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Sampler Books

The Sampler is a collection of popular reading material located on the third floor near the south entrance. Much of the collection consists of mass-market paperbacks and its composition changes relatively rapidly as new books are added and old ones withdrawn. This statement describes procedures for developing and maintaining the Sampler catalog.

Responsibilities:

Development of the Sampler collection is the responsibility of the General Reference Department Chair, who selects, acquires and weeds books from the collection. All processed items and cards from the Catalog Dept. for the Sampler should be delivered to his/her office upon completion.

Responsibility for cataloging for the Sampler is assigned to the Fiction Cataloger. All items for this collection should normally be referred to him. Withdrawal of Sampler items is handled by the RLIN/NOTIS Unit.

Preliminary Book Processing:

Sampler books are not processed through the Acquisition Dept. as other books, but are delivered to the Fiction Cataloger directly from General Reference. They do not come with TPF's or any other accompanying documentation, nor have they been tattle-taped when they are received in the Catalog Dept.

Preliminary processing of Sampler books consists of having the books tattle-taped (in the Acquisitions Dept.) and stamped with the library's property stamp (in the Catalog Dept.). The full property stamp ("Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah") is stamped at the top of the inside of the front cover and at the bottom of the verso of the title page. A briefer stamp ("BYU Library") is stamped along the fore-edge and the top and bottom edges of the text block.

Online Records:

A bibliographic record is created in NOTIS for each Sampler book in much the same way records are created for books in other collection. Since these books are not processed in the Acquisitions Dept., however, no acquisition records have been entered prior to cataloging. It is still advisable, though, to search the database before entering a new record to see if the book has previously been cataloged in NOTIS, in which case the Sampler copy can be added to the copy holdings.

Sampler books are not classified, but are assigned an accession number when cataloged. Each book will be labelled with an author cutter and a category designation by General Reference personnel before it is delivered to the Catalog Dept. The categories are Biography, Classics, Computers, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Motivational , Mystery, Non- fiction, Romance Sicence Fiction, Travel and Western. The NOTIS location codes for these catagories are as follows:
samp,biogBiographysamp,mystMystery
samp,clasClassicssamp,nfNon-fiction
samp,compComputerssamp,romRomance
samp,fanFantasysamp,sfScience Fiction
samp,fictFictionsamp,travTravel
samp,humHumorsamp,westWestern
samp,mMotivational

The Fiction Cataloger maintains a sheet of labels typed with numbers to keep track of accessioning. A five-digit number is assigned to each book in the order in which they are cataloged. The label bearing this number is placed on the spine of the book above the author cutter.

The call number for the book is entered in NOTIS as follows:

001 1O CN $a [location code] $b [accession number] $c [author cutter]

Example:

001 1O CN $a samp,west $b 16839 $c G869m

Barcords, Cards, Shelf List & Routing:

The barcode is placed on the inside back cover of the book about one inch from the top to make room for the plastic cover that will later be placed over the book.

One card should be ordered on NOTIS for each book. The shelf list for the Sampler is kept on the third floor. No temps are filed for cards ordered; instead, the Fiction Cataloger makes a xerox copy of the spine of each book (in groups of 10 or so to a sheet) and checks them off against the cards before they are delivered to General Reference.

The books are sent directly to the General Reference Dept. chair after cataloging.