Wednesday, March 3, 2010

How to read a list of "kept" titles

When you "keep" a group of titles in the library catalog, your printout will look something like the above image. (If this looks familiar to you, great; if not, and you'd like to be able to do this, just ask!)

Do you know how to read this list? Where would you go in the library to find Transformers and philosophy? How about Persepolis 2? A lot of people have trouble figuring out which call number and location goes with which title when they look at these lists. Hopefully this post will help clear things up.

The image below is the same as the one above, only with the first and second titles in the list more clearly indicated.

Your first instinct might have been to think that the indented lines are the second half of an entry, so that the call number PN6747.S245 P4713 2007 goes with the title In Odd we trust, but in this second image you can see that this call number actually belongs with The complete Persepolis.

Remember, if you ever have problems finding anything at the library, we're happy to help!

2 comments:

Kim Gragg said...

This is such a great post Melissa. A young lady the other day was very confused by this. Thanks!

Melissa said...

I was inspired to write it by Janie and the student she was helping's confusion. :) I'd love it if we could somehow make these lists easier to read.