Day 18

 Day 18
10/28/2011
Start time: 8:00
End time: 12:00
Hours Worked: 4
Total Hours: 138

Today I will be only working a half day and working on mainly ETDs.  The first ETD I worked on is the last one of my third batch.  It's a teaching, learning, and curriculum studies dissertation titled Young Children Conceptualize the Relationships Among Positive and Negative Numbers and Zero by Peggy D. Manchester.  The dissertation is about how young children think about negative numbers and how they have intiutions about them.  I think this is part of a movement to teach children about negative numbers at a younger age when they might think about it more intuitively. I had a hard time thinking up subject headings for this because there wasn't a subject heading for mathematics and children.  I felt that the subdivision "Study and teaching (Primary)" didn't really convey what the dissertation was about.  I ended up thinking of the headings "Mathematics--Study and teaching (Primary)" and "Numbers, Negative--Study and teaching (Primary)," but I wasn't completely satisfied with these headings.  So, I did a search on WorldCat and it lead me to the heading "Number concept in children" which fits perfectly.  I also found a record that added the subdivision "Psychological aspects" to the study and teaching headings.  I think this set of subject headings is much better at conveying what this dissertation is about.  My call number was based on "Number concept in children."  My suject headings are:


650 0 Number concept in children.
650 0 Numbers, Negative ǂx Study and teaching (Primary) ǂx Psychological aspects.
650 0 Mathematics ǂx Study and teaching (Primary) ǂx Psychological aspects.

Sevim liked what I had but wanted me to change Primary to Elementary.

Day 17, Mostly Microfilm

Day 17
10/25/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 134

Most of my day involved cataloging microfilm TDs.  I started the day by checking the records that I worked on Friday morning.  Sevim thought I did pretty good work, but there were some changes that I had to make.  I replaced the OCLC records of the microfilm TDs that had OCLC records and put them into KentLINK as well.  For the original record I did on Friday, I just uploaded to both OCLC and KentLINK.

I also worked on five new microfilm TDs.  Three had regular records that could be mostly copied, one had a German language record that I could derive some information for but had to create a new record for, and thel last one didn't have a record in OCLC, so I had to create an original record.  One of the three that had a record in OCLC had some major errors and it looked like it had been merged with a photocopy record.  I don't have as much detail on the microfilm TDs because I don't keep as good records for those as I do for the ETDs.  Oh well.

The purely original microfilm TD that I worked on today was titled The selection and training of salesmen for the machine tools industry by James D. Robenstine.  The title basically said what this TD was about.  I chose two subject headings:  "Sales personel--Training of" and "Machine-tool industry."  I chose the call number HF5439.8.  Here's the way my subject headings look in Connexion:

650 0 Sales personnel ǂx Training of.
650 0 Machine-tool industry.

Day 16

Day 16
10/21/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 126

 Today I started with cataloging five microfilm theses and dissertations.  Four of the microfilm TDs had OCLC records which I merely had to go and correct any errors.  The other one did not have a record in OCLC, so I had to do completely original cataloging for it.  This microfilm TD was an education thesis titled Survey of methods and materials in the teaching of transcription in public secondary schools by Ethel Luella Mart.  Because doing in depth reading on the microfilm reading is difficult, I only read a couple of pages to determine what the subject headings were.  Both the title and those first couple of pages both gave me the idea that this thesis was simply about teaching transcription skills in secondary schools, so I used the subject heading "Transcription--Study and teaching (Secondary)."  It was pretty simple.  Everything else was pretty straightforward.  Here are the subject headings:

650 0 Transcription ǂx Study and teaching (Secondary)

Sevim liked both my subject heading and my call number. 

After finishing with the microfilm records, I started cataloging some ETDs.  The first ETD I cataloged today was a teaching, learning, and curriculum studies dissertation titled Skype™: A Portal Into the 21^st Century in a Secondary Spanish Classroom by Colleen A. Blaurock.  This thesis was a study that consisted of pairing up Non-Native Speakers (NNSs) with Native Speakers (NSs) over Skype to help the NNS learn the language.  This study researched students who were learning Spanish, but it could easily applied to other languages.  I didn't have a hard time of thinking of analyzing the concepts of this dissertation, but I did have a little difficulty chosing which subject headings I wanted.  I tried to find a subject heading for foreign language educatin, but there was not a heading for that.  Next, I tried to find a heading for second language education and found "Second language acquisition."  However this heading is only used for sociological and psychological aspects of learning a second language rather than just teaching and learning a second language.  I decided to use this heading because the dissertation talks is also about the experiences of the students who participated in the study.  To convey the educational aspect, I chose "Language and languages--Study and teaching (Secondary)."  There were many different methods in the narrower topics of that heading, and Wikipedia and a Google search helped me learn a little more about them so I could rule them out.  I also wanted to have a heading to bring out the technology aspect of this dissertation.  There were a few options.  The first one I found was "Computer assisted instruction," but this heading is more for when automated computer applications instruct people.  I also found "Educational technology" which I decided to use because the article is about using Skype as an educational technology.  The call number I chose was P53.6 which means that it's about the study and teaching of oral communication of languages.  I'm not 100% happy with this number and might change it to the general works number.  Here are my subject headings:

650 0 Language and languages ǂx Study and teaching (Secondary).
650 0 Second language acquisition.
650 0 Educational technology.

Sevim liked the subject headings I had, but she suggested that I created a subject heading for the concept of computer mediated communication.  The subject heading for that concept is "Telematics."  I also changed the call number to P53.855 to reflect that it's about technological innovation rather than oral communication.  Here are the final subject headings:

650 0Language and languages ǂx Study and teaching (Secondary)
650 0Second language acquisition.
650 0Telematics.
650 0Educational technology.

The second ETD that I cataloged was a Foundations, Leadership, and Administration dissertation titled The Third Culture Kid (TCK) Experience: Adult-TCKS’ Reflections On Their Multicultural Childhood, Its Impact On Student-Teacher Relationships In U.S. Classrooms And Their Recommendations For Multicultural Teacher Education In The United States by Gretchen L. Espinetti.  This dissertation is about the Third Culture Kid (TCK) and how adult ones can help teachers with multicultural education.  TCKs are children who are raised in a different culture than their parents and move back to their parent's country of origin at some point.  The dissertation also talks about teacher-student relationships.  This one was tough because a lot of the concepts in the book had no subject headings associated with them, so I had a hard time choosing subject headings.  Wikipedia was helpful in me gaining an understanding of some of the concepts presented like TCK, but it wasn't helpful in choosing any subject headings.  I couldn't find a heading that had anything to do with TCK or any iteration of the concept like multicultural children, trans-cultural children, and cross-cultural children.  None of them were in LCSH.  So I had to focus on other aspects of the work.  I decided to use the heading "Multicultural education--United States" since multicultural education is mentioned in the title, abstracted, and the work itself.  And since it talks about how TCKs can help multicultural teacher education, I decided on the subject heading "Teachers--Training of--United States."  The relationships between TCKs and their teachers is also discussed in the dissertation, so I decided to use the heading "Teacher-student relationships--United States" based on that.  I performed a WorldCat search on TCKs to find my last heading which is "American students--Foreign influences."  I decided to use that subject heading because I found it is the best way to give a heading to the concept of TCK.  I don't know if it'll work or not, but I thought I'd give it a try.  Here are my subject headings:

650 0Multicultural education ǂz United States.
650 0American students ǂx Foreign influences.
650 0Teachers ǂx Training of ǂz United States.
650 0Teacher-student relationships ǂz United States.

Sevim really liked this ETD and wanted to read it.  She liked the subject headings, but she thought that I should take out the "Teachers--Training of--United States" because the paper wasn't about that and only gave reccommendations for it.  She also said that I need to change the call number slightly to show that it's about the United States.  Here are the final subject headings:

650 0Multicultural education ǂz United States.
650 0American students ǂx Foreign influences.
650 0Teacher-student relationships ǂz United States.

Day 11, Starting Subject Cataloging Batch 3

The first ETD of Batch 3 is a geology thesis titled Engineering geology considerations for realignment of interstate 70/76 across the landslide at New Baltimore, Somerset County, SW Pennsylvania by Lisa Ann Nowicki.  This thesis focuses on investigating the landslide and how it will affect the interstate realignment.  The most obvious subject heading to choose for this thesis was "Landslides--Pennsylvania." I also checked to see if there was a specific entry for the New Baltimore Landslide, but there wasn't a subject heading for that.  The other idea for a subject heading that jumped out at me immediately was for slope stability because I had used that for another ETD and it was mentioned in this one.  So I used the heading "Slope (Soil mechanics)--Stability."  Unfortunately this subject heading can't be subdivided by location, so I can't add Pennsylvania on to it.  I also chose "Landslide hazard analysis--Pennsylvania" because it really seems as if the author is doing a landslide hazard analysis.  Finally, I chose the heading "Engineering geology--Pennsylvania" after using Wikipedia search that lead me to the term geotechnical engineering.  In LCSH, geotechnical engineering leads you to landslide hazard analysis.  I had trouble determining which subject heading to put first in order to make the call number.  The two headings I was debating making the first heading were "Landslides--Pennsylvania" and "Engineering geology--Pennsylvania."  The call number for the former is QE599.P4 N69 2011 and the call number for the latter is TA705.3.P4 N69 2011.  I eventually chose the former after reading the conclusion of the thesis.  It seemed to put much more emphasis on landslides than anything else.  Here are the subject headings I got for this one:

650 0Landslides ǂz Pennsylvania.
650 0Landslide hazard analysis ǂz Pennsylvania.
650 0Slopes (Soil mechanics) ǂx Stability.
650 0Engineering geology ǂz Pennsylvania.

Sevim suggested that I switch "Landslides--Pennsylvania" and "Landslide hazard analysis-Pennsylvania."  I thought this was a good idea and obliged.

The second ETD I cataloged today was a English thesis From Postmodernism to Psychoanalysis: Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 by Brittany N. Adams.  The title of this thesis is pretty informative about its content.  This thesis analyzes the postmodernism and psychoanalytic theory in regards to Pynchon's novel.  From this I got three subject headings.  The first is a name-title entry for Thomas Pynchon and The Crying of Lot 49.  The second is "Postmodernism (Literature)."  The third is "Psychoanalysis and literature."  I couldn't come up with any other headings that were related to the thesis's aboutness.  The call number for this one came from Thomas Pynchon.  It was PS3566.Y55 Z56 2011.  I don't know if I need to make the Z56 something different though.  Here are the subject headings I have:

600 10 Thomas Pynchon. ǂt The crying of lot 49.
650 0 Postmodernism (Literature)
650 0 Psychoanalysis and literature.

Day 11, Descriptive Cataloging

Day 11 

10/04/2011
Start time: 8:00
[1 Hour Lunch]
End time: 5:00
Hours Worked: 8
Total Hours: 88

The first part of the day was finishing the descriptive cataloging that I started on Friday for my third batch of ETDs.  I have 20 ETDs to work on in this new batch.  4 of them are restricted, and all the information that I have available for the descriptive and subject cataloging comes from the OhioLINK ETD Center page. This is the breakdown of the ETDs by subject:

Geology:  1
English:  3
Political Science:  2
Art Education:  1
Fine Art:  2
Psychology:  1
Creative Writing:  2
Nursing:  1
Foundations , Leadership, and Administration:  3
Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum:  4

I think this is going to be a rough batch of ETDs.  Some of them seem like they are going to be hard to subject catalog.  We'll see how it goes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Introduction

My name is Laurence, and I'm a graduate student at Kent State University studying Library and Information Science.  I am working on my practicum this semester which is also my final semester.  For my practicum, I am going to be cataloging Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).  I think it will be a really interesting and rewarding experience where I will learn some very useful knowledge and skills.  I'm really excited and nervous to get started since I have never worked in a library before.