|
Basque Center
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Newsletter
Issue
61
Issue
60
Issue
59
Issue
58
Issue
57
Issue
56
Issue
55
Issue
54
Issue
53
Issue
52
Highlights
Cast
Scholarships
Monument
Leading
Library
Novice
Bookshelf
Elderhostels
Issue
51
Issue
50
|
|
Basque Studies Program Newsletter · Issue
52, 1995
The Cast and Crew
by Kathryn Etcheverria
The Basque Library has moved into the fast lane on
the information superhighway. The vehicle? A combination of
old-fashioned cataloging know-how and new-fangled computer
capabilities joined together in a concentrated effort to put
as many bibliographic records (“catalog cards” in
the old days) on-line as possible in a two-year
span.
To find the group responsible for engineering this
quantum leap from the nineteenth to the twenty-first
century, you have to walk down a long hallway from Basque
Studies, take the elevator to the first floor, pass through
a fire door, round a corner, and enter a tiny office labeled
“Room 118” in the northwest corner of the
Reference Department of Getchell Library (on the University
of Nevada, Reno campus).
Once there, you will encounter five desks, four
terminals and as many as seven project employees working
intensively on strange-looking printouts or screen displays.
Don’t fail to say hello, simply because these workers
are busy. These are members of the Basque Cataloging
Project, and they are proud of the fact that their primary
purpose is to make the Basque collection more accessible to
library users by providing machine-readable records for
monographs in the Basque Library.
Let’s meet the members of the cataloging
team.
Kathryn Etcheverria, resident of Carson City and
former cataloger for Basque Studies, returned to direct the
current project. Her background with catalog conversions as
well as her former involvement with the Basque collection
made her an excellent candidate for this
work.
Amy Coddington, cataloger, came here from the
University of Kansas. Her experience in their special
collections dept. with rare books cataloging has made her a
valuable member of the team.
Donna Sciascia, former cataloger for Bowdoin College
brought over 25 years of cataloging and administrative
experience to the project.
Brigida Cobb, library assistant, coupled former
library experience with an immense curiosity and interest in
the Basque people when joining the
project.
Judy Sokol, library assistant, with nearly 20 years
of work experience at UNR along with training in the Basque
language, transfered to the project from another department
because of her interest in the work.
Each member of the team possessed demonstrated
language ability, primarily in either Spanish or French.
None, however, had sufficient knowledge of Basque prior to
the project. The two team members hired from elsewhere knew
virtually nothing about the Basque culture or their
influence in the western United States. All members,
however, brought enthusiasm and a willingness to learn
enough about the Basque language and culture to produce good
work for the project. The team gave considerable time early
on to seminars on the basics of Basque grammer and
Basque/Spanish publishing conventions in order to tackle the
task of cataloging books in a language not formerly familiar
to them.
“I was interested in Basques before the project,
and I may have Basque ancestry,” says Brigida Cobb who
was born in the Philippines. Ms. Cobb actually followed Marc
Ugalde back to the Basque Studies Library after he spoke to
her library science course, prior to learning about the
Cataloging Project, simply because she was so intrigued by
what he shared about this special
collection.
Judy Sokol, who already had some knowledge of the
Basque language, wanted to put her skills to better use.
“I have always liked cataloging, and I wanted to use my
Basque and my Spanish.”
Donna Sciascia explains, “I knew about Basques
in Spain, but not in the West. For me, to come here was an
adventure in a new place and a way to delay my
retirement.”
Amy Coddington reports, “I knew nothing about
Basques, but I was looking forward to extending my
experience with this collection.”
Why was such a project needed? First, there was a
need for original records produced locally for Basque
language titles, as neither the Library Congress or other
libraries were producing such cataloging in sufficient
quantity. Further, a large body of retrospective, or older,
material in the collection meant that a retrospective
conversion, known as a Recon, was vital, and many libraries
have found this kind of project handled best by a separate
project team. Finally, past efforts on a smaller scale
proved to be insufficient to keep pace with the need to
catalog recent acquisitions of the Basque Library. It was
clear from these past efforts that nothing short of a
dedicated project would accomplish the task of providing
access to the collection.
A project would bring together a team of experts,
those who have a background in library cataloging and those
who have a knowledge of Basque language, culture and
publishing conventions, in such a way to process materials
for cataloging efficiently. The hope was that during a two
year period, such a team would produce cataloging for the
Basque book collection in sufficient quantity to finally
make this collection available to researchers in a
comprehensive way.
Efforts to date have been highly successful. By the
end of August, 1995, the Project had produced roughly 8,000
catalog records, giving machine-readable access to those
titles in the Basque collection. About 2,000 titles of those
produced are in the Basque language, and the remainder are
in Spanish, French and English. Along with that, the project
has established and imported thousands of personal, place
and corporate name authorities to the online catalog,
bringing significantly more consistency to the process of
searching for a name of any kind. A library administrator
who has worked closely with the project called it one of the
most productive units in the entire university
library.
All team members found the work challenging.
“Not knowing the language, and needing to rely at times
on the translations of others was difficult,” said
Sciascia, who had a healthy background in Spanish prior to
the Project. “We also had to learn the cataloging
policies of a different library.”
Amy Coddington concurred. “Doing a good job of
subject analysis without understanding all the words is, at
best, difficult.”
And Sokol agrees. “Doing descriptive catalog and
subject analysis in a foreign language is high level
work.”
Adds Cobb, “It was very challenging, but I
decided to learn and study and get something out of it. My
curiosity led to learning.”
And learn they did. Classes in a seminar format were
provided by Linda White and Marc Ugalde for the catalogers
for the first month. To follow up, Ms. White and Mr. Ugalde
visited Room 118 regularly to handle language questions as
they arose, helping out with everything from a point of
grammar to some issue of historical background such as kings
and succession in the Basque country.
The cataloging team developed a good rapport, team
spirit and camradery with members of Basque Studies.
“Poor Marc!” says Amy, referring to our constant
stream of questions and interruptions. “Everyone went
out of their way to be accomodating,” says Brigida,
highly approving. “We were always made to feel that our
work was appreciated,” says Donna, referring to the
positive feedback received from Basque
Studies.
A clear sense of purpose was expressed by all members
of the team. “This work was talked of for years; it
needed to be done,” said Judy with
conviction.
Donna said, “With a unique collection of
materials such as this, it’s almost criminal not to
make them accessible to users.”
“There’s an immense amount of information
about Basques there; it needs to be available to the
academic world,” adds Brigida.
And a comment from Amy sounds like a mandate:
“Get the information out where it can be found. Let
books fulfill their purpose in
life!”
|
