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If books
could talk...
Stuber catalogs
world's languages for UNM General Library
By Carolyn
Gonzales
The
stack of books on Jim Stubers desk stands as a silent Tower
of Babel. A cataloger of foreign language materials for the UNM
General Library, Stubers world is filled with books in Hebrew,
German, Arabic, Russian and a host of Asian languages.
If the books
could talk, the sound of Russian would rise through the cacophony.
Stuber looks at a Russian title, trying to determine if it is
the final volume in a four-volume set.
I can
search in Cyrillic in OCLC, he says, referring to the Online
Computer Library Center, a shared cataloging system used by librarians
the world over. Continued searching in Russian library catalogs
fails to reveal whether or not the volume is the final in the
set, so Stuber sets it aside for further research. Stuber also
selects Russian language and literature materials for the library.
Next, the
singsong sounds of Asian languages would rise from the stack.
His computer is equipped with CJK, a program that allows for Chinese,
Japanese and Korean character display.
I can
bring up the records for the titles in character. The program
comes with six dictionaries English-Chinese, Chinese-English,
and so on, he says.
Stuber can input and create records using CJK. Searching for,
Japans Beauty, using CJK reveals that the multi-volume
set was published in 1967-68 and that in Japanese its Nihon
no bi.
Stuber can
then add UNM to the list of libraries owning the title. Library
of Congress used to do the cataloging in house in character. They
also transliterated the Asian characters into our alphabet,
he says.
Stuber catalogs
approximately 100 titles a month. It requires enormous intellectual
energy. The Library of Congress system is rigid, but a beautifully
categorized system. The cataloguer determines where each piece
fits in the system, he says. UNMs librarians have
been specially trained by the Library of Congress to catalog at
a level not accessible to all, he says.
Before the
computer age, Stuber had a Cyrillic Selectric typewriter, but
I handmade all the card catalog cards in Arabic, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean and the Indian languages, he says.
Stuber has
been cataloging for the library since April 1974 after earning
a bachelors in Fine Arts at UNM. He learned Russian at Highland
High School and continued to study it at UNM. He also studied
Spanish and German. Indian languages, East Indian, that is, he
said he learned slowly. The Devanagari script, the alphabet system
used in Hindi and other languages, is more alphabetical than character,
he says. The Arabic and Japanese I picked up on my own with
some friends in the community.
Away from
the University, Stuber is an artist. Ive been doing
some stone sculpture in serpentine, a green stone, he says.
Hes also working in marble and is currently working on a
commemorative piece for Sept. 11. He was also creating a series
of woodcuts of the bosque, until the Montaño Bridge
came in and destroyed it.
Some of his
hand printed catalog cards have become part of his collected art
work, as well.
The
detail work of cataloging
Stuber
picks up a book of poetry by local author Wendell Anderson.
He says that the library had several volumes by Anderson and
that each had been cataloged at different times, resulting
in a different author number for each volume. He pulled them
all and determined one author number for Anderson. From there,
he had to get approval from the Library of Congress for the
number. They accepted it. The number is PS 3551.N399. The
P stands for language and literature, the S
for American literature. The 3551 means that Anderson
is a current author and that his name starts with A.
The N399 represents nderson.
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