ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 368 / C &RL News read for the first time very recently, were also named as having had a profound influence on an individual’s way of thinking. Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschw itz fit this category, as did Sohachi Yamaoka’s 26-volume novel, Tokugawa leyasu. According to the professor of economics who se­ lected the Japanese epic: “Compared to this major work of literature, D on Quixote and W ar and Peace are child’s play.” Popular literature was also represented among the titles selected. Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red O ctober and Josephine Tey’s The D aughter of Time were chosen as good recreational reading. A professor of industry and technology mentioned Ellis Peters’ The Raven in the Foregate‚ confiding, “I save these until after grades are turned in each semester, then I go back in time to 12th-century England. Alternatively, I enjoy escaping into the 23d century with the Star Trek novels.” Such honest and provocative comments added life and warmth to our usually impersonal exhibit cases. So as not to lock up the library’s copies of every work mentioned, we sought as many per­ sonal copies of books as possible. In this way, also, we collected quite a number of bright-colored pa­ perbacks and books with dust jackets which helped to make the exhibit more attractive. Although some people were unwilling to part with their “fa­ vorite” books, even for a short time, most were very cooperative in lending materials for this project. Each book was exhibited with the individual’s comments about it. The exhibit was mounted in early December when students and faculty members, preoccupied by term papers and final exams, looked forward to vacation. Many who stopped to look at the exhibit commented that they were going to read a particu­ lar book over the holidays, when they would have time. In addition, the exhibit attracted the atten­ tion of the outside community when the local newspaper featured an article about it (complete with photograph) on the back page. W e prepared a list of included titles which could be picked up by passersby near the exhibit cases. Although library staff members did all of the typing and physical layout of the exhibit, this was a relatively easy project to coordinate. Aside from the initial distribution of the survey, no research was required; most of the text was prepared by the participants; and the materials exhibited were not limited to holdings within the library’s collections. While our primary goal in undertaking this proj­ ect was to stimulate students’ interest in books and reading, faculty enthusiasm for our plans was over­ whelming. Those who participated encouraged their colleagues and students to visit the library, specifically to view the exhibit. Many who did not participate this time have asked when we are plan­ ning our next “My Favorite Book” exhibit. Others have suggested we poll students regarding their fa­ vorite books and one philosophy professor has al­ ready sent unsolicited information on his least fa­ vorite book. Admittedly, we had asked a difficult, if not im­ possible, question. The comments we received, however, reflected the thoughtfulness with which people approached the assignment, sharing their feelings and personal experiences about something that was important and meaningful to them . W hat came through most clearly in the exhibit was the fact that books are much more than a means of transmitting information. An automated finding aid for special collections By Lucy Shelton Caswell Curator Library fo r Communication and Graphic Arts Ohio State University K aren A. Smith Special Collections Cataloger Library fo r Communication and Graphic Arts Ohio State University and H annah Thomas Manuscripts Cataloger Library fo r Communication and Graphic Arts Ohio State University You may recognize this common reference desk scenario: The caller has an urgent request, “The song is from an old movie and I think the words are something like ‘You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss…’ Do you have the sheet music?” An al­ ternate scene: The researcher is preparing a book on the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. He asks to see all the editorial cartoons in the collection which depict this image. A third request: The pro­ fessor stops by to say that her class needs to see sev­ eral examples of historic photographs and she espe­ cially needs to have three or four cyanotypes on 370 / C &RL News June 1988 / 371 view for her students to see. Or: A scholar from E n ­ gland needs to know the names of Jerome L aw ­ rence’s correspondents when the American Play­ wrights Theatre was established. How can these information needs be met? Developing an automated finding aid to help li­ braries answer requests such as these is the chal­ lenge being undertaken at the Ohio State Univer­ sity L ib ra rie s ( O S U L ) . W h ile m a terials representative of other cultures and time periods are collected, four of the special collections and one of the departmental (branch) libraries at Ohio State have especially strong holdings of materials representative of several aspects of 19th and 20th- century American culture. They are located at dif­ ferent sites on the Columbus campus and each is charged with collecting in a separate area: Ameri­ can fiction, the theatre arts, music, and the graphic arts. All relate to the American experience, and the intellectual links between the collections are well- defined. In fact, one of the primary goals of the proposed database is to increase awareness of the inter-related nature of the special collections at the Ohio State University. The diverse physical loca­ tions of these special materials compound the tradi­ tional problems of organizing large collections of non-book materials to promote ready access to them for a broad range of scholarly purposes. Work on creating an automated finding aid to solve these problems began in earnest early in 1987, and a structure for the proposed database has been developed. The autom ated finding aid project (known as SCDB— the Special Collections D ata­ base1) has the following goals: 1) Intellectual and physical control of the collec­ tions at the item level. W hat do we have and where is it? 2) Easy access to information about Ohio State’s special collections by students and scholars, both locally and, potentially, nationally and interna­ tionally. How can we better inform current and potential researchers about the resources available at Ohio State? 3) Information for future collection develop­ ment and management. How can the special col­ lections at Ohio State grow to complement and en­ hance currently held materials and to fill gaps in present holdings? Several assumptions have been m ade about SCDB as it relates to OSUL’s online public access catalog and circulation system, the Library Con­ trol System (LCS), and OSUL contributions to the O C LC online union catalog. All books and serials in these collections are to be fully cataloged and, therefore, represented on LCS and O C LC . Collec­ tion level bibliographic records for discrete collec­ tions held by these special collections libraries 1Nena L . Couch, Thomas F . Heck, Susan J. L o ­ gan, Geoffrey D. Smith, and Robert A. Tibbetts are also in the working group which conceived and designed SCDB (Special Collections Database). (e.g., for the papers of W alt Kelly) will be created in the suitable MARC format and represented on LCS and O C L C . Where appropriate to meet local and/or national scholarly purposes, subcollection or item-level MARC records will also be created (e.g. ‚ for a daguerreotype self-portrait of Matthew Brady). All names used in SCDB will conform to conventions of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition, and will be verified against existing headings on LCS. SCDB is intended to provide both item-level de­ scription of and varied means of access to materials through index fields in the database. For the pur­ pose of SCDB, an item is one unit as defined by the person processing the collection and may vary from one motion picture lobby card to a folder of corre­ spondence or a collection of drawings. SCDB is planned to improve upon the large number of type­ written finding aids (cards, notebooks, etc.) now available in these libraries and to provide a single information source for the content of these collec­ tions. When discussing the design objectives of SCDB, ease of input and ease of retrieval of information were most important. Under the supervision of col­ lection curators, advanced students or graduate as­ sociates will determine how to represent and input the data, so the number of fields had to be limited and format-specific data entry work forms devel­ oped. The current version of a scheme for general data description and analysis is shown in Figure 1 and an explanation of the field abbreviations shown in Figure 2. A key feature of SCDB is the availability of non- traditional library access points, but it will not be necessary to describe each item using every field available on the data entry form . Many fields are to be repeatable, for example, the personal name/cre- ator field, PERN , may contain several names and lifedates, qualified by relator codes to indicate per­ sons associated with the item (such as the actors, producer, director and lighting designer for a given play). The relator codes to be linked with PERN have been adapted from the RBMS list of relator terms (C &R L News, October 1987, pp. 5 5 3 -5 7 ). Similarly, T T L E functions to allow the title of the parent work or the first line of the verse of a song to be related to the item. T hree an aly tical fields have been created . TOPC may be used to indicate what the item is about: the cartoon is about the National Recovery Act, inflation, or Roosevelt’s election to a fourth term. The LCSH field is provided for those times when one or more Library of Congress subject headings might be used. SHWN is to list what is de­ picted in graphic materials: Rudolph Valentino is on the poster; a snake is in the cartoon. The designers of SCDB believe that access by type of material is also important, so the “7” fields were created. A second use for these fields is to de­ scribe components of an item (such as the case for a tintype). MATT will describe the general class or 372 / C &RL News genre of an item (dance score, editorial cartoon, poster, etc.). MATD specifically describes the ob­ ject at hand. (A comic strip might be in the form of an original drawing, proof, color guide proof, en­ graver’s proof, proof on newsprint or tearsheet. A poster might be a one-sheet, three-sheet, lobby card or window card.) MEDM is to describe the format or technical process used for the object’s creation. (The original cartoon mentioned above might be ink and crayon on coquille board.) V IE W w ill describe commonly used im age categories (half-view portrait, landscape, etc.). The library record section of the data entry form (fields 16-27) will be visible by password to staff only. The acquisition and disposition records are intended to give better custodial information about an item and to provide centralized online acquisi­ tion information (donor records). T h ere has been m uch discussion about the MARC mapability of SCDB and possible future methods of linking it to LC S. The data fields of SCDB are intended to follow consistent definitions and usage which would make mapping to MARC for descriptive purposes a viable option. Another possibility would be to use LC S as a gateway to provide more general access to the SCDB database. Descriptive fields RECN 1.00 System-supplied record number (unique ID) PERN 2.00 Personal name/creator, date and relator code TTLE 3.00 Title and relator code PUBL 4.00 Publisher PRIN 4.10 Printer PLAC 5.00 City/state/country of publication/printing PLPF 5.10 City/state/country of performance SITE 5.20 Site of performance DAT1 6.00 Date (year/month/day) of publication, creation, copyright, DAT2 performance, etc., and relator code DAT3 LOCO 7.00 Location code MATT 7.10 Type of material (general object class or genre) MATD 7.20 Nature of materials (specific object descriptor) MEDM 7.30 Medium (technical process and/or physical material) VIEW 7.40 View category of visual images MATN 7.50 Notes relating to physical features of material EXTN 7.60 Extent (number of pages, pieces, etc.) SIZE 7.70 Dimensions in centimeters (length x width x depth) PHYC 7.80 Physical condition LANG 8.00 Language code LLCS 9.00 LC S code indicating which library has item LCSH 10.00 Library of Congress Subject Headings TOPC 11.00 General topic(s) or subject(s) SHWN 12.00 Person(s), place(s), thing(s) illustrated NOTE 13.00 Notes RSTR 14.00 Restrictions LINK 15.00 Linking record to larger collection to which item belongs Library records (not available to public): SACQ 16.00 Source of acquisition (name(s), address, phone) ACDA 17.00 Accession date MACQ 18.00 Method of acquisition: purchase, donation, gift, transfer, loan PRPR 19.00 Purchase price APVL 20.00 Appraisal value ASVL 21.00 Assigned value PRES 22.00 Preservation status indicator ACTN 23.00 Action log (actions taken, dates, etc.) DAFA 24.00 D ate of future action(s) RESR 25.00 Researcher(s) who have used material RSCD 26.00 Record source code (person who created record) plus year, month, day F IG U R E 2. Field abbreviations. June 1988 / 373 It must be emphasized that all collections and significant subcollections will be represented on LCS and O C L C in cataloging records in the appro­ priate MARC format. The special collections auto­ mated finding aid is not intended to function as a library catalog, but more as an index. F or example, the traditional American library cataloging con­ cept of “main entry” will not be used. “Main entry” and “added entry” names will all be treated identi­ cally in the PERN field. (Names used as subjects will be put into separate fields.) The physical de­ scription fields will allow for expanded description of and access to both graphic items (such as an am- brotype) and support formats (such as a leather case). In this instance, both case and ambrotype would be described fully. Also, multiple sizes of posters for a film could be included in the same rec­ ord, but posters of each size would be individually retrievable. V ocabulary control will be m ain­ tained in many of the physical description fields. As part of the planning process, the committee attempted to learn of current projects which would be instructive as models. A literature search was done. Database documentation proved informa­ tive from two photography collections: the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, and the Photography Collection, The Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. A review of museum-based data systems was also in­ formative, and the Smithsonian Institution was contacted for information regarding its in-house system. Various visual resources librarians and other special collection librarians were consulted. Discussion of the STAR system was initiated with the Getty Center for the History of Art and the H um anities which has used STAR for several years. In addition, an early prototype of the data­ base was set up on Ingres at Ohio State. Now that the plan for SCDB exists, the next step is to talk to vendors to determine whether or not any currently available software can implement it, before requests for funding can go forward. SCDB is still in the project definition stage and its final format is heavily dependent upon the software sys­ tem chosen. Topping the list of products under con­ sideration are BASIS, STAR, ARTIS and Ingres. W e seek the reaction of our colleagues to the brief description of SCDB in this article and would be most grateful to receive any comments or sugges­ tions for its improvement. Please send responses to Lucy Caswell, The Ohio State University, 242 West 18th Ave., Columbus OH 43210-1107 (614) 292-0538. W e would be especially interested to know about other libraries which have created au­ tomated finding aids. Letter BI for educators To the Editor: The piece by the Bibliographic Instruction for E d u ca to rs C o m m ittee of the EBSS section of A CRL (C &R L News‚ April 1988, pp. 2 1 7 -2 3 ) is se­ riously flawed, especially in the “Reference tools” section. Despite the disclaimer that “Inclusion in this list by no means indicates endorsement of the quality of information provided by the source” (to which one might well respond, “W hy not?”), the first two books listed have drawn highly critical re­ views since 1968. These are the Gourman Reports on graduate and undergraduate programs (3rd and 5th editions, respectively). Librarians in charge of selecting reference books might be excused for having missed the reviews in Personnel and G uidance Journal (May 1968); Jo u r­ nal of the Association o f College Admissions C oun­ selors (June 1968), reprinted in the M iddle States Association Report (October 1968); the letter in the Journal of Education fo r Librarianship (Summer 1970) ; the full-page story in the C h ro n icle o f H igher Education (May 8 , 1 9 7 8 , as well as a letter, July 3, 1978, and another long story, February 15, 1984); and the 17-page definitive article in C hange magazine (November/December 1984). But it is less easy to excuse overlooking the 9-page article in RQ (Spring 1986). If more need be said, a look at the new edition of Sheehy will disclose that the editors of that ALA publication declined to include the Gourman Re­ ports because of serious questions about the validity of the compilations. To hand out the Gourman Re­ ports in a public library to unsuspecting high school seniors is bad enough; to think of giving them to ac­ ademic administrators, as the Committee recom­ mends, is mind-numbing. Perhaps one reason the Committee missed the recent critiques of Gourman’s books is explained by the fact that the “Bibliography” section of its report contains no title dated later than 1984. The continuing uncritical use of the Gourman Reports calls into question standard library acqui­ sition procedures. When a title is ordered without the backing of a faculty member or librarian, or a reputable review, does it then just land on the shelves without further examination? Do any li­ braries judge such books by more than their covers? Once a title is established on a library’s shelves, are new editions ordered like a drug addict hungering for a new fix?— William R. Eshelm an, The Press at the Cam perdow n E lm , Wooster, Ohio.