I’ve never really thought of Google as a cataloguing tool. Recently, though, I’ve had two cases where Google came to the rescue.
In both instances, separated by a couple of weeks, I was dealing with pre-1800 books from our Division of Archives and Research Collections. Both appeared to be in an Eastern European language, but as I don’t read any of those languages I had no idea which one it might be.
I took a stab at identifying the title based on the layout of the title page and started with the usual suspects. OCLC, nope; RLG, nope; BookWhere (the heavy guns…), still nothing. Trying again with variations on my search terms proved no more successful.
Finally, out of library tools, I turned to Google. Up popped hits in both cases. The first appeared in a bibliography of early printers in Dubrovnik. The second was in the library catalogue of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. I wasn’t able to extract a ready-made MARC record, but in each case I gained enough information to do some basic cataloguing.
For the curious, the two books in question were
Vandjelja i kgnighe apostolske istomacene is missala novoga rimskoga u jesik slovinski i poklognene : prisvjet. i priposct. gospodinu D. Garguru Lazzari arkibiskupu dubrovackomu i apostolskomu namjesniku, by Ivan Salatić, published 1784.
Pravi nacin za dovesti dusce virni na xivot viçgni / Koi sloxi i dade na svitlost za vechiu slavu i posctegnie Gospodina Boga, Blaxene Divicze Marie zaçete brez griha i spasegnie svij duscah karschiana pravovirni Otacz F. Stipan Badrich iz Darnisca …, by Stjepan Badrić, published 1746.
My best guess on the language is Croatian. If you can read the linked catalogue records and think we need corrections, please send them along!
Great detective work! Google has certainly added a new dimension to cataloguing. When we were first introduced to the web in the workplace, the only hope of finding items like the ones you mention was to take a stab at the language, think of a university library in a likely country, and search their catalogue. It was a great search strategy back then, and produced some useful results (particularly if the web page had a choice of English or the native language!) Let’s hear it for Google!
By: Lou on March 31, 2007
at 6:45 am
Well, I certainly am on board! Just yesterday I had to catalogue a Bertrand Russell book that happened to be in Norwegian. Well, not being able to speak the language I thought how the heck will I do this? Like Wade, I tried the usual resources but struck out. I then tried the ol Google search. I searched the title and came up with a few hits that helped me to ascertain what the title was in English and what the subject matter was. One of the hits was a library in Oslo that had catalogued the item and therefore it helped me to determine what the necessary information was.\
Maybe Google is the cataloguers friend after all
By: Rhonda Moore on April 4, 2007
at 10:59 am
Catalogers Using Google
I’ve been wanting to blog about cataloging and Google for awhile. Here’s the perfect opportunity. You’ll want to read this notable article by Jennifer Lang Have You Searched Google Yet? Using Google as a Discovery Tool for Cataloging. I particularly
By: Cataloging Futures on June 1, 2007
at 8:58 pm