Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 20

A record today which came up including a link, in the field that would indicate an online copy of the text, but which actually pointed to a search on ebay. The book is a collection of award winning high school history essays about the terror of the 1930s, and the hardships suffered by previous generations. The ebay link is a search for swakara coat. That’s some sort of fur coat. WTF? This is a field which will not be copied into our library system.

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Нефтянка [Neftianka], by Валерий Ларин [Valerii Larin]. On the cover: Реальность такова: “нефть” и “кровь” – это синонимы [Real’nost’ takova: “neft'” i “krov'” – eto sinonimy/This is reality: “oil” and “blood” are synonyms]. I didn’t recognize that the title is actually a word — it looks like a made up word, to me at least, intimating a oil woman. Neft’ means oil, or petroleum, and the ending -ianin [-янин] or -ianka [-янка] is often used for nationality nouns. I.E. россиянка [rossiianka] means a woman of Russian nationality. So a нефтянка would be a woman with a …personal and political connection to oil.

As it turns out, though, нефтянка is also a word for oil machinery, like oil rigs. In any case, I think it is a novel about the corrupt world of oil corporations…

A (Polish) dictionary of literary scenes. Full of images relating to various tales, as well as explanatory text I cannot read. For instance, Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita includes paintings of Christ & Pontius Pilate, photo of Bulgakov, painting of a street in 1930s Moscow, photo of a fellow with horns in a production of M&M, and a painting of Christ on the cross. Hamlet includes various paintings of Ophelia, or the man himself looking thoughtfully at poor Yorick. [ISBN: 9788372664204]

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A double book: one copy in Slovene, one copy in English. It’s about star-children, and I think the translator was mistaken about a word. When the little stars wake up in the evening, “they mince their eyes”, which sounds, well, painful. I can’t identify any part of the Slovene that this is translated from; the English text is about four times longer than the original as well.

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Lithuanian folktale explains why cats wash their faces after eating: A cat caught a quick-thinking sparrow, who exclaimed “I never met anyone who ate breakfast before washing their face!” Chagrined, the cat began to wash its face, whereupon the sparrow flew away. Even more chagrined, the cat vowed to wash afterwards.

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Series of what appear to be trashy paperbacks by one Darya Dontsova (www.dontsova.ru). Very busy covers. Here’s one called Две невесты на одно место [Dve nevesty na odno mesto/Two brides for one spot] with one of the many things on the cover being a business card for Ivan Podushkin, gentleman сыска [syska] (detective).

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Also from Poland: THE PWN GREAT ENCYCLOPAEDIA – how appropriate for this to come out of Poland, which has historically been pwned so many times…

What do they actually mean by PWN? It’s an acronym, which I can’t specifically find spelled out, but I’m guessing it stands for something like Polski Wydawnictwo Naukowe (except with proper Polish grammar, which I have no grasp of), or Polish Publishers of Science. Except the full name of the publishing house seems to be Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, so who knows?

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 18

Today’s discussion topic among the media librarians: one of them has got a video of a modern dance production done at Stanford, which is choreographed to represent protein synthesis, and how exactly do you put the right subject headings on such an item, to indicate that it is more than modern dance, and more than a normal visual representation of a biology lecture… They put it up on one of the screens, so I got to see part. The film starts with a fellow in a suit and a tie, washed out colors from 1971. He’s got his chalkboard all set up with a diagram, and as he points out each player in the process of protein synthesis, they flash to a still of the dancers who will represent it. You don’t have to wait for the media librarians to figure out how to label it, it’s already on the internet. Overall, it reminds me of the cellular respiration ninjas.

Back in the Slavic domain, I have “Designers of Novosibirsk (they were first)” by Iu. Shepel’. First though they may have been, they were not assigned an ISBN number, and have no copy.

Also had a book cover with Braille imprinted on it, with the title. The book itself is not printed in Braille, so why did they include it on the cover? Did someone think it would make the book stand out design-wise (yes, at least if you pick it up), or is it just mean-spirited? Imagine the blind man, picking up the book. He is intrigued by the title, and flips it open, and… damn.

(“I wonder,” says one of the media catalogers, “if it should be performance art, instead of modern dance.”)

Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 17

I spent a while this morning searching for genocide in Abkhazia. I didn’t find it, which is not to say that it didn’t happen, but rather that the book “Genocide in Abkhazia,” is nowhere to be found, though the computer records show it was recieved by the library in Sept 2007. This is so long ago, that it must have gone through the quickcat process already, but it would probably have gone to the basement again. There is an acceptable Library of Congress record we could use now, but it is from Oct 2008, so it wouldn’t have been there in spring 2008, when this book was probably handled by a previous student worker. But, apparently they cannot locate it in the basement, so it’s an all hands call to look everywhere else.

And why? Some patron of the library would like to read it. It seems ironic. So many of the books I process I wonder if they will ever be read (in front of me just now I have The Philosophical Law of P.I. Novgodtsev, in Russian), and here is one that someone wants, that is in English, and we can’t find it!

On a more pleasant note–though also of questionable utility–here is the best subject heading ever: Butter trade ǂz Russia (Federation) ǂz Siberia ǂx History ǂy 20th century.