We Are Harry and the Potters

That’s right, the rumors are true!

“Wizard rock music” is now an offical Library of Congress Subject Heading!

What does that even mean?

Well, I’ll let our friend and (wizard rock) librarian Joy Lambert explain how this extraordinary honor has come to pass:

Basically, when an item is cataloged to be added to a library collection, it is assigned subject headings so people can find it if they do a subject search in a catalog. The Library of Congress has official subject headings. It is from this list that cataloging librarians can choose what subject headings to assign to an item. My friend and colleague Annette Anderson-Ma and I did a little investigation and found out that there wasn’t an actual subject heading for Wrock. Until now, Wrock albums were mainly cataloged with other subject headings, such as “Rock music” or “Potter, Harry (Fictitious character) — Songs and music.” We felt that Wrock really deserved its own heading, so we talked a lot about it, but weren’t quite sure how to go about submitting it. Fast forward a couple of years, and we finally had the time and figured out who to contact to submit it to Library of Congress.

With help of a librarian at UCLA, our heading was submitted and approved! AND, if you look on Worldcat.org, which is part of OCLC and basically a huge library catalog of materials from all over the world, and look up the Wizard Rockumentary, you will see that the record for it has the subject heading of “Wizard rock music”!! So far, it is the only item with that official subject heading. But, that will change as we update the records of other Wrock albums, and as new Wrock is cataloged by librarians who know about the new subject heading.

You can see it here on the Library of Congress approved subject heading list here:
http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/subject/weeklylists/
Our subject heading is listed alphabetically on the list for March 18th.

You may notice under the main subject heading “UF Wrock music”. That means that “Wrock music” can be used for and searched as a subject and will retrieve the same records that “Wizard rock music” would. Also, “BT Rock music” means that rock music is a broader term.

And here is the Authority Record, which is basically the official record for the subject heading. You can see that you and Joe and other Wrock bands were mentioned in our supporting evidence.

http://authorities.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?AuthRecID=7804931&v1=1&HC=1&SEQ=20090326150927&PID=AJfv6LihIiA1IH2N03RfTI8qYFzwyVG

Annette and I are really excited. Having a LC Subject Heading approved is a pretty big deal in the library world! As Wizard Rock Librarians and huge fans, we are happy that Wrock stuff can now properly be cataloged and is getting the recognition it deserves!

So congratulations are in order for Annette and Joy and for all of the people who have supported wizard rock over the years. We have created something new.

Amazing.

-paul

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 6:47 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.