Card Catalog Entries

For non-computer catalog entries, those being typed on cards and filed into a card catalog, the subject headings are also entered at the end of the cataloging record:

CAS          Tripp, Valerie
Tripp            Happy birthday, Josefina! [sound recording] : a springtime story / 
                  Valerie Tripp. – Winter Garden, Fla. : Magnetix Corp., c1999.
                     1 sound cassette : mono. ; 1 ¾ ips. – (American girls collection)

                    Josefina hopes to become a "curandera" or healer like T`ia Magdalena,
                  and she is tested just before her tenth birthday when a friend receives a
                  potentially fatal snakebite.

                    1. Healers—Fiction. 2. Ranch life—New Mexico—Fiction. 3. Mexican
                 Americans—Fiction. 4. Aunts—Fiction. 5. New Mexico—History—Fiction.
                 I. Title.                    

As seen in the above example, there are 5 subject headings listed in paragraph form at the end of the cataloging information. Each of these headings is numbered. These headings are not listed in order of importance or alphabetically. Each subject heading will receive a catalog card entry of its own, so there is no specified order they need to be listed in. When the cards for this library item are typed up, one copy of this card will be made for the main entry or author, one for each of the 5 subject headings, and one for the title entry. This will make a set of 7 cards that will be filed into the card catalog. These cards are filed into the catalog alphabetically based on the first line of information on each card. For the author card, that will be in the ‘T’ drawer, under Tripp. Below is an example of what one of the subject heading cards would look like:

CAS                      HEALERS—FICTION
Tripp 
                  Tripp, Valerie
                      Happy birthday, Josefina! [sound recording] : a springtime story / 
                  Valerie Tripp. – Winter Garden, Fla. : Magnetix Corp., c1999.
                     1 sound cassette : mono. ; 1 ¾ ips. – (American girls collection)

                    Josefina hopes to become a "curandera" or healer like T`ia Magdalena,
                  and she is tested just before her tenth birthday when a friend receives a
                  potentially fatal snakebite.

                    1. Healers—Fiction. 2. Ranch life—New Mexico—Fiction. 3. Mexican
                 Americans—Fiction. 4. Aunts—Fiction. 5. New Mexico—History—Fiction.
                 I. Title.                    

This card would be filed in the ‘H’ drawer alphabetically under HEALERS. If there were other entries under HEALERS, it would be filed further alphabetically by the subdivision. This pattern would be repeated for each of the remaining subject headings, creating alphabetical entries for each one. The final card would have the title as the top line, in the space taken by the subject heading in the example above. This provides entries for each of the access points specified by the information at the bottom of the catalog card. This same information is provided in the computer catalog record, but in a slightly different format, and without having to duplicate the cataloging record several times.

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