Day 12

Day 12
10/07/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 96

On Tuesday, I worked on a political science dissertation titled Deciding to Not Decide:  A Longitudinal Analysis of the Politics of Secondary Access on the U.S. Supreme Court by Andrew A. Povtak.  This is probably the most interesting ETD that I've read so far.  It's a study of the political leaning of the Supreme Court under three different Chief Justices (Warren, Burger, and Reinquist) and how that affects the Courts decision to not hear cases due to a lack of standing. I'm sure that I'm not describing it effectively, but I found it exceedingly interesting.  The first subject heading that I decided to put was "United States--Supreme Court--Decision making."  I found the Supreme Court heading pretty simply by using the name authority file, and eventually found the decision making subdivision while looking for a subject heading for it.  The dissertation made great use of the word "justiciability," so I thought that would be a great subject heading.  When looking it up in LCSH, it lead me to the subject heading "Judicial power" which I decided to subdivide by "United States."  I decided on the subject heading "Jurisdiction--United States" because the dissertation talks a lot about that concept.  The call number for this one was pretty tricky.  I found too call numbers that might work:  KF8742 or KF8748.  The first is a treatise or monograph about the Supreme Court and the second is a piece of criticism about the Supreme Court.  I decided on the former because it didn't really soon like a critical piece but rather an investigative or analytical piece.  Wikipedia wasn't really needed here.  Here are the subject headings I chose:

610 10 United States. ǂb Supreme Court ǂx Decision making.
650 0 Judicial power ǂz United States.
650 0 Jurisdiction ǂz United States.

Sevim was happy with my subject headings.  She thought that I should choose the KF8742 call number.

The second ETD that I cataloged today was a art education thesis titled A Depiction of Art Education in an Ohio Metropolitan Profit-Charter School System by Amanda L. Boyd.  This thesis investigates the experiences of six art teachers in profit-charter schools in Ohio Metro areas.  The thesis seemed to talk about At-Risk Youth, but I'm not sure if it was enough to warrant a subject heading.  I thought the thesis was about both art education and art educators, so I chose subject headings for both of them.  For art education, the LCSH subject heading is "Art--Study and teaching," and for art educators, the heading is "Art teachers."  I subdivided both of these by "Ohio."  Because the thesis was specifically about art education in Metropolitan Profit-Charter School Systems, I chose the headings "Charter schools" and "Metropolitan areas" and subdivided both of them by "Ohio."  I couldn't find any other subject headings for this.  Wikipedia wasn't really needed here.  Here are the headings I can up with:

650 0 Art ǂx Study and teaching ǂz Ohio.
650 0 Art teachers ǂz Ohio.
650 0 Charter schools ǂz Ohio.
650 0 Metropolitan areas ǂz Ohio.

Sevim only suggest a couple of changes to this one after talking with me about it.  She didn't think that the "Metropolitan areas--Ohio" subject heading was needed, and I should take it out.  Also, after checking what grades the teachers interviewed in the thesis taught, she suggested that I change the heading "Art--Study and teaching--Ohio" to "Art--Study and teaching (Elementary)--Ohio."  Those were the only changes that were needed.  Here are the final headings:

650 0Art ǂx Study and teaching (Elementary) ǂz Ohio.
650 0Art teachers ǂz Ohio ǂx Attitudes.
650 0Charter schools ǂz Ohio.
The third ETD that I cataloged today was an art thesis titled Embodying Fiber: Artful Adornment by Dena J. Gershon.  I have found that art theses can either be really hard or pretty easy.  This was ended up being not that difficult.  The art in this thesis is felt art, specifically felt jewelry.  The first think I did was make the artists name a subject heading and subdivided it by "Exhibitions."  Then I decided on two subject headings.  The first I decided on was "Felt work--United States--21st century--Exhibitions" and the second was "Textile jewelry--United States--21 century--Exhibitions."  I decided to make my call number using "Felt work" because I couldn't find a good correlation with "Textile Jewelry."  "Felt work" had a call number that allowed me to cutter by the artists, so I ended up with the call number "NK8998.G47 ǂb A4 2011."  Wikipedia was not necessary.  Here are the subject heading I ended up with:

600 10 Gershon, Dena J. ǂv Exhibitions.
650 0 Felt work ǂz United States ǂy 21st century ǂv Exhibitions.
650 0 Textile jewelry ǂz United States ǂy 21st century ǂv Exhibitions.

Sevim was happy with my work on this one.

The fourth ETD that I worked on today was a English dissertation titled A Critique of Vygotskian Scholarship in Writing and Literacy Studies: The Role of Marxist Dialectics in the Discussions of Method by Yuri Maziev.  This was one of the ETDs that doesn't have full-text access, so I had to catalog it using only the abstract.  This was one of the hardest ETDs I've cataloged thus far.  The abstract was really hard to read and not very helpful.  The dissertation has something to do with Lev S. Vygotsky's and Alexei N. Leont'ev's theories on writing and literacy studies.  It also uses Marxist dialetical method to do something.  The only subject headings I could think of were "Marxist criticism" and "Pyschology."  After being stumped for a little bit, I asked Sevim for help.  She was about as stumped as I was.  She suggested that we find some information about Vygotsky and Leont'ev studied.  We learned via Wikipedia that they studied developmental psychology with a special attention on language development.  Then, we performed a WorldCat search to determine what subject headings works by Vygotsky were cataloged under.  We found the subject heading "Psycholinguistics" came up several times, and because of this fact, we decided to use it instead of "Psychology."  Sevim wanted to take out "Marxist criticism," and I happily obliged her.  The call number was pretty straightforward.  Here's the subject heading we ended up with:

650 0 Psycholinguistics.

The fifth ETD that I worked on today is a psychology dissertation titled Development, Reliability and Validity of the Health Risk Behaviors Inventory: A Self-Report Measure of 7 Current Health Risk Behaviors by Leah A. Irish.  The dissertation is a study on undergraduates and about whether they partake in health risk behaviors (physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, inadequate sleep, cigarette smoking, alcohol use, illicit drug use, and risky sexual behaviors).  Health risk behavior was the first idea for a subject heading that I had, but it is not a subject heading.  The other idea I had was health risk assessment, but that is only used as heading for when there are environmental risk factors.  There was no subject headings for anything that had to do with unhealthy behaviors or unhealthiness.  The first subject heading I decided upon was "Health behaviors" because it seems to fit really well.  The other subject heading I decided on was "Undergraduates--Health and hygiene" because it also captures pretty well what the dissertation is about.  The call number for this one was easy peasy.  I didn't need to look anything up on Wikipedia for this one.

650 0Health behavior.
650 0Undergraduates ǂz Health and hygiene.

Sevim didn't think I needed the "Health behavior" subject heading because the "Undergraduates--Health and hygiene" subject heading covered it all.  She also suggested that I add the subdivision "United States" to the "Undergraduates--Health and hygiene" subject heading.  So here are the headings I ended up with:

650 0Undergraduates ǂx Health and hygiene ǂz United States.

The sixth ETD I cataloged today was a creative writing English thesis titled Life in Imperfect Forms by Alexander Todd Cox.  The full text for this ETD was not available, but since it's a piece of creative writing with no overarching theme, I'm pretty sure there would be no subject headings.  So all the work went towards creating a call number.  The call number I came up with was PS3603.O9 L54 2011.  PS3603 is for a contemporary author whose last name starts with the letter C.  The .O9 is the cutter for his name (Cox) starting with the second letter.  The L54 is the cutter for the title.  Sevim suggested that I change the first cutter for this one based on what is in KentLINK, so I decided to change it to O889.

The seventh ETD I cataloged today was an English dissertation titled A Discourse-Based Analysis of Literacy Scholarship in New Media:  The Case of Military Blogs by Patrick William Thomas.  This ETD was another one where the full text had not been released yet.  I had a hard time with this ETD.  It's about literacy sponsorship in relation to military blogs.  I can't really gain anything more than that.  The subject headings that I chose for this were "Soldiers--Blogs," "Digital media," and "Literary patrons."  Wikipedia was helpful to me in choosing "Digital media."  I chose "Literary patrons" because I thought it was the best way to get at the idea of literacy sponsorship.  But I wasn't really sure and decided to ask Sevim for help.  She wasn't satisfied with the "Literary patrons" heading either, but she did like the other two I had chosen.  She also suggested headings for both the War in Iraq and the War in Afganistan subdivided by "Blogs" because those are the wars that the soldiers in the dissertation are a part of.  These were the headings that I ended up with:

650 0Soldiers ǂv Blogs.
650 0Digital media.
650 0Iraq War, 2003- ǂv Blogs.
650 0Afghan War, 2001- ǂv Blogs.