Notes

The ARLIS/NA Cataloging Advisory Committee has drafted these best practices to provide practical guidance to catalogers working with art exhibition publications. The guidelines are confined to cataloging issues and situations characteristic of this type of material; they are intended to be used with and are compatible with other cataloging documentation including Resource Description and Access (RDA) and LC-PCC Policy Statements and Metadata Guidance Documents. Examples have been given using the MARC21 format for consistency and familiarity, but MARC21 is not a prescribed or preferred schema. The order of notes in this document generally follows the WEMI framework but can be adjusted for local practice or when it has been decided that a particular note is of primary importance

Assigning Subject and Genre/Form Headings

These best practices are concerned with applying the Library of Congress Subject Headings to art exhibition publications, and are intended for use with the relevant sections of the Library of Congress Subject Headings Manual. Assigning subject headings to exhibition publications presents a great opportunity for the exercise of cataloger’s judgment. Not only are art exhibition publications frequently published with little information about their subject beyond an artist’s name and a short checklist, but the existing bibliographic records that catalogers follow as examples can vary widely according to local practices. Many of these practices can depart from established standards published in the Library of Congress Subject Headings Manual

Title and Statement of Responsibility

Some forms of exhibition documentation, such as brochures or checklists, are produced in-house and may present bibliographical information in an unconventional fashion, requiring the cataloger to look well beyond the title page or even beyond the publication itself. Exhibition publications often require more use of cataloger's judgment, and more intervention in terms of transposing, omitting, and supplying data. Decision-making about the choice of a primary access point can be quite involved. And cataloging exhibition publications is probably more affected by local practices and guidelines than any other area of art documentation, since catalogers who work at institutions that mount or host exhibitions are often expected to provide more detail about their own institutions' publications. Though these are local practices, it is useful to alert other catalogers to this phenomenon