Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 16

There was just a PA announcement, which is odd, because you don’t think of a library as having a PA system. Anyone in the library just heard that a theft had been reported, and all persons should not leave their belongings unattended.

**

I really can’t help it; I always look through the art & photo books. Some that I’ve seen:

Photo book: Russian 1900-1917. The first photograph: looking from the street at a large building, a shop front, for the artistic photographer M.I. Rumiantsev.

Randomly from the middle: 1911 photo of school children outside their new school building in Archangelsk. Not a single one is smiling. Many are actively scowling. One girl has her arms folded, with a particularly severe look. Later, a photo from Malevich’s exhibit “Black Square,” showing his art on the wall, the various black, quadratic compositions as they were first viewed by the public.

The last photo: A group siitting at a board room table, a single bulb lamp hanging down above and between the heads of Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin leads towards Trotsky with a grin on his face, he is in on a joke which he hasn’t told yet; no one else is smiling.

Another photo book, the 1968 invasion of Czeckoslovakia. It is filled with photos where the only thing I can understand is the grafiti scrawled in cyrillic: “Go home.” “Moscow 1800 km –>” “We don’t need you. We don’t see you. We don’t hear you.” “Russians go home” “Why are you shooting friends we have no friends” “Ivan go home” “Soviet occupation” “Soviet fascists”

**

PA: “May I have your attention please. A theft has been reported in the library.”

Media Librarian 1: Yet again.
Media Librarian 2: Stop walking off and leaving your bags!

**

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 15

Today starts with a bunch from a Hungarian publishing house, Akademiai Kiado, in Budapest. Some of their books are in English. I think one pair of books is the same – one in Hungarian, the other in English. But they have call numbers somewhat removed from each other, so either they are not exactly the same book, or the language change moves it around.

Another one in Hungarian, which is about ethnic relations in Transylvania, according to the subject headings. All I can think about is vampires, and how preying upon your neighbors wouldn’t make for good ethnic relations.

Sárközi seems actually to be a Hungarian name. I know nothing about the French president, but perhaps his ancestry is from further east in Europe.

I don’t know what the name of the Hungarian currency is, but it is abbreviated Ft, and it takes a lof of them to buy a book, so the prices printed on the back look oddly like elevations. 2600 Ft. This book printed at 2835 Ft. Written at 4400 Ft. Best read at 2980 Ft.

Also, I messed up today. The first Russian book after the Hungarian ones, and I added Cyrillic to the record I found, and updated it and then realized that I hadn’t really looked at it, I hadn’t added a barcode in the book or done any of the things to add it to our system, and furthermore, the existing record didn’t have call number so I shouldn’t have done anything anyway! I can’t assign call numbers.

In case you’ve been wondering, here’s an update on the media librarians: A serious discussion to determine whether an item is this four CDs accompanying a book, or a book accompanying four CDs? The question hinges upon whether the book exists only as liner notes for the stuff on cd. Also, different call numbers are assigned for an item from a public museum than for an item from a private museum, so there was some research into whether Oxford (in Britain) is public or private. Turns out the Brits don’t quite differentiate the way we do, but Oxford is about 80% funded by the government, so we’ll just presume it’s equivalent to public.