We chose to create a library based on a single work—Jane Austen’s 1815 novel, Emma—in order to experiment with the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) conceptual scheme of work, expression, manifestation, and item (Joudrey and Taylor 2018, 212-21; Tillett 2003). By beginning with a single “work,” we could concentrate on how its many expressions and manifestations and the relationships between them could be captured through cataloging the specific items in our collection.

Cataloging the ACT library was, in one sense, very simple. Our materials—both the ones we actually cataloged and the ones we anticipate being added—are traditional textual, audio, and visual resources for which there are already very clear guidelines in both RDA and MARC. Because the ACT library is a subsidiary of the Emma Museum, we expected that non-traditional materials—photographs of Jane Austen, Regency-style dresses, and so on—would be cataloged by the museum rather than the library. We were left with a sizable, but not staggering, stack of materials produced in the last two centuries. Easy, right?

But the simplicity of this task was also its primary challenge: we had to think about how patrons would approach searching narrowly focused resources rather than the entire world of knowledge. This is a very different task than cataloging for, say, a large multi-purpose public or academic library. Basically, the patron’s initial searching effort—finding resources related to Jane Austen’s Emma—has already happened by the time they come to our library. The question then becomes, how would patrons need/want to refine this search? Is the collection small enough that we could scrap large portions of the MARC cataloging we found in OCLC connexion? Or was all that information important enough to be included? Under what scenarios would we need to include DDC or LCC numbers if our collection were sorted, as it is now, simply by medium?

Our initial hunch was that patrons of the ACT library—whether they were high schoolers who just saw the movie Clueless and wanted to know more about the novel from which it was adapted, or academic researchers documenting the reception history of the novel—would want to know four main things about any resource pertaining to Emma:

• What is the medium? book? article? podcast? TV series?
• How is it related to the original Emma?
• When was it produced?
• Who produced it?

These are the main facets of the faceted approach we took to cataloging the collection.

Though our responsibility was to create a cataloging policy for the collection, we also thought a lot about the library interface. Our patrons would not be looking at a MARC record or an RDA table; they would be looking at either a computer screen or physical objects. How could our cataloging provide the necessary structure for a comprehensive program allowing patrons to find, identify, select, and obtain the items in the ACT library? (Joudrey and Taylor 2018, 207) We wanted to develop tools that could take the patron with a laser-like focus directly to the resource they seek, but also give the curious wanderer the opportunity to stumble across resources that might appeal to them.

The choices we made—detailed in our cataloging policy—were in service of these goals. But the actual cataloging was not trivial. Yes, our cataloging needs were fairly simple: we could get by with a limited number of MARC fields to capture the information our patrons would need. But what’s the harm in packing our RDA and MARC records with all the information we could access about the items? Our patrons and librarians might not need to know the retail price of an item, or even the item’s appropriate LCC number, but is there any drawback to having all that information encoded in the record, just in case? What if the library closes and all its materials are donated to a large academic library? Wouldn’t it be better if all the available information were present? In this as in most cases, we decided to split the difference: keep it simple, but include some key bits of non-necessary information.

Among other things, we learned the following from this project:

1. Knowing the original publication date is important for understanding the relationships between the work—Emma—and its many manifestations. But the original publication date can be hard to find. For example, a translation of Emma into Korean may have the date 2012, but closer examination shows that this is simply when this particular publisher put out an edition of a translation that was made in 1953. How much searching should a cataloger do to find this original date? Which is the “original” date? Can (should?) the chronology of these various manifestations of Emma be left to scholars and patrons rather than catalogers? Or should the cataloger embark on this perhaps frustrating detective work?

• While we thought we were making a good attempt at notating the relationship between a particular manifestation and the original Emma, we forgot that it might be just as important to notate the relationships among the various manifestations. If we catalog both the screenplay of an Emma movie, and the movie itself, shouldn’t it be clear that the two are intertwined with one another? If someone contributes a piece of fan fiction drawn not on Emma, but on Clueless, shouldn’t that be made clear?

• While listing all the relevant contributors to a particular manifestation is a laudable goal, it’s really difficult to execute. The “one book, one to three authors” standard is impossible to apply to materials like films. There are directors, producers, screenwriters, actors. Do they all need to be listed? What if the item being cataloged doesn’t display this information on its cover? Do you need to watch the film to take down this information? Is it enough to list the people in the opening credits? Sure, we don’t need to list the head grip or the animator whose name appears in a list of thirty-five animators, but the closer you get to the most obvious first-named people (the director, the screenwriter, the lead actor), the harder it is to parse who belongs in the catalog and who does not. Furthermore, contributors don’t always appear on an item in the order that an individual cataloger might consider significant. The narrator of an audiobook might be prominently displayed while the author is almost a side note. Catalogers at the ACT library might be inclined to slap Jane Austen’s name front and center on every manifestation, but in many cases, she, as the “original” author, might be nearly irrelevant.

• Two of us (Alexis and Cynthia) went into this project thinking RDA was superior to MARC because it is so flexible about accommodating different types of items. But we both developed a surprising affection for MARC; it was just easier to use as a copy cataloging format. We ended up focusing our attention on creating useful MARC records.

• We continue to be fascinated by the of-ness and about-ness of resources in general. Though this didn’t come up with any of the six items we cataloged, we were struck by the challenges involved in describing and classifying an item while giving suitable attention to spoilers, trigger warnings, and even the exact topic of a controversial book.

• Possibly the most important lesson we learned is that having a single person responsible for cataloging is not necessarily a great thing, at least for beginning catalogers. We learned so much by going over each other’s cataloging records. From typos to varying understandings of particular fields, it was really important to have many eyes on each record.