Nau mai, haere mai - welcome to DescribeNZ
DescribeNZ aims to be a useful, credible and up-to-date source of information about cataloguing for both the New Zealand cataloguing community and anyone in the wider library community who would like to discover more about cataloguing.
Here you will find guidance on cataloguing standards, links to resources for professional development, information about New Zealand cataloguing practice and policy, and future trends in cataloguing and metadata such as Linked Data and BIBFRAME.
The official newsletter of the LIANZA Cataloguing Special Interest Group (LIANZA CAT SIG), Catapult, is also archived here.
DescribeNZ is paid for and maintained by the LIANZA Cataloguing Special Interest Group (LIANZA CAT SIG) and is managed by a moderator group with representatives from a number of different New Zealand libraries and a representative from the LIANZA CAT SIG committee.
Current moderator team:
- Joanne Rowan (LIANZA CAT SIG Rep)
- Janess Stewart (National Library of New Zealand)
- Daniel Malpass (National Library of New Zealand)
- Vanessa McDonald (Te Puna Services)
New additions to the moderator group would be most welcome!
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please contact us at catsigcommittee@gmail.com
Last updated: November 15, 2018 (JHS)
CATALOGUING POLICIES OF NEW ZEALAND LIBRARIES
This page contains links to and information on cataloguing policy decisions made by New Zealand libraries
Auckland Libraries Cataloguing Policies
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing Policies
- National Library of New Zealand policy on Tables of Contents
- National Library of New Zealand policy on Genre/Form Terms
- National Library of New Zealand policy on Non-Latin Scripts in Catalogue Records
- Scope of the New Zealand National Bibliography
RDA Policy
- RDA policies for the NLNZ now sit in the global workflow section of the RDA toolkit as
- NLNZ RDA Attributes Policy
- NLNZ RDA Relationships Policy
- NLNZ Agent and Series Policy
- RDA maps for the following formats are available in the global maps section of the RDA toolkit as
- NLNZ Art Catalogues workflow
- NLNZ Cartographic Resources map
- NLNZ Compilations flowchart
- NLNZ Monograph map
- NLNZ Moving Images map
- NLNZ Music Scores
- NLNZ Music Sound Recordings
- NLNZ Non-Music Sound Recordings
- NLNZ Resources issued together (including tete-beche and parallel language expressions)
- NLNZ Revised editions
- NLNZ Standards documents map
- NLNZ Web sites map
- NLNZ Whole part relationships workflow (including tete-beche and resources issued together)
If you do not have access to the toolkit and would like clarification on an RDA-related cataloguing decision from the NLNZ, please contact us at nznb@dia.govt.nz
Last updated: March 2, 2020 (JHS)
CATALOGUING RESOURCES
To view professional development and training material click here.
Cataloguing 101
- 5 minutes on Bibliographic Control
- Library of Congress Frequently Asked Questions about Cataloguing
- The Evolving Catalog / Karen Coyle – history of library catalogues and associated technology
- The MARC of Quality - Useful self-directed online tutorials for beginning cataloguers from Deborah Fritz. Access under the ‘Foundations’ heading in the left-hand menu.
- MARC21 in Your Library. Part 1, MARC and Bibliographic Information: The Underlying Fundamentals.
- MARC for Copy Cats. Part 1
Classification
- Dewey Decimal Classification
- 025.431: the Dewey blog 'Everything you always wanted to know about the Dewey Decimal Classification system but were afraid to ask'
- Library of Congress Classification
- Cataloging & Classification quarterly Table of contents abstracts available free online. Journal articles available through Interloan.
Subject access
- Library of Congress Authorities Search authority records, with facility to print, E-mail and download
- Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly Lists Weekly lists of new and changed subject headings
- Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms PDF Files
- Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms PDF Files
- Thesaurus for Graphic Materials Tool for indexing visual materials by subject and by genre/format.
- Ngā Ūpoko Tukutuku - Māori Subject Headings
- Iwi-Hapū Names Names from this list can be used as LCSH headings in bibliographic records by adding (New Zealand people) as a qualifier.
- New Zealand Gazetteer of Place Names
- OCLC Music Toolkit This a tool which automatically generates faceted terms for music resources based on bibliographic data already present in a record.
- OLAC video game genre vocabulary (olacvggt) A controlled vocabulary of genre terms for cataloguing video games, created and maintained by OLAC Inc. (Online Audiovisual Catalogers).
Bibliographic files
The National Library of New Zealand provides access to the following files of bibliographic records, on the National Library website:
- Publications New Zealand – a monthly file of records added to the New Zealand national bibliography during that month
- NDHA items – a monthly file of freely available items added to the National Library catalogue from the National Digital Heritage Archive during that month
Catalogues
- Publications New Zealand Record of New Zealand publications listed in the National Bibliography, from books to films to maps
- Tiaki Provides access to descriptions of the unpublished manuscripts and pictures collections of New Zealand and Pacific material in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
Authority control
- Value of authority control
- Library of Congress Authorities Search authority records, with facility to print, E-mail and download
- Virtual International Authority File Joint project of several national libraries, matching and linking their authority files and making them available on the Web
- ID.LOC.GOV provides both interactive and machine access to commonly used ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and other lists for bibliographic description
- MARC standards
- MARC21 format for bibliographic data
- MARC21 format for holdings data
- MARC21 format for authority data
- ANSI/NISO Z39.71 Holdings Statements for Bibliographic Items
- ISBN Converter Converts 10-digit to 13-digit ISBNs
Last updated: January 16, 2019 (JHS)