Cataloguing for Fun and... Just Fun, Really

Welcome to my first cataloguing tutorial! I hope you'll have as much fun reading it as I will writing it. Although I suppose I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Who knows if I'm going to have fun writing this? I might get really annoyed and bored and think this is stupid then go off and have a sandwich halfway through because I hate it so much. In that case I hope you'll have more fun reading it than I did writing it. But feel free to have a sandwich, no matter your enjoyment of today's piece.

Right on! Today we'll be going over illustrations. Now, if you're like me before I went to library school, you probably aren't aware that there are books that don't have pretty pictures in them. So as a matter of course, a good record should mention whether or not there are illustrations. You know, just so somebody doesn't take out a copy of War and Peace and suffer heart failure when faced with reams of text without helpful, friendly pictures of ducks, puppies, and walruses. (Walrii?) If the book is illustrated, we enter this into the physical description tag:

ill.

Now, this doesn't mean that we think the book is off the hook or dope or fly or anything like that. No, this is just an abbreviation for the word "illustration". It's okay, I'm here to help you through this, so please stop breathing heavily. Unless you just went for a fun run. Then it's all right.

But wait, now we have to mention whether the illustrations are in colour. If they are, we do this:

col. ill.

But if only some are, we do this:

ill (some col.)

There are some books where most of the illustrations are in colour, and there's only a few in black and white. Then we do this:

ill (chiefly col.)

Now! The caveat with this is that we have to use this even if the book has only one black and white illustration while the rest are in colour. Which means that we have to look at every illustration in the book. (In theory.)

Things get stickier when graphic novels enter the picture. Because they are chiefly pictures with word balloons, we describe them thusly:

chiefly ill. with captions

Ah! But a particular graphic novel has only colour illustrations! What would the description be, I wonder? Can you figure it out? Oh, who am I kidding, like you're going to f***ing bother. You're already scrolling down, aren't you? That's fine, I'll just writing text up here while you're lollygagging about down there. Are you having fun? How's the view?

chiefly col. ill. with captions

Then again, with most graphic novels, there's usually a panel in black and white, usually to demonstrate an intense emotional moment. Like when the character is trying to take a dump when he or she is constipated. Happens in manga* all the time. Why do you think the kids love it so much? In that case, we...

*sigh*

chiefly ill. (chiefly col.) with captions

I don't know about you, but seeing that just about makes we want to bash my head in with my barcode reader and shower my eyes with Goo-Gone cleaner while that Dragonette song plays in the background.

*Warning: This might be an unrepentant, boldfaced lie.