Australian Subject Analysis Project
The Australian Subject Analysis Project (ASAP) are hosting a survey on the use of subject headings and controlled vocabularies in Australian library catalogues, to inform the future direction of the project. All librarians are invited to contribute their perspectives, from cataloguers and collections librarians to frontline staff, liaison librarians and managers. The survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete. All questions are anonymous and most are optional. The survey can be accessed here.
Additionally, the project is hosting a second survey specifically for thesaurus maintainers: that is, libraries who compile and maintain a subject vocabulary other than LCSH for their own in-house use. This survey does ask for the name of your vocabulary, so only complete the survey if you are the maintainer. The survey can be accessed here.
Both surveys close COB Friday 1st May. For more information, contact ASAP Steering Committee Chair Sae Ra Germaine.
Trove
A new template has been released for the Trove Partners Cataloguing service to assist in describing photographs. This adds to the existing collection of templates for books (standard and extended), audiobooks or oral histories, maps and serials. Forthcoming templates will include posters, notated music and more. Find the templates in Trove Partners Cataloguing when creating a new record.
ALA
The Bibliographic Standards Committee of the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section is holding another Cool Things We Cataloged webinar, this time featuring American psyop propaganda leaflets, Egyptian stained-glass windows, an artist’s book bound between crow wings, an Assyrian medical tablet, and a detached leaf from the first Bible printed in North America. The webinar is on at the Australia-unfriendly time of 2am AEST Tuesday 7 April, but will be recorded. Register here.
The ALA Core Interest Group Week was held in the first week of March, also at largely Australia-unfriendly times, but many sessions were recorded and are now available to view here.
Other
What if subject thesaurus, but Super Mario? The National Library of Finland’s Osma Suominen has released Super Finto, a 2D platform adventure game that explores the General Finnish Ontology (YSO) in four languages: Finnish, Swedish, English and Northern Sámi. Built using AI-assisted tools, Super Finto takes the player on an ontological journey of discovery, collecting persistent identifiers and defeating semantic monsters. Play the game here, or read more about it here.