Making Decisions When Cataloging Bound-with Books

Introduction

A bound-with book, strictly defined, is a single print volume, sometimes bearing a distinctive or collective title, comprised of two or more separately created works that were bound together after publication. These works may be related by series or subject matter, or may bear no relation at all. Similar bound multiparts are common in libraries: bound periodical issues, multipart monographs bound in one, or an edited book cataloged as an analyzed set. These cases all have related issues for their inventory management and bibliographic control. However, bound-with books exist in an uneasy middle ground, where their contents are often not so easily classified and may partially overlap with other items in the collection, requiring special treatment. Further, being a single volume that also exists as a collection, their value to a library is estimated differently than most print works. As a result of these special characteristics, bound-with books bring challenges that raise many questions about their value and cataloging needs.

One of the initial questions posed by bound-with books is that of value. For resources with so many problems, the temptation may be to not bother with them in the first place. However, their uniqueness, rarity, and teachability give them special significance, particularly in academic libraries and special collections. Because these books are so often compiled after publication, they represent the collecting intuitions of former owners, and can in certain cases provide context by the nature of their composition. Bound-with books carry the mundane and the extraordinary, with no easy way to sort them from each other without thorough cataloging. Therefore, while they are not in and of themselves rare, they are so unpredictable in their contents that the possibility of a hidden gem is ever-present. Lastly, there is a whole world of printing and binding techniques exemplified in bound-with books that can be useful when studying both the history of the book and the primary source history of the disciplines represented by their contents. It also can give insight into the influences of scholars or collectors who arranged for their binding. These possible unique, rare, and teachable additions to a library collection make bound-with books worth the time and effort it takes to thoroughly catalog them.

Standards and Cataloging Methods

Like any resource that necessitates detailed cataloging treatment, bound-with books have been addressed in multiple cataloging standards (see Figure 1), though the expectations and level of detail vary widely. The earliest American standards for cataloging bound-with books appeared in the Library of Congress’s 1949 Rules for Descriptive Cataloging.¹,² These rules offered the first consistent instruction to note when works are bound together, with distinctions for whether they were issued together or compiled after publication. These notes were printed on catalog cards and their primary importance was locating the resource and providing sufficient access points. The next major set of cataloging rules to address bound-with books was the 1959 Cataloging Rules of the American Library Association and the Library of Congress: Additions and Changes 1949–1958.³ These rules provided more guidance on the “issued with” type, for the first time distinguishing different types of works bound together, though they do not specify how and when to apply the guidelines. This distinction between items published separately or together remains important for description. The next significant change in the cataloging of bound-with books came from the 2nd edition of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2), which opted for more concise, limited guidance, offering simply the “with” note and an example in the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) punctuation showing the title, statement of responsibility, and statement of publication. It is still, probably intentionally, punting on the nuances of how and when to apply these guidelines, as the needs and organization of a library collection can factor into the decisions about the level of detail needed. However, the pattern of limited guidance for bound-with books ended with the introduction of Resource Description and Access (RDA) in 2011. In contrast to prior rules’ focus on the content or style of a “with” note, RDA offered guidance in terms of item-to-item relationships, providing more clarity about the types of relationships and their individual considerations. RDA chapter 28, Related Items, includes a Policy Statement from the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging (LC-PCC-PS) that specifies analytical description as the preferred means for relating items that are bound together and that a structured description in the form of the familiar “with” note is still the way to record the relationship.⁴ Much of the note format is inherited from AACR2, though a statement of responsibility no longer follows the title, simplifying the details needed for each entry in a lengthy “with” note. The next generation of guidance came from the Official RDA Toolkit (Official RDA), a substantial redesign and expansion of “original” RDA. It designated bound-with books as a “Collection Manifestation” which is not itself an RDA element, and provides relationship elements for items, notably “bound with.”⁵ Lastly, the Library of Congress’s Metadata Guidance Document “Relationships: WEMI-WEMI” (Work, Expression, Manifestation, Item, provides examples in both Machine-Readable Cataloging twenty-one (MARC21) and Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME) for how to record different types of notes.⁶ It is easily the most detailed and comprehensive guidance to date. This landscape, having developed amidst a steady evolution in cataloging guidance over a period of nearly seventy-five years, offers an excessive degree of detail to consider; however, if local policy is defined in relation to both the landscape of guidance and the needs of the institution, bound-with cataloging can be done consistently, as with any other format of material.

Figure 1. Timeline of standards addressing bound-with books

This cataloging can be done according to two different descriptive methods for multipart resources: comprehensive description and analytical description. Comprehensive description aims to describe the sum of the contents within a single bibliographic record, and analytical description aims to describe each individual manifestation with its own bibliographic record.⁷ Analytical description allows each manifestation to be cataloged as though it were an ideal copy. A “with” or “bound with” note (MARC field 501) is added to indicate the relationship to the whole, and the means of recording this will vary based on the existing catalog and the technological means available for applying the relationship in discovery and inventory control. This method is ideal for maintaining true bibliographic control over a physical collection, as it allows for duplicate copies not contained in the bound-with to be described with the same bibliographic record. It works best with bound-with books that contain a reasonable number of components for cataloging them as individual manifestations and when the contents of a bound-with book are unrelated or only distantly related in their subject matter.⁸ In cases where analytical description is unsuitable, comprehensive description offers a path. This method is preferable when the number of components far exceeds what is reasonable for analytical description, or when the bound-with book is considered more useful as a collection, such as a bound volume of 200 concert programs.

When creating a comprehensive description, the contents note (MARC field 505) is generally used to record the title and statement of responsibility for each component.⁹ Notes should be given to identify the physical makeup, identifying any omissions in the contents note, binding information, or other details considered relevant for identification and discovery. A summary note (MARC field 520) is highly encouraged, and in some cases, such as the concert programs example, a contents note may not even be necessary, depending on the material. Comprehensive description is also suitable in cases where the resource’s primary function in the collection is to exemplify a certain type of binding, or other feature unique to the resource as a bound-with. Neither analytical nor comprehensive description is superior as a method; rather, they are two sides of the same coin, each providing advantages and trade-offs for the resource in the catalog.

Of particular note in the choice between analytical and comprehensive description is inventory control. A bound-with volume exists in one physical location, with room for one call number, and if it circulates its entire contents are borrowed together. For analytical descriptions, this poses a technological challenge. To properly maintain inventory, the system will need to identify and affect the holdings of all bibliographic records related to the bound-with when the item moves or is borrowed. Library systems have tackled this in different ways, but there are a few problems to be aware of. Some institutions will assign an item record to each bibliographic record and select one “primary” item record to receive the identifier for the bound-with, usually a barcode or accession number. The other items are given a “dummy” identifier. This approach is not compatible with inventory control, as the dummy items are not automatically affected by changes made to the primary item. This scenario mainly creates issues for bound-with books that are part of the circulating collection. Other common problems include having a linking system that is incompatible with the structure of a new library system the institution will be migrating to, or the identification of such an issue after a migration is completed.

In the Alma library management system, the 773 and 774 MARC fields can be used to establish different linking relationships in the catalog, several of which are outlined by Yoel Kortick of Ex Libris.¹⁰ The core elements of this method are the establishment of one bibliographic record as the “host” record, and assigning it one holdings record and one item record. The linkages to the other bibliographic records recorded in the 77X fields are processed in a daily linking job, and the resulting logic allows for proper inventory control. An alternative method that assigns a host bibliographic record which is separate from the records for the components of the bound-with has also been developed, which is more approachable for catalogers working in OCLC Connexion or other shared cataloging environments.¹¹ Methods for different library systems to manage bound-with linking vary enough that generalizing them is not useful, however, acquiring an awareness of how it can be done is essential.

Case Studies

To exemplify bound-with books that defy the norm of analytical description, three case studies are offered to demonstrate how decisions affecting their cataloging are considered and justified. Each bound-with volume presents different challenges to the RDA preferred method of analytical description, through a combination of the nature of the contents, the user tasks fulfilled by the metadata, and the purpose of the bound-with book in a larger collection.

Case Study 1: Philological Pamphlets

Held in Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections, Philological Pamphlets is a single-bound volume of published and ephemeral material generally covering topics in philology (see Figures 2, 3, and 4). The title comes from the spine but otherwise the volume does not have a collective title. Being a combination of both published works and ephemera, an analytical description is not totally sufficient, as ephemera are not given bibliographic control elsewhere in the collection.

Figure 2. Philological Pamphlets: spine view

Figure 3. Philological Pamphlets: bottom edge showing varied material bound together

Figure 4. Philological Pamphlets: folded chart containing a comparative table of alphabets

To remedy this, the published works are analyzed and the ephemera are treated comprehensively. This requires a collection level record for the bound-with volume, using a contents note to record the ephemera and a “Bound with” note to record the analytical relationships to the other bibliographic records, an excerpt of which is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Contents and bound-with notes for Philological Pamphlets

Case Study 2: English Sheet Music Collection

Held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s Music Special Collections, the English Sheet Music Collection is six binder’s volumes comprising a set of over 200 individually published songs and song collections (see Figure 6), each of which has a corresponding entry in the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM).

Figure 6. English Sheet Music Collection: Spine view and example score

Normally, references to RISM would be made through a citation note (MARC field 510); however, given the number of items, analytical description was not a reasonable option for this cataloger, and a collection level record was created instead. In order to solve a separate issue with providing indexing for the RISM citation numbers, a local style for the contents note was devised, where the RISM number was added in square brackets following the title, as shown in Figure 7. This approach was largely justified in the context of user needs. Because these resources were already described analytically in full detail through RISM, catalog users were generally performing known item searches by title, composer, and RISM number.¹² While not a regular occurrence in the course of cataloging bound-with books, the way that users access the material can impact the decisions about the descriptive standards desired.

Figure 7. Excerpt of the contents note for the English Sheet Music Collection

Case Study 3: Czech Prayer Book

Another title from Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections, this Czech prayer book is bound in a hammered brass repoussé cover in bauerneinband style and happens to be included in a bound-with volume with two similar Czech prayer books, shown in Figure 8. The first book lacks a title page and the second book’s title is “Peˇt cˇerwených Koralu.” This book was acquired for the library collection as a specimen of an armored book, not for its content. The record that meets our user tasks and collection aims must then be a faithful description of both the content and the binding.

Figure 8. The Czech prayer book’s bauerneinband style cover

Binding description, being inherently copy-specific, posed a challenge for analytical description of the contents, even though there were only two manifestations present. To highlight the aspects of the resource that are relevant to the collection, the bound-with volume was cataloged comprehensively, with a contents note identifying the two prayer books and extensively detailed binding notes supplemented by local notes expanding on the condition, all in addition to a detailed description of the actual content of the two Czech prayer books within, a record for which is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Excerpt of the bibliographic record for the Czech prayer book

Conclusion

Bound-with books are complex objects that come in many forms, making them high-touch cataloging problems by nature. Alma offers technical flexibility to support several different approaches for cataloging bound-withs, particularly its functional inventory control on analytical records, but the barrier to entry is high and should be considered in the context of the usage expected. There is merit in both analytical and comprehensive cataloging of bound-with books, and the right choice for one library will not necessarily be so for others. The challenge for catalogers is to make policy decisions balancing their users’ needs, their system limitations, and the future of their catalog, while also remaining cognizant of the notorious unpredictability of a bound-with book’s contents.