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.