AJK Community Seed Library

Libraries across the country are expanding their circulating materials to include many unique special collections. Our group members have personal experience with libraries that check out telescopes and hand-held document scanners and know of other libraries that circulate things such as museum passes, specialty cake pans, and fishing equipment. As libraries continue to push the boundaries of what types of items they will loan to their users, libraries will need creative and flexible thinking catalogers who can interpret the cataloging rules and standards and apply them to whatever object might be the latest lending trend.

One trend that is building momentum is seed libraries, which is a special collection of seeds that are available for public use. Our project library, Community Garden Seed Library, contains seeds and bulbs for both flower and vegetable gardens, as well as some live plants such as tree seedlings. Library users can also borrow gardening tools, which unlike the seeds, have to be returned to the library. Patrons who explore this special collection will also find traditional library materials such as books and DVDs about gardening. This project revealed some of the challenges faced when cataloging consumable goods and nontraditional objects and has left us better prepared to handle non-traditional materials in our future.

The first challenge we faced was determining the source of information for the items in our seed library. Seeds and bulbs usually come in a package with identifying data printed on it, and trees and plants usually have this information printed on a tag or spike. Our instructor confirmed that these tags and labels are the best sources. However, we thought of situations where the package information is incomplete. Farmers and home gardeners may donate seeds that they have collected themselves, and they will not have the resources to package the seeds in a traditional seed envelope. Seeds from these sources may only have the type of seed handwritten on the outside of the container. Gardening tools are also likely to arrive at the library with little more data than the name of the tool printed on a price tag or packaging. We considered what would be reliable sources to gather information about our items if they had little to no identifying information with them. We decided that websites and catalogs for seed companies like American Meadows could be used, as well as commercial websites such as amazon.com and Lowe’s. We also found the websites for nonprofit organizations like the Arbor
Day Foundation to be reliable sources of information when the packaging is incomplete or missing.

We debated what would be the title or title proper of these items and how to determine the main entry when a person or corporation did not have responsibility for the creation of the item. There is a main entry field for a uniform title, and that suited our needs best, but we had to determine what would be the title of a seed or garden tool. We looked at several seed libraries and found two that have their seeds available to search in their OPAC, Pima County Public Library and El Paso Public Library. Both of these libraries recorded the seed’s common name in the 245 field. Pima County also recorded the scientific name in a 246 varying title field with parallel title indicators since the name is in Latin. We agreed with their title decisions and applied them to our policy, but had more trouble identifying what should be the uniform title.

Garden tools do not have parallel or other varying titles, so it would be easy to determine the uniform title for the tools and garden supplies. However, the seeds, bulbs, and tree seedlings in our library have two different titles in their record. The purpose of a main entry would be to unite all records for one type of plant so that a search will return all records related to it. Since we were looking for the title that would unify other records, it seems the best title to use as the uniform title, in our case, would be the common name from field 245. Using the scientifc name for the main entry would unite records, but not many patrons would know or search by the scientific name. We would have to make sure that all future catalogers use this same uniform title for all types of the same plant, for example both an acorn and an oak seedling would have the uniform title “Oak”.

Once we had our information source and titles established, we had to decide what data from the source was relevant to our patrons. We knew that our cataloging records would contain multiple 500 General note or 5.9 Cataloger’s Notes, so we needed to make sure that these notes and the information contained within were consistent and reflected our user’s needs. We made a list of things a patron would need to know to select the seed or tool that meets their needs. The planting zone, soil and water needs, sun or shade tolerance, size when fully grown, and how long it takes to reach maturity were criteria that we knew would apply to
all seeds, bulbs, and tree seedlings. However, some information on our list did not apply to everything, like whether the plant will be edible or if the flower will be a perennial or an annual. Information that is important but does not apply to all seeds, bulbs, and plants so those will appear as notes but are not required for every record.

We also thought it was important that the source of the seed or plant be noted in the record, especially when seeds come from local farms and gardens. This note field is one field where it is a 500 general note in MARC record, but the corresponding field in RDA is not 5.9 cataloger’s note. Field 2.19.1 in RDA covers the immediate source of acquisition of the resource, which is what we are documenting in our note field. MARC does not have a field for recording the acquisition date of an item, so we must use a general note when cataloging using that standard.

This seed project was challenging. Seed libraries are gaining popularity, but are new enough that there were not a lot of resources available to help inform our choices beyond the RDA Toolkit and the MARC guides provided by OCLC and the Library of Congress. The libraries who have already taken the challenge to catalog seeds and make them searchable in the OPAC, and the websites that guided us to those libraries, were a tremendous help. Although this is a fictitious seed library, by working on this project when the seed library concept is relatively new, we have gained experience in an area where not many librarians can say they have. We have made cataloging decisions and policy for a concept that libraries across the nation will be adopting over the next few years. This practice can give us the opportunity to take this fictional seed library and apply what we learned to a real one.