The Dewey Decimal Collection

Overview

Housed in MIT's Library Storage Annex is a "hidden library" containing thousands of monographs and serials originally collected by the MIT Libraries and classified by Dewey Decimal number. The collection began in the 1960s when MIT moved over to Library of Congress classification, and older Dewey Decimal materials were transferred out of the divisional libraries into a central location.

For many years SerCat has been involved in an ongoing project to catalog the serials contained in this collection, and to reclassify them to Library of Congress call numbers. The cataloged materials are then transferred to MIT's Off-Campus Collection. Now that they can be found through Barton, patrons can have these materials delivered to the LSA within 24 hours from their request.

SerCat procedures relating to the DDC Recon

What to catalog

Not all serials in the DDC are eligible for recon. In general, SerCat only handles materials that conform to the following requirements:

  1. More than 10 issues are available.
  2. The item is not published by GPO.
  3. The item is not a reprint series.
  4. The item was published after 1850. (Items published in or before 1850 are referred to Steven Skuce, MIT's head of rare materials cataloging.)
  5. Monographic series are, whenever possible, treated serially.
Workflow for DDC recon
  • Selected DDC ranges are determined according to ongoing collection policies. We are currently working in the 300's.
  • Materials are inspected on the shelves and an initial assessment as to whether they are serial in nature, and catalog-able, is made.
  • Then, we check OCLC to determine if there is a bibliographic record for the items.
  • If we find a record, we add our holdings to it in OCLC.
  • If there is no record in OCLC, we can go ahead and create one, based on the items in hand. Encoding level (ENCL:) should be set to I.
  • Less than CONSER-level records in OCLC are eligible for cataloging upgrade:
    • LC call numbers and LC subject headings are added.
    • Pre-ISBD / pre-AACR2 records (non-CONSER only) can be converted to AACR2/ISBD.
    • Open serial records (CONSER or non-CONSER) can be closed off, if the final issue is in hand.
    • Serial records (CONSER or non-CONSER) can be "backed up" if earlier or the earliest issue is in hand.
  • In all cases, whether to upgrade a record or not is based on the cataloger's discretion.
  • Whenever possible, non-CONSER records should be made to conform to the "CONSER standard record" practices.
  • Call numbers: All serials in the DDC Recon Project are assigned full LC-call numbers. Cutters must be checked against MIT's shelf-list to avoid conflicts with previously established call numbers. LC call numbers assigned by institutions other than LC (e.g. in MARC fields 090 or 050:14) may be accepted without re-analysis; however, again: all Cutters must be checked against MIT's shelf list.
  • The final step of cataloging in OCLC involves adding to the record two local fields:
    • 910 RECON[cataloger's intials][YYMMDD] (question) This field goes into the local bib., so that we know who cataloged the serial and when.
    • 949 |z Serial |a x |g [summary holdings statement] (question) This is an "expansion code", which will be converted to a proper holdings record once the bib. comes over from OCLC into Barton.
  • Next day process: Records cataloged in OCLC appear in Barton the following day. "Next day" process involves updating the holdings record, creating item records and adding bar-codes, and finally housing the material (if necessary) and placing it on the "wall" in LSA. Once a month, items on the wall are removed to off-campus storage.