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Genre Searching in the Yale Library Catalog

See also: Special Collections Subject: Searching in Orbis Help

Several Yale libraries and special collections use specific published lists of form and genre terms to catalog materials in their collections. These lists include:

For the Beinecke Library:

Genre terms : a thesaurus for use in rare book and special collections cataloguing / prepared by the Bibliographic Standards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, ACRL/ALA. 2nd ed. Chicago : Association of College and Research Libraries, 1991.

The Beinecke Manuscript Unit uses Art and Architecture Thesaurus / Toni Petersen, director. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 as its primary thesaurus, and then Descriptive terms for graphic materials : genre and physical characteristic headings / compiled and edited by Helena Zinkham and Elisabeth Betz Parker (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress). Washington, D.C. : Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, 1986. and RBMS Genre Terms as supplementary thesauri.

A representative selection of terms used from the RBMS Genre Terms includes:

Amateur periodicals--[place]
Booksellers' advertisements--[place]
Chapbooks--[date]
Comic books
Comic strips
Cookbooks--[place]--[date]
Cries--[date]
Dime novels
Fairy tales and nursery rhymes--[date]
Farewell sermons--[date]
Fast day
Fourth of July addresses--[date]
Funeral sermons--[date]
Gallows speaches
Juvenilia--[date]
Juvenile literature--[date]
Laws--[place]--[date]
Local histories--[place]
Ordination sermons--[date]
Playbills--[place]
Plays--[date]
Poems--[date]
Publishers' advertisements--[place]
Theater programs-- [place]

For Sterling's Department of Manuscripts and Archives:

Art & Architecture Thesaurus On Line

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This file last modified 05/12/06
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