Talking about Rare Books: exploring CVRMC as a learning tool

Trying to befriend a controlled vocabulary

Have you ever come across a term in a controlled vocabulary, and immediately wished you'd known it four months ago for a particular book you were working on? That's me all the time!

I don't think it's possible to ever comprehensively know all of the controlled vocabularies you're working with. However, it helps a lot to at least have an idea of what your options are.

An exercise that I've found incredibly helpful in getting to know the Controlled Vocabulary for Rare Materials Catalogers (CVRMC) is to choose one of the top hierarchical terms, and then just straight up type it out. This charged up my cataloguing in a couple of ways:

1. It gives me a holistic visual sense of the size and scope of the vocabulary ;
2. There is a slim chance that my brain will remember at least some of the terms ;
3. It's a great way to learn new terms and familiarise yourself with what people in the field call things.

In case you're curious as to what this looks like, here's an example.

Case study: Index of CVRMC\Work\<Content of work>

https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/rbmscv.html, 13 June 2024

Leaf books

(Use for a book containing an account of an earlier printed book or manuscript and including an original leaf or leaves from it.)

Prejudicial works

See separately: Index of CVRMC\Work\<Content of work>\Prejudicial Materials