A Bit of What I Do at the Carter

Every month, the Amon Carter Museum Library publishes its report of “new” books processed over the last month. I put new in quotes as the books might not be new, but are simply items in the collection that have been fully cataloged over the last month. These books sit in the reading room for the month, allowing patrons to come in and look at them in one convenient place before going into the stacks with the rest of the collection.

I want to write about this today, as out of 62 books this month in the report, I am in some way responsible for 22 of those items. These 22 items were copy-cataloged by me, meaning that someone else had created the original bibliographic record, and I edited it so that it conformed to the cataloging guidelines of the Carter. This might be anything from the simple task of changing the classification (call number) to a more complex task like adding a complete table of contents, adding authority-controlled subject headings (we primarily use Library of Congress Authorities and the Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus), or adding an alternate title.

One of the more interesting things I cataloged was the first item on the list, that appears as:

Moll, Herman, d. 1732.
A new & correct map of the whole world : shewing ye situation of its principal parts. Viz the oceans, kingdoms, rivers, capes, ports, mountains, woods, trade-winds, monsoons, variation of ye compass, climats, &c. With the most remarkable tracks of the bold attempts which have been made to find out the North East & North West Passages / by Herman Moll, geographer, 1719. London : [J. Bowles, 1709-1720]

This map is a wonderful hand-colored map of the world from 1719 (I’ll just say that Baja California was apparently its own continent) and was very interesting to look at. The title you see above is one of two titles that appear on the map. These two titles did not appear in the bibliographic (catalog) record, and so I had to add the second title, as well as some subject headings. It was interesting to see and handle this rare map (Princeton is the only other institution with a copy of it) as well as to contribute to the bibliographic data about it. Maps, as you might have deduced from the unusual call number, are stored in the map file cases in the archives and so are not displayed with the new books on the cart in the reading room.

Please stop by and ask to see this great map! While you are in, another really great map to see is this one:

Map of the states of California and Nevada : carefully compiled from the latest authentic sources / California by Julius H. von Schmidt, Arthur W. Keddie, and C.D. Gibbes, C.E.'s ; Nevada by Chas. Drayton Gibbes, C.E. San Francisco, Calif. : Warren Holt, 1869, c1868 (Philadelphia : S.B. Linton, engr. & lithogr.)

It’s another really great hand-colored historical map of the United States. Drop in and say hello and ask to see these great maps, as well as any other of the fascinating resources at the Amon Carter Museum Library.