Yale University Library: The Sterling Card Catalog



Sterling Catalog What's in it? What's NOT in it? Arrangement Locating Materials

How is the Card Catalog Arranged?

Physical Arrangement

The Sterling card catalog is a union, divided catalog. It's a union catalog, because it contains records for material held in almost all of Yale's libraries. It's a divided catalog, because it separates author and title entries from most subject entries.: The Name-Title Catalog (isn't it really the Author-Title Catalog?)

It would be easy to say that this catalog contains author and title cards for all materials represented in the catalog, more or less, and leave it at that. But much research carried on at Yale relies on locating older, obscure material, and it's this material that's likely not to be found if the complexity of this section of the catalog is minimized.

Most materials whose records enter under the author's name will have an author card and a title card (and cards representing other added entries) in the Name-Title Catalog. All materials will have at least one card representing them in this catalog, but for older materials there may be only one card representing them in the entire catalog. For instance, if the subject of a work and the title were the same, no title entry would have been made until the 1970's. Similarly, a work which was the name of a biographee would not have a title entry until relatively recently. When only one card represents a title, that card will be the one representing the main entry for the item, whether author or title. This is why understanding the concept of authorship and form of entry is so important in this catalog.

Full information on a title - all locations where it's held on campus and for serials, precise holdings information for the Sterling cluster of libraries - is found only at the main entry location.

The Name-Title Catalog also contains subject entries for subjects which are proper names, whether people or corporate bodies. This means that it contains entries for materials both by and about Shakespeare, the Catholic Church, and the American Psychological Association.

The Subject Catalog

This catalog contains subject entries for topical and geographic subjects only and only for Sterling, Mudd, Beinecke, Cross Campus, Kline, Social Science, Art and British Art. In addition, entries for all libraries are included for bibliographies of topical subjects.

Basic Filing Rules

General filing rules:: - Filing is word by word, e.g. New York files before Newark
- Some letters with diacritics in foreign languages file as two letters, e.g. the umlauted "o" in German files as "oe"
- "Mac" and "Mc" interfile as if spelled "Mac"
- Acronyms precede all other entries beginning with the same letter, e.g. AIDS precedes "aardvark"

The Name-Title Catalog

There is a card in the catalog at the main entry location for every location where a title is held on campus. The filing order is the Sterling cluster copy first (Sterling, Mudd, Beinecke, Cross Campus, or British Art), then the school or departmental libraries' records arranged alphabetically by library name.

Entries under author, personal or corporate, arrange with works by the author first, followed by works about them.

Different entities with the same name file in the following order: personal names, place names, titles and phrases (including corporate names).: Example; Phoenix, Stephen Whitney ........................ PERSONAL NAME (AUTHOR)
Phoenix, Stephen Whitney - Biography ..... PERSONAL NAME (SUBJECT)
Phoenix, Ariz ............................................ PLACE NAME (AUTHOR)
The Phoenix and the turtle ......................... TITLE
Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co. ........... CORPORATE NAME

While the works of most authors arrange strictly alphabetically under the author's name, some authors are represented by so many works in so many languages and editions, that a non-alphabetical initial organization has been imposed. These authors are refered to as organized authors.

The general filing order for organized authors is:

Examples from the catalog Filing arrangement
Shakespeare, William. Works. 1623. Works (original language, by date)
Shakespeare, William. Works. Chinese.
Shakepeare, William. Works. Polish. Works (translations, by language)
Shakespeare, William. Works. Poems. 1640
Shakespeare, William. Selections Works (by form):

Drama (orig. language)
Drama (translations)
Poems (by date)
Prose
Selections
Spurious/doubtful works
Correspondence
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. 1603 Individual works (orig. language, by title, by date)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Arabic.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Esperanto. Individual works (translations, by language, by date)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet - Style Individual works (as subject)
Shakespeare, William

- Authorship
- Characters - Fairies
- Portraits
Author as subject
Shakespeare in fiction, drama, poetry Author as a phrase subject heading
Shakespeare, William, 1849-1931 Authors of same name, by dates
Shakespeare & Company
Shakespeare allusion book Titles/phrases beginning with author's name

When identical personal names are filed, the order is:

SIMPLE FORENAME William, the Conqueror
William I, king of England
William II, king of England
COMPOUND FORENAME William Albert, prince of Coburg
William Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg
SIMPLE SURNAME William, J.
William, John
William, John, 13th c.
William, John, fl.1722
William, John, 1801-1863
FAMILY NAME William family
TITLE William and his friends
COMPOUND SURNAME William-Davenport, Albert (interfiled with Titles)

The Subject Catalog

Entries which are identical but which refer to different kinds of entities (place, things, topics) file in this order: places, then topical subjects (topics and things).: EXAMPLE

Phoenix, Ariz.
Phoenix, Ariz. - Description
Phoenix, Ariz. - History
Phoenix (Fabulous bird)