture on the history of the West Virginian constitution.  The speaker was really good and very funny.  Time to start the weekend!

Day 6, Descriptive Cataloging the Second Batch

Day 6
09/16/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 48
On Tuesday, I finished subject cataloging all of the first batch of ETD records that were in the system when I first started my practicum.  Now I am starting on the second batch of ETDs that contains 18 records.  My first batch of ETDs cotained 12 records.

Since I hadn't done any descriptive cataloging of ETDs in two weeks, I had to readjust to doing it and remember all of the steps that needed to be taken to make sure that the record is accurate.  I made a couple of mistakes in the beginning, but I quickly discovered that I had made them and corrected them.  While working with these records, I came across something that I haven't dealt with yet.  For two of the records in the new batch, the full-text version has not been released yet and won't be released while I'm doing my practicum.  Sevim guided me through what to do in this kind of situation, and it was pretty easy to deal with.  I was able to deal with the second one of these by myself.

Half of the records in the new batch need a Name Authority Record (NAR) because either the authors didn't follow the directions and use the same name they used in their thesis or dissertation on the ETD form, or the author has an common name that's already in the Authority Record.

I finally got a Philosophy thesis.  That makes me pretty happy.  I believe it is about Aristotle.  Maybe it'll give me a good idea of what I want to do mine on whenever I get the opportunity.  I can't think of anything else to add.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Day 5, ETD Work

The first ETD I worked on today was Conceptualizing Audience in Digital Invention by Elizabeth Conrad-Reiter Tomlinson.  This is an ETD that I've been putting off doing because it didn't seem very clear what exactly it was about, and there also wasn't a chapter labeled "Introduction."  I had a hard time pinning down what subject headings I wanted to use for this ETD, but after searching I finally made some decisions.  The first heading that I wanted to use was "Writers," but that is not an official heading and it sends you to "Authors" when you want to use it.  Even though "Authors" isn't exactly the heading I would like to use, I'm going to use it.  The other heading that I found that I think is perfect is "Online identities."  This ETD is about "how audience considerations inform the text-based identity construction of writers composing in digital environments" and the author uses examples of people creating online identities on networking and dating sites.  This subject heading is kind of perfect.  I also thought about using the heading "Rhetoric" because the author talks about it rhetoric in the dissertation and it is the subject heading on the OhioLINK ETD entry, but I don't think that the ETD is really about Rhetoric.  So I ended up with:

650 0Online identities.
650 0Authors.

When Sevim and I went over this one, we decided to add "Online social networks" because the ETD talks about creating online identities on eHarmony and LinkedIn.  We also decided to remove "Authors" because it might make people think that this ETD is about famous, published authors.  So we ended up with:

650   0 Online identities
650   0 Online social networks

The second ETD I did was Consonance in Information Systems Projects:  A Relationship Marketing Perspective  by Pei-Ying Lin.  The title of this ETD basically told me what it was about, and the abstract and introduction confirmed it.  The author defines consonance as "harmony or agreement among components."  The ETD was basically using Relationship Marketing to get everyone on the same page on Information Systems projects.  Relationship marketing has its own heading in LCSH, but Information Systems does not.  I used wikipedia to figure out that Information Systems is "an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study."  I had a hard time determining which subject heading to use.  I eventually found the heading "Management information systems." and made the decision to use it.  I could not find anything to represent the consonance aspect of this ETD.  I'm going to ask Sevim about it when we look over it.  Here what I ended up putting: 

650 0Relationship marketing.
650 0Management information systems.

Sevim didn't like the "Management information systems" heading because she thought it was too specific and might people think that it was specifically about management information systems.  We made the topic broader by using "Information storage and retrieval systems."  She also suggested that we add the heading "Project management" because the ETD is about making people come to one mind while working on Information Systems projects.  We kept the "Relationship marketing" heading and based our call number off of it.

650   0 Relationship marketing
650   0 Project management
650   0 Information storage and retrieval systems

The third ETD I cataloged today was Development of a Landslide Hazard Rating System for Selected Counties in Northeastern Ohio by Ahmad Yousef Dalqamouni.  This one was pretty straightforward.  The ETD is simply about the development of a landslide hazard rating system in Northeastern Ohio, and I found the heading "Landslide Hazard analysis" which fits perfectly.  I subdivided that heading by "Ohio."  That seemed to be all I needed.  Here's what's in Connexion:

650 0Landslide hazard analysis ǂz Ohio.

Sevim was pretty happy with this one and made no changes to it.

The last ETD that I cataloged today was the one that I had been putting off and was most frustrating.  It is Conservatism, Earnings Persistence, and the Accruals Anomaly by Gulraze Wakil.  This ETD is an Accounting dissertation, and it caused me several headaches.  I tried to enlist my sister to see if she could help me with it, and she gave me some ideas.  In the end, I contacted the author, and he told me that the term that I had been thinking about ("accural basis accounting") was not the term he would use but he suggested another term also.  Unfortunately the first term he suggested was not in LCSH, but the second term he suggested was.  Sevim and I decided to go with the broad "Accounting" as the first subject heading.  The second heading we used was "Capital market" which was suggested by the author.  This is what we ended up with: 

650 0Accounting.
650 0Capital market.

After completing all of these, I started working on the descriptive cataloging for a brand new batch of ETDs.

Day 5, Checking Friday's Work

 Day 5
09/13/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 40

The first I did today when I got into the office was get Sevim to check the last two ETDs I worked on yesterday which were Use of Remote Sensing in the Collection of Discontinuity data for the Analysis and Design of Cut Slopes and Grammar Efficiency of Parts-of-Speech Systems.

For the first one, the only changes that I made were to remove: 

650 0Statstistics.
which left me with:

650 0Slopes (soil mechanics) ǂx Stability.
650 0Remote sensing.

I want to note that Wikipedia helped me get some information with remote sensing that helped me make the decision I made.

For the second one, Sevim said that the two headings that I gave were good after I explained why I had chosen them.  The main thing I explained was why I chose "Computational Linguistics" which was because after searching WorldCat for works with "Mathematical Linguistics" as a subject heading, many of them also had "Computational linguistics."  Also, this ETD seemed to put a lot of emphasis on the number crunching which seems computational to me.  So I ended up with:

650 0 Mathematical linguistics.
650 0 Computational linguistics.

Wikipedia wasn't really helpful with this one.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Day 4

Day 4
09/09/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 32

The first thing I did today was go over the work that I did on Tuesday since Sevim had to leave early.  I did fairly well on all of the records that I worked on.

On Socioecological of the Guianan bearded saki, Chiropotes sagulatus, all the headings that I chose were used in the final record.  This file was completed.

For Value Relevance of Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry, the only subject heading that I could think of was: 

650 0Pharmaceutical industry ǂz United States.

Sevim and I talked and thought about this ETD for a while, but neither of us could come up with any better subject headings so we just stuck with this one.

Collaborating with Industry to Ensure Regulatory Oversight:  The Use of Voluntary Safety Reporting Programs by the Federal Aviation Administration was the ETD that was the one that I think we spent the most time going over.  Sevim said that I should change both "Aeronautics, Commercial" headings to "Airlines."  We also added  the subdivision "United States" onto both of the now "Airlines" headings.  Those were the changes we made.  This is what the subject headings looked like after we were finished:

650 0Airlines ǂx Self-regulation ǂz United States.
650 0Airlines ǂx Safety regulations ǂz United States.
61010United States. ǂb Federal Aviation Administration.

After we finished going over those records, I decided to read an article that Sevim emailed me yesterday.  The article was about subject analysis of ETDs in the Hard Sciences.  I found this article extremely helpful, and after reading it, I decided to tackle some of the hard science ETDs on my list.

The first ETD I worked on was called Mitochondrial heteroplasmy in Mimulus Guttatus.  This ETD was about "the causes and consequences of mitochondrial heteroplasmy in Mimulus guttatus (Phrymaceae), a flowering plant."  The first thing I learned was that the Mimulus Guttatus is called the Common Monkeyflower.  I learned this from looking up Mimulus Guttatus in ClassificationWeb.  After using Google, I found a good definition of heteroplasmy from the Genetics Home Reference ("The situation in which, within a single cell, there is a mixture of mitochondria (energy producing cytoplasmic organelles), some containing mutant DNA and some containing normal DNA").  Because this definition contained the word, mutant, I decided to use the subject heading "Plant mutation."  I decided to subdivide the heading "Common Monkeyflower" with "Genetics" because this paper seemed to be focused on the genetics of the common monkeyflower.  When Sevim came over to check my work, we spent some time trying to find out as much information about all of this as we could and eventually decided to stick with those two headings.  So my entry in the record looked like this:

650 0Common monkeyflower ǂx Genetics.
650 0Plant mutation.

The second article I cataloged today was The role of vasopressin 1b receptor in the regulation of sensorimotor gating.  This article was pretty tough to catalog.  The only heading that I came up with on my own was "Vasopressing -- Physiological effects."  Determining this heading was pretty easy.  But I felt that there were more headings that could be added, but I had a hard time thinking of what they should be.  I thought about adding the heading "Neurosciences," but I wasn't sure.  Sevim came to check the work I had done at about this time because she was about to leave.  We both were pretty stumped by this one.  But after using Worldcat and Wikipedia, we finally settled on the heading "Sensorimotor integrating."  We decided on this heading because we wanted to have a subject heading about sensorimotor gating because it's an important part of the ETD, but there was not a heading for that in LCSH.  We found "Sensorimotor integrating" after doing some searches on WorldCat for "sensorimotor gating."  So we decided to use it.  The final product looked like this:

650 0Vasopressin ǂx Physiological effects.
650 0Sensorimotor integration.

The third ETD I worked on was Use of Remote Sensing in the Collection of Discontinuity data for the Analysis and Design of Cut Slopes by James E. Fisher.  This one seemed pretty straight forward from looking at the title and the abstract.  I have decided on the following subject headings: 

650 0Slopes (soil mechanics) ǂx Stability.
650 0Statstistics.
650 0Remote sensing.

I picked "Slopes (soil mechanics) ǂx Stability" because the abstract talked about slope stability and LCSH directs you to the heading I used when searching for slope stability.  The abstract talks about statistical analysis and LCSH leads you to the heading "Statistics" when searching for that.  Finally, remote sensing seemed very important to the ETD, so I put that in there as well.  I'm thinking of looking to see if I can add "Cut slopes" as well, but I'm not sure.

The last ETD I worked on today was "Grammar Efficiency of Parts-of-Speech Systems.  This ETD is giving me some trouble.  The title gives a good indication as to what it is about, but I didn't know how to turn that into subject headings.  Bonita directed me to look at the keyworkds and I found "Mathematical linguistics" which is an LCSH heading as well.  I'm thinking of adding "Computational Mathematics" because of a WorldCat search I performed.

It's time to get out of here and enjoy the weekend!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Day 3

Day 3
09/06/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 24

Today was a very busy day for my practicum.  I started the day by finishing up a little reading I had been doing over the last two days I've been here.  After that, Sevim gave me a task involving fixing some ETD records in KentLINK and an Excel spreadsheet.  I had to find the Department of the ETDs and put the right 793 field in the MARC record in KentLINK using Millennium and also add that information to the Excel spreadsheet.  This task did not take me very long, but I liked that it allowed me to get some more experience use Millennium which will be really helpful to know in the long run.

I worked on four ETD records today and completely finished the first one I did.  It's the first one I've completely finished and have uploaded to KentLINK.  I'm very happy about this.

The first ETD I did was title Challenging Appropriation:  Modern Moko and Western Subculture by Ridgley Dunn.  This was a very interesting ETD.  It was about the Maori (of New Zealand) tradition of ta moko which is a form of tattooing that involves carving the skin rather than simply puncturing it.

 
Ta moko has great cultural significance to the Maori.  The ETD talks about how the effect of Western usage of Ta moko effects the Maori.  It also discusses groups such as the Modern Primitives who have adopted this practice.  The subject headings for this ETD weren't too hard to pin down, but I had to make some adjustments after Sevim looked over them, but overall, I thought it wasn't too bad.  I found Wikipedia really helpful in learning exactly what Ta moko was and how it is different from normal tattoos.  I really enjoyed this ETD.  Here's the subject headings I chose:

650         0    Tattooing |z New Zealand
650         0    Maori (New Zealand people) |x Social life and customs
650         0    Identity (Psychology) |z New Zealand

The next ETD I worked on was Socioecological of the Guianan bearded saki, Chiropotes sagulatus by L. Tremaine Gregory.  I had a pretty easy time with this ETD.  I used Wikipedia to find more information about the bearded saki which helped me find the appropriate subject heading for this type of monkey.  I also found a previous work by the author about the bearded saki which had subject headings that helped guide me.  I ended up choosing these subject headings: 

650 0Pitheciidae ǂx Behavior ǂz Suriname.
650 0Pitheciidae ǂx Ecology ǂz Suriname.
61010Brownsberg Nature Park (Suriname)

There wasn't an authority file for the Brownsberg Nature Park, and I'm going to ask Sevim about this when I see her on Friday.  I chose to add the park as a subject heading because a previous work used it as a subject heading and because the research took place at this park.

The third ETD I cataloged was Value Relevance of Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry by Mary E. Schramm.  This ETD was about how innovation drives growth in the pharmaceutical industry.  I'm going to have to go back and look at this one.  The only subject heading I've chosen so far is: Pharmaceutical Industry.  I'm deciding on whether or not I want to add the subdivision technological innovation or not as well as any other subject headings.  This one was a little tricky.

The last one that I worked on today was Collaborating with Industry to Ensure Regulatory Oversight:  The Use of Voluntary Safety Reporting Programs by the Federal Aviation Administration by Russell William Mills.  This article was about how the voluntary safety reporting of the FAA is working really well in spite of the disasters that have occurred in other industry where voluntary safety reporting has also occurred.  For this ETD I chose the following subject headings:

650 0Aeronautics, Commercial ǂx Safety regulations.
650 0Aeronautics, Commercial ǂx Self-regulation.
61020United States. ǂb Federal Aviation Administration
650 0Administrative agencies.

I'm not 100% happy with these headings.  I'm not sure if I can add Self-regulation to Aeronautics, Commercial.  Unfortunately, I don't think any other subject headings really apply to this ETD.

That's all that I'm going to write today.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Day 2

Day 2
09/02/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours:16

Today started off with some technical issues which haven't been completely resolved yet.  Hopefully they will be resolved by the time I come in on Tuesday.

Today I started actually working with ETDs.  First I was shown how to find the records in OCLC Connexion.  After that, Sevim guided me through the process of determining what description elements needed to be added to the Bibliographic records.  I worked on one with Sevim guiding me through the process, then I worked on a few by myself which Sevim check after I finished them.  I did fairly well on adding the descriptive data, only making a few errors.  After that, I finished the rest of them.  One thing I learned from dealing with the descriptive data is that people who right theses and dissertations cannot follow directions when it comes to putting the same name on the dissertation or theses and the ETD form.


After I came back from lunch, I proceeded to read some things about LCSH and subject cataloging and the introduction of the first ETD that I was going to do the subject cataloging for.  The dissertation I cataloged was about Pennsylvanian politicians', like Ben Franklin, influence on the United States during the time of the American Revolution and afterwards.  After working with Sevim, I decided on five subject headings:

Pennsylvania ǂx Politics and government ǂy 1775-1865.
Pennsylvania ǂx History ǂy Revolution, 1775-1783.
Franklin, Benjamin, ǂd 1706-1790 ǂx Influence.
Morris, Robert, ǂd 1734-1806 ǂx Influence.
United States ǂx Foreign relations ǂx History ǂy 18th century.
United States ǂx Commerce ǂx History ǂy 18th century.

I tried some other ones, but I found that these worked the best.  The other ETDs that I will be doing will be much more difficult because they will be in subject areas that I don't understand as much.