We chose LibraryThing as our cataloging program so the next steps should be....
In cataloging we learned that when organizing a collection there are essentially three steps: 1.Describing the object so as to separate it from every other object, 2. Creating access points for the object so that others can find what that object is about, and 3. organizing that object in relation to others that are similar to it (aka a classification system like LC or Dewey).
1.Step 1: I see as easy enough on LibraryThing, mostly pulling the record from somewhere else or cataloging the other objects (pamphlets and websites) by hand.
2. Step 2: In terms of access points, LibraryThing does not let you search the LC subject heading section of the record even though it has that section and you can import the subject headings from other catalogs if they have them. However the search function on LibraryThing does search the tag fields, therefore I want to tag the resources to provide an access point. The word document that Sandra sent me already put the books into categories and I hope to use those as the basis and foundation of the tags. I also want to tag the language and maybe pull some other tags from the LC subject headings if there are any that correspond with that item. I plan to read over that word document listing the resources and create a list of probable tags for Kelly and Sandra to review. I want them to look over the tags because I know that librarything will only look up what you type in, not variations so we need to choose if dyslexia or dyslexic would be the best terms to search for.
3. Step 3 is determining an organization system so that they can find their books. Since this is going to be a very small resource center I was thinking that we would not be large enough to use LC or Dewey classification system, that would also necessitate putting labels on all of the books. Also an alphabetical system by author or title I didn't think would be very useful either. I was thinking some sort of general subject system where resources are first put under their main subject and then within each subject maybe alphabetical by author. I was thinking about going to visit some bookstores and then the Levine Children's hospital resource center to get some other ideas about organization.
Some other process thoughts about how to set up the resource center:
Circulation. Since Librarything does not have any formal circulation functions I read about using the comments fields to conduct circulation. There are both private and public comments fields. In the public comments would either say "Checked out" or "Available" and also the Location Info/classification scheme. The Private comments would only be filed when a resource was checked out, and would say the family's name and date of checkout.
Collections - LibraryThing lets you have different collections and also lets one resource be part of more than one collection. I wanted to use the collections feature to keep the FSN and CDSA collections separate. I also wanted to use the collections feature to start separate out the Spanish language collection, or any other collections that FSN wanted to create. Perhaps even use that to create a separate Wishlist collection.
As I go along I am also thinking about what I will need to train Kelly, Sandra, Tami and maybe some others about. So far the "manual" I plan to write has three parts:
1. How to find a resource
2. How to checkout a resource
3. How to add a new resource
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