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I've been involved as a newbie in cataloguing in three
libraries (JCC, day school, synagogue religious
school)
for a little less than a year. I don't what level
that makes me.
We are using an online catalog and circulation system
which you can find at LibraryCom.com at the JCCS and
day school. It is cheap, simple and online. It gives
you access to MARC records, with complete information
about books, which you can easily copy into your
catalog. Not all Judaica is available in their MARC
records, but, if you're not overly picky, it's easy to
create original records.
It is possible to print a report listing all the books
in alphabetical order in the LibraryCom catalog. You
can even import this into Excel and do various sorts
on Title and Author. However you can't print out
information about subject headings. The available
reports from LibraryCom are very limited, although
they do include a spine label report with labels for
book cards; this may be just what you need. (See
below.)
The online catalog with its subject search
capabilities is not Shomer Shabbat-accessible; the
paper printout of the report is. But do you print a
new copy whenever you add a bunch of books? In my
readings, it seems as if there was a time when
catalogs were printed in book form and updated every
few months. Or there's the old "card catalog" ploy.
I like the idea of tracking books electronically. Two
other advantages of online systems are they provide
backups and storage space and the can be seen beyond
the walls of the synagogue with an Internet
connection.
For the religious school, I entered book information
into an Excel spreadsheet. (I think this can be
imported into a LibraryCom catalog.)
The other consideration is checking books in and out.
Is there an eruv? Can you check books in and out on
Shabbat? If so, you can have a card for each
synagogue member and a card in each book; a member
checks out books by paper-clipping the member card and
book cards and putting them in a checkout box. This
is done at a Reform synagogue near me when the
librarian is not in.
I would not use Library of Congress because most
people don't exclusively hang out at university
libraries. I use Dewey in the day school because I
like alliteration; actually because I want the
students to learn how to use public libraries. I have
been warned that this is a bad idea and that Elazar
and Weine are much better choices. (The problem is
that most books will be 296.x, where x tends towards
infinity.) There are some publications by the AJL
that you should look into.
I recently emailed the Library of Congress to ask
about their rules for transliterating Hebrew. I can
either send the rules to you or you can email them
directly. I did not ask about Russian and Yiddish,
although the JCC does have books in these languages; I
should, but forgot.
Hope this helps a little. If I can help more, let me
know. Even better, if you learn anything useful, let
me know.
Chag Sameach,
Rose Myers
Hillel Academy
Fairfield, CT
and
The Community Library at the JCCS
Bridgeport, CT
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