Volunteer Stories
My husband and I arrived in Volcan about three years ago. Two years ago I became involved in helping the San Benito library (Biblioteca San Benito). I have performed many of the tasks required to restore the books we were able to save from the old library, but I found my real passion in cataloging the books. I share this volunteer effort with Ed Simmons.
Volunteer Jill Dubler
CATALOGING
Each book needs to be entered into our BSB system to make it searchable in multiple ways. There is much to this endeavor. I work on my home workstation so to start this process my husband and I move boxes of books from the library BSB "office" to my home office. I've had as many as 7-10 big boxes in my office at once.
The cataloging is varied and interesting. There are four partner libraries that allow us access to their databases, so I first search for the book in those libraries by title, author, publisher, ISBN, etc. If it's in one of them, we then use some of their previously entered information. However, we check all aspects of their form to be sure it's correct for the book we have in hand and BSB. The form is very long and includes the ISBN, author's name, complete book title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, number of pages, illustrations, and maps. We measure the book for size in cm., note whether it's part of a series, its volume number and language. We add a summary, any awards the book achieved, the various topics the book covers, and the illustrator's name, if applicable. (That's a simplification of the first page.)
The second page of the form is specifically how we denote a book on the shelves in our library. It's necessary to know where it will be shelved: its Dewey Decimal Classification, if the book is fiction, juvenile, early reader elementary, adolescent, reference, biography, etc., it's BSB barcode and the estimated replacement cost.
WHAT IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE BOOK?
If our book isn't found in the four partner libraries, all of this information must be created on a blank form in our system. Many books from these libraries don't show a photo of the cover which we like to have to help identify the book, so Google, Amazon, eBay, and AI are our friends for finding photos and summaries of the book. Depending on how much information we need to search for, a single book can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to enter.
IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CATALOGING SPANISH BOOKS AND ENGLISH BOOKS?
Spanish books are seldom found in our partner libraries so they nearly always require starting from scratch and translating all of the above information required in the form into both languages. I've read that it's helpful in learning a language to read children's books. They are right!
We are going to have an amazing selection of books in Volcan's new Biblioteca San Benito and I'm so grateful to be a continuing part of it.